“When you pick (No.) 5, there’s only so many chances that an organization gets to add talent,” Jeff Gorton, the Canadiens’ executive vice-president of hockey operations, said in a video the team released after last year’s draft from a pre-draft scouting meeting. “It’s very hard. You can’t do it through free agency anymore, really. You’re getting older players and you have to pay them a lot of money, right? You pretty much have to draft or get lucky to get high-end talent now, right? And sometimes you take a chance. So it seems as though this room has said, ‘No, we don’t want to try this chance,’ and I just want to make sure we’re making the right decision.”
While the video didn’t make clear which player Gorton was talking about, you have to believe it was Russian forward Matvei Michkov that the Canadiens weren’t willing to take a chance on. With Michkov, there were concerns about the fact he still had three years remaining on his KHL contract, the geopolitical landscape in Russia with the war against Ukraine, along with the mysterious death of his father, Andrei, whose body was found in a pond last April at age 51 under what the Russian Hockey Federation said was “unexplained circumstances.”
Instead, the Canadiens took the safe route and selected Austrian defenceman David Reinbacher with the No. 5 pick, while Michkov went to the Philadelphia Flyers with the No. 7 pick.
There was a report last month from Russia’s SportExpress that Michkov could be headed to Philadelphia as early as this summer, getting out of his KHL contract. The Flyers aren’t certain that will happen and team management said last week they are still going on the assumption Michkov will play out the final two seasons of his KHL contract.
We will find out on June 28, when the first round of the NHL Draft is held in Las Vegas, if the Canadiens are willing to take a risk this year.
