MONTREAL - It was anyone’s guess.
For the second year in a row, the Canadiens held a top pick heading into the 2023 NHL Draft in Nashville, TN.
And for a second year in a row, they played their cards close to their chest.
No one knew who the Habs would select or if Montreal’s general manager, Kent Hughes, would trade the pick away to move up or down —and that's exactly what Hughes wanted.
“There’s definitely more than one name that comes to mind,” he said, coyly, during a media availability the day before the Draft. “We think that at fifth, we’ll get a good hockey player if we keep our pick. If we move up, we’re even more certain. If we move down, it depends.”
The West Island native certainly has a way of keeping everyone on their toes.
Pundits and fans fed into the speculation for months leading up to the annual event until the Habs brass put an end to the guessing game when they made Austrian blue-liner David Reinbacher the fifth-overall pick at Bridgestone Arena on June 28.
“We felt that David, given what he has done this year, and last year in fact, his growth, his potential, are very, very intriguing and extremely difficult to obtain,” said Canadiens’ co-director of amateur scouting Nick Bobrov following the conclusion of the draft on June 29. “We see that at every draft, teams trying to trade up and get that guy.”
The stats don’t lie: In 2022-23, the right-handed defenseman amassed 22 points in 46 games for Kloten, the most by a teenager in Switzerland’s top tier professional league. He ranked second among defensemen in the National League with an average ice time of 18:56. That number represented a more than six-minute increase on his average ice time from the previous campaign. [statistics courtesy of Adam Kimelman, NHL.com]