- Montréal, dans les perdants, selon...
- Le journaliste de Toronto, Scott Wheeler...
20. Montreal Canadiens
Pick: 16. Kaiden Guhle
My ranking: No. 31 (change: +15)
A year ago, as a number of teams took defencemen near the top of the draft (see: Moritz Seider, Philipp Broberg, Victor Soderstrom), a talented forward fell into the Canadiens lap: Cole Caufield. This year, in the lead-up to the draft, I warned of a second consecutive draft that was light on D, and of the value that teams could get by taking forwards as other teams drafted defencemen a few picks too high. Coincidentally, the team that benefitted from that a year ago, did the reverse this time around. I don’t love the Guhle pick, if only for that reason. He’s huge and he’s an extremely athletic, powerful player, who wins battles with ease and skates better than you expect out of a defender his size. That’s an intriguing set of skills at face value. My concern with his game is that, like my concern with Sanderson (though to a more pronounced degree in Guhle’s case), he’s not particularly talented inside the offensive zone. He’s not going to run a power play. He’s not going to contribute across the offensive zone blue line beyond a hard shot. And there is still plenty of time for him to polish some of those skills (on his other skills, some believe he’s close to NHL ready), but I’m not sure that’s the type of player I would have targeted quite so high, considering how gifted some of the available forwards still were.
- OUIN...