Kent Hughes finally reveals exactly why his organization chose Juraj Slafkovsky

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Jeff Drouin
July 12, 2022 (10:57)

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When Kent Hughes announced the selection of Juraj Slafkovsky with the very first pick in the draft last Thursday, the Habs general manager took everyone by surprise as the majority of the team's fans, as well as many experts, expected Shane Wright to be the Habs' selection.

In the end, Wright slipped to fourth overall when he was selected by the Seattle Kraken. Now that the dust has settled, one might wonder what tipped the scales in favor of the Slovakian forward. It didn't take long for the Habs GM to answer that question.

As reported by Marco Normandin of Habsolumentfan.com, Hughes was in an interview with Sportsnet reporter Elliotte Friedman sometime after the first pick was announced, and he revealed the process behind the selection of the big Slovak forward.

"As I mentioned earlier, we had narrowed our list down to three players and considered having done extensive research on each of them. On Wednesday morning, our group seemed to be leaning towards Juraj Slafkovsky, but we needed to meet with him to ask him a few questions that we needed answered. He answered the questions in spectacular fashion, and here we are today."

Afterwards, when Friedman asked him if Slafkovsky had said anything in particular to convince Habs management to draft him, his answer was pretty clear.

"He really has a charismatic personality and he was asked what his favorite part of hockey was for him. He replied that it was when his team was leading by a goal or losing by a goal and the game was on the line."

Now that's something to impress an organization with by showing maturity at a young age and having a charismatic personality bodes well with the new direction the Habs want to take since the new staff arrived.

Slafkovsky is currently at the Habs' development camp and even though he has been with the organization for less than a week, Habs fans are already looking forward to the start of official training camp in September.

To watch the interview between Kent Hughes and Elliotte Friedman, click on the link below.

Elliotte Friedman and Kent Hughes on Sportsnet