Patrick Johnson

As they did a year ago, Canadiens took a seventh round flyer on a skilled American kid who is woefully undersized. In 2007 it was Minnesota high schooler Scott Kishel, who was 5-11, 165 pounds as an 18 year old senior. Kishel did very little to justify the pick in the USHL last season and has added just 5 pounds as he prepares to enter the NCAA. Patrick Johnson is already in the WCHA and comes off a strong freshman year at Wisconsin, but he is even smaller than Kishel, showing up at the development camp at 5-9, 150 pounds. Johnson is a forward where size is less critical and has a reputation for both fearlessness and physical play despite his diminutive stature. But even assuming that both players can add around 20 pounds before they leave college hockey, they still would be at the very minimum, size wise, in terms of playing pro hockey. Curious choices, but hey, it's the seventh round.

Maxim Trunev

A seeming afterthought fifth round pick that Calgary sent to Montreal in the Alex Tanguay trade could turn out to be much more than that if Trunev is what he appears to be at first glance. Despite the fact that he is one of the youngest players taken in the draft (turns 18 on September 7), he put up similar scoring totals to Nikita Filatov (#6 overall pick) in the Russian 3 league last season. Trunev is about the same size, (listed at 5-11, 175), and didn't have the advantage of playing with the two highly regarded linemates Filatov lined up with at CSKA, Kugryshev and Kulemin. Moreover, Trunev actually has spent more time in North America up to this point, despite the fact that he was not on the Russian select team that came to the ADT junior challenge in B.C. last year, even though he was named to the preliminary rostor. Maxim has twice travelled to Calgary with the Severstal Cherepovits midget team for the Mac's Tuornament, and twice attended the Okanagan Hockey School run out of Penticton, B.C. by several former NHLers. One of the coaches there, Richard Kromm, is coach of the Portland Winterhawks of the WHL, and he was confident enough that Trunev would come to North America and make a difference to his team that he selected him with the third overall pick in the CHL import draft. Certainly there would be no better place for Trunev to get his feet wet in terms of the North American game than the tough checking, defense oriented WHL.

Jason Missiaen

As developmental projects, goaltenders take longer than most other position players as a rule, and in the case of the 6'8" netminder the club drafted out of the OHL, that learning curve figures to be even longer. At 18, Jason probably has the athletic co-ordination of normal sized players two or three years younger. It will likely take him several more years to grow into his body, so it is quite impressive that he has already completed two OHL seasons albeit in a backup role. He did put up better numbers that highly regarded starter Trevor Cann in Peterborough last season, although he only played a minority of the games. Cann has one more season in the OHL in all likelyhood, and barring a total collapse on his part, Missiean will remain as a backup for the upcoming season. Already 215 pounds, he figures to be up around 240 pounds when he fully matures, and if he has even average skill level will present a formidable obstacle to NHL shooters.

Steve Quailer

In a draft year where there were a dozen or so top prospects who went off the board in the first half of the first round, the club focussed on longer term projects with the majority of their picks. Quailer certainly fits that description, just one year removed from the obscurity of Colorado high school hockey, and having been passed over in his first year of eligibility for the draft. But he has an intriguing set of raw tools, and is still just 18 years of age. At 6-4 already, he needs to add some muscle to his 180 pound frame, but skates very well for such a tall player, and has surprisingly soft hands. His first season in the USHL was excellant, he co led Sioux City in scoring during the regular season, and was named team MVP. Steve also was selected to participate in the mid season All Star game, and named to the All Rookie team. His season mirrored that of Max Pacioretty with the same club a year earlier in many ways, although last season't edition of the Musketeers wasn't nearly as strong a club, and Quailer's scoring total fell short of Pacioretty. At this point the lanky right winger isn't nearly as strong as Pacioretty was a year earlier, but he has the height to eventually fill out to at least the same size. Recruited by Northeastern University, Quailer was also drafted by the Seattle Thunderbirds of the WHL, and will choose between the two alternatives this summer. He would have two years of eligibility in the WHL, and four in the NCAA.

Danny Kristo

Montreal landed the USNTDP team captain with the #56 overall pick in the second round. It was an off year for the program, but that still seems very late in the draft for the top rated U18 grad to be drafted. The past several drafts have seen several U18 team members taken in the top few picks, and generally four or five in the first round of each draft. The 2007-2008 team seemed to score by committee, without the usual standout star on board. That is the type of player Kristo seems to be, two way, team first guy, capable of taking on whatever role he is assigned. As such he seems like a fairly safe pick, he is a good skater, a hard worker, and is willing to get his nose dirty. That should guarantee him work on one of the bottom two lines, and he has at times flashed the offensive skills required to play higher in the lineup. The line on him sounds very similar to Christopher Higgins in 2002, at this point in time. The difference is that Higgins was a year older and coming off a fine freshman season at Yale,as well as a strong WJC tournament that vaulted him into the first half of the first round of the draft. Danny will have to serve a year in the USHL before he enrolls at the U of North Dakota, to finish his high school, but he was invited to the WJC selection camp. The time in major junior may prove beneficial to developing his offensive skills, as there will be far less room to work once he enters the WCHA.

Playing the draft cards

Hard to say how much planning went into the Canadiens dealing around the 2008 draft, but the net result looks very promising.

First of all, they were able to extract top line left winger Alex Tanguay from the Flames for their first round pick this year (#25 overall), and their second round pick next year (#60 overall..;) ). The Flames used the Habs first round pick (after some shuffling of the draft cards themselves) on lanky OHL winger Greg Nemisz, who had a decent season but was knocked for his skating. He seems like a poor man's Guillaume Latendresse. It is unlikely that Montreal would have taken Nemisz, given their emphasis on skating, and the player many thought they wanted at that spot, Nicholas Deschamps, lasted into the early part of the second round. Deschamps came with the rep of being fairly good in all aspects of the game, but outstanding in none.

The Habs used the fifth round pick (138 overall) coming back from the Flames, on young Russian winger Maxim Trunev. Unlike Nemisz, Trunev can fly, and unlike Deschamps, he stands out for his exceptional offensive skills. He was listed at 5-11, 175 pounds, but that seems like an outdated measurement out of Russia. Given the measurements of some of the other Russian kids in Russia, versus what they measured at the Central Scouting combine, the likelyhood is that Trunev is around 6-0, 185 now. He was one of the youngest players drafted, and doesn't turn 18 until early September, so he could easily grow to 6-1 or 6-2 ultimately, and around 200 pounds. Despite mentions of his "diminutive stature", I really don't think that will prove to be any sort of an issure. There is some concern over the fact that he wasn't included with the U18 team at the World Championships, but I've never heard a specific reason given. When you look at the Canadian and U.S. rep teams in that tournament, there were certainly many top prospects who weren't included from those two countries.

The next draft related deal came a couple of weeks later, and might have been consumated at the draft itself, except for the fact Bob Gainey was waiting to hear from free agent Mats Sundin after making a tentative deal with the Leafs for early negotiating rights. Those proved fruitless, and whatever deal was in place between the two teams was amended after a couple of weeks. Centre Mikhail Grabovksi, who was growing frustrated waiting for playing time in Montreal, was sent to Toronto for a player the Leafs had just drafted in the fifth round, American defenseman Greg Pateryn, and Toronto's second round pick in 2010. Pateryn was taken 10 spots before Trunev, and had obviously caught the Hab scout's eye prior to the draft. He came directly out of Michigan Catholic School League hockey and had a very strong season in the USHL as a 17 year old. Recruited by the University of Michigan, he will enroll there in the fall. There are a lot of parallels with last year's pleasant draft surprise, Max Pacioretty who followed a similar path a year earlier. Pateryn's season in the USHL was every bit as impressive as Pacioretty's, considering the fact that he plays defense, and was both younger and bigger than Pacioretty while he was there.

The net result so far, shows Montreal adding Alex Tanguay, Maxim Trunev, and Greg Pateryn, while giving up Mikhail Grabovski and Greg Nemisz (or Nicholas Deschamps if you prefer). Seems like brilliant management to me on the surface.