Recommended Habs draft strategy

TRADE. ALL. YOUR. PICKS.

That is my advice to GM Pierre Gauthier as he heads into his first NHL entry draft at the helm of the Montreal Canadiens. Trade every single last one of your picks!

The Habs have the worst history of draft picks of any NHL team. Well, I haven't done all of the research, but they must. Over the past ten seasons, they have used first round picks to select the likes of Ryan McDonagh, David Fischer and Kyle Chipchura. Even the so-called successful picks (Mike Komisarek, Chris Higgins, Andrei Kostitsyn and Carey Price) have enjoyed less than spectacular careers to date. The only top tier NHLer to be drafted by Montreal in the past ten years was Tomas Plekanec (3rd round in 2001), and it is debatable whether he is even a first line centreman.

But the futility extends well beyond the last decade. In the 1990s, Montreal used their first pick to select (in order): Turner Stevenson, Brent Bilodeau, David Wilkie, Saku Koivu, Brad Brown, Terry Ryan, Matt Higgins, Jason Ward, Eric Chouinard and Alexander Buturlin. Only Koivu and Stevenson registered more than 81 career NHL points. In fact, you need to go back to 1984 to find what could be considered, by any measure, a successful draft. That year the Habs selected Petr Svoboda (5th overall), Shayne Corson (8th overall), Stephane Richer (29th overall) and Patrick Roy (51st overall). Interestingly, the remaining ten players the team drafted that year played a grand total of zero games in the NHL.

Over the years Montreal has drafted first overall on five occasions and are either one for five or two for five, depending on how you classify Rejean Houle. Personally, I think he was great as a player, but his years as GM more than made up for it. Guy Lafleur (1st overall in 1971) is perhaps the greatest player in Canadiens history, but Doug Wickenheiser (ahead of Denis Savard and Paul Coffey), Michelle Plasse and Garry Monahan (ahead of Peter Mahovlich) can be generously described as disappointments.

So, there is the illustrious draft history of the Montreal Canadiens. It is actually worse if you go year by year and look at the names of the players selected. Whether its bad luck or bad management, it is pretty clear that Gauthier should dump all of the team's for...anything! The odds tell us that it is worth it to trade all of the picks for any serviceable NHL player.

Either that or they trade their scouts in for a magic eight ball or a ouija board.