It wasn't just Montreal that got the draft wrong and things could have been very different for Cole Caufield
In the last few years, fans and analysts have been good at criticizing the CH regarding its draft efficiency. Many liked, even became obsessed with, hurling their venom at the club's former amateur draft director, Trevor Timmins.
If he made excellent choices such as Carey Price, Max Pacioretty, P.K. Subban, Brendan Gallagher or even Ryan McDonagh and Mikhail Sergachev, it was his failures that left a mark on the public. Jarred Tinordi, Nikita Scherbak, Louis Leblanc and Michael McCarron, just to name a few, certainly give fans headaches, especially when they look at, after all, who could have been drafted by the club. Evgeny Kuznetsov (Tinordi), Brayden Point (Scherbak), Ryan O'Reilly (Leblanc) and Jake Guentzel (McCarron) were all available when the CH was going to talk.
That kind of thinking is very easy to do after the fact, though. It's also important to realize that the CH is not the only team that has made mistakes. Look at the first two rounds of the 2017 Philadelphia Flyers drafts, they must be biting their fingers today.
If you take Jake Oettinger out of the equation, as he was selected before Morgan Frost, the Flyers could have had two of the Stars' top three players in their lineup in Miro Heiskanen and Jason Robertson. When you consider what Nolan Patrick and Isaac Ratcliffe have become, there is plenty to rage about if you are a Philadelphia fan.
That's not even counting one of the Flyers' most egregious mistakes in the 2019 draft, when they selected, Cam York and not Cole Caufiled...
Just goes to show that the draft is really an inexact science and that it is very difficult to predict who will be an NHL player.
| POLL | ||
Do you think the CH is doing better in recent years at drafting? | ||
| Yes | 155 | 88.1 % |
| No | 21 | 11.9 % |
| List of polls | ||
