NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE. — Canadiens general manager Kent Hughes said after picking up the No. 5 pick in the NHL draft lottery in May, there’s a difference between drafting and team building. There are qualities the Canadiens look for in players they recruit, and as such they should take precedence over how a player fits into the organizational structure.
On Wednesday night, after picking Austria right-back David Reinbacher with the No. 5 draft pick, Hughes mentioned that if Reinbacher was a left-back he might have “chilled” but the organization lacks depth in the right side.
It’s difficult to reconcile these two seemingly contradictory statements by the same man six weeks apart. If there’s a difference between drafting and team building, then the Canadiens’ organizational depth on the right side of their defense shouldn’t matter on draft night. Seeing this contradiction between what he had said after the lottery and what he had said a few minutes earlier, Hughes fought back.
“He was right there on our list. We evaluate players based on their potential,” he said. “Because it’s a right-footed D, the tie-breaker would go to the right-footed D instead of a left-footed D. But if we thought there was a better choice, we would have taken it.”
When it comes to scouting, there really shouldn’t be any ties. Scouts spend all season observing these kids, talking to teammates, coaches and parents, trying to gather as much information as possible. Hughes said he watched Reinbacher on video all season and enjoyed his progress over the season in a top European men’s league. They had scouts visiting Kloten in Switzerland throughout the season, not only their chief scout for Europe, Christer Rockstrom, not only their co-directors of amateur scouting Nick Bobrov and Martin Lapointe, but also some of their American scouts, just to make sure what everyone wanted saw.
One of those scouts asked Kloten’s GM Larry Mitchell upon his arrival in February what would keep Reinbacher from playing in the NHL. Mitchell’s response was that nothing will stop him from playing in the NHL.
“And then this particular scout looked at a couple of practice sessions and a couple of games, and the next day we had coffee,” Mitchell said, “and he said I agree 100 percent with what you’re suggesting.” said a few days ago.”
The Canadiens lacked that level of in-depth, personal scouting with Matvei Michkov, who traded to the Philadelphia Flyers two picks later at No. 7. Hughes said that was the biggest red flag for her. It wasn’t because of his contract with SKA St. Petersburg, it wasn’t because of the geopolitical situation. It was because they only saw him play on video, and videos never tell the whole story.
And the Canadiens weren’t alone.
“We had some concerns,” said San Jose Sharks GM Mike Grier, who left Michkov in fourth place. “He’s a special talent on the ice, there’s no doubt about that.” Super skillful, can do things that many other players can’t. But there are some things we weren’t entirely happy with, being able to take someone with the fourth pick.”
The Arizona Coyotes also passed Michkov for 6th place, not to mention the Anaheim Ducks and Columbus Blue Jackets, who edged ahead of the Sharks.
Daniel Brière, GM of the New Flyers, didn’t pass.
“We took a big swing but we’re hoping for a home run,” he said. “Time will tell and it’s still a bit early but we think if he’s ready to come he could really make a difference. And that’s the risk we were willing to take, to wait a bit to hopefully make a difference.”
Just as Hughes’ two comments, made six weeks apart, sounded contradictory, so did two NHL GMs’ comments, made just minutes apart.
Drafting on demand versus drafting the best available player is always presented as a diametrical opposite. Either you do one or the other. But that’s not necessarily true.
A right-back is needed throughout the league and is one of the top pairs as it is rare. Because of this scarcity, teams in a trade or free agency often pay too much to get one. And because of that same scarcity, teams often place a much higher value on getting them on the draft list than most public lists give. The New Jersey Devils did just that last year when they picked Šimon Nemec as their #2 overall pick, while the Detroit Red Wings did so in 2019 when they picked Moritz Seider as their #6 pick overall.
There is the concept of position value that goes into the best available player equation.
And when Hughes said drafting and team building aren’t the same thing, I don’t think that’s true either. Teams are always trying to fill organizational gaps, even early in the design. Also last year, the Devils took Nemec and passed Shane Wright and Logan Cooley, largely because they were center stage with Jack Hughes and Nico Hischier. It happens often.
On-demand drafting has long been taboo in the NHL because the players in the draft were so far from contributing to your team and there was no way of knowing what your team will look like when those drafted players arrive. But even that is far less true than it used to be. Players move from draft eligibility to the NHL very quickly, especially at the top of the draft. Reinbacher will have to play in Montreal for a year at most. Some believe he could play in the NHL right away, and Reinbacher himself is open to any scenario, including a game in the AHL like Nemec did this season.
But I would argue that it is foolish to blindly draw the best available player while ignoring your needs and also ignoring whether you already have that player profile. I think Michkov will score a lot of goals in the NHL. I feel the same way about Cole Caufield. In my opinion, Michkov will drive the coaches crazy with his indifference when playing without a puck. In a way, I feel the same about Caufield. You see the value of the goals Caufield creates from scratch and accept to live with the inefficiencies in other areas of his game. But can you live with two of these players? Can you win with two of these players? I don’t think you can.
But can you win with someone like Reinbacher? I don’t know. But I know to win you need someone like Reinbacher, the Canadiens believe.
In the 2022/23 season, at the age of 17, Reinbacher played for Kloten in the second division in Switzerland. He had virtually no chance of getting drafted, much less drafted 5th place, playing in that division. But Kloten won the division and managed to get promoted to the top division in Switzerland, and that in a year in which this league was better than ever. They increased the number of imports per team from four to six, there was an influx of imports fleeing the KHL, and Reinbacher was still thriving.
But perhaps more importantly, according to his coach, the 17-year-old Reinbacher was a big reason Kloten was in the top flight in the first place.
“He played in the Second Division and in the first year with us in that Second Division he made progress throughout the year and he was one of the main reasons we ended up going up,” said Jeff Tomlinson. “It’s not easy in Switzerland. He was the type to just walk away with it. Without him we would have had trouble getting up. I mean he made the bigger difference for us on defense and movement of the puck. We knew at the beginning of this season, the staff, we all knew he would be in our top four at the start of this season. We thought he would be in our top 4 because he simply responded to any challenge. And you know, he’s a big kid. He’s skating. Why not, right? Why don’t you give it to him?”
Responding to every challenge was a big deal for Tomlinson. Not believing Reinbacher would get a chance to feature on the power play early in the season, circumstances required him to complete a game on Kloten’s second power play unit. He never left.
“He seemed to surprise us with every offensive role we gave him,” Tomlinson said. “We didn’t start the season with him on the power play. That wasn’t the plan. It was all about getting him used to playing in the league and working with him. And then he got the opportunity and used it in a game. You know, some people want 10 or 20 games and they still say, “Coach, I didn’t have a chance.”
“But David has always met and even exceeded the expectations we had of him. I didn’t expect him to stay on the power play all year, but he did.”
This ability to exceed expectations is in Reinbacher’s nature.
“I think he’s just a quiet kid and business like,” Tomlinson said. “Sure, we’re all frustrated, and so is he. But it’s not at a level that blocks him. He keeps going. He tends to really work on the things he needs to do post-workout because he’s not satisfied with them. So maybe he’ll take it to another level.
“But he’s just very calm in the head and he’s more, how should I put it, he’s not frantic in his head. And I think that’s a very big quality for him. He’s able to slow down the game out there and process things a bit more clearly I think. That was a big thing for him.”
The processing of the game is what this Canadiens administration values more than perhaps anything else.
Montreal-based hockey data expert Thibaud Chatel works extensively with teams in Switzerland to track data and provide in-depth analytics to his clients and subscribers. His service, NL Ice Data, followed 22 of Reinbacher’s games with Kloten and came to the following conclusion.
“To go deeper, we also have a prospect model that looks at each player between the ages of 16 and 22 and projects their potential career (up to) the age of 30. In this case, Reinbacher was easily the second picking player in the draft behind (Connor) Bedard, with a 52 percent chance of being an average “elite” (top 10 percent) player in the league over the next decade.”
There’s a valid argument that if the Canadiens hadn’t drafted Michkov, they would have traded down and added value. Hughes said five or six teams called for him because of the pick, but they didn’t see any value in making the trade compared to the value they saw in Reinbacher.
Brière said they were looking for a way to move up to get Michkov.
“To have talent of his caliber, we didn’t think he would be available at seven years old. So we looked at different ways to move up,” he said. “For some reason, the value of the picks seemed to go up really, really high on the day of a draft. As such, we couldn’t get close to any of the other picks in front of us. So we just waited and it kind of fell into our laps. So it was an easy decision for us.”
The problem for the Canadiens is that a 7th-ranked relegation would leave them unable to sign Reinbacher, since he was basically guaranteed that he would move to the 6th-ranked Coyotes if he became available. They wanted this guy that bad.
The Canadiens could be wrong. Maybe drafting Reinbacher was a mistake. But Hughes called him a “diamond in the rough,” someone they felt had tons of potential in addition to position value, someone who will play many minutes for the Canadiens for a very long time.
The Canadiens value players who perform in a playoff environment, and they see that in Reinbacher.
They’re essentially betting on themselves and their ability to assess prospects, and they’re doing so for the second year running in the face of intense public pressure to call up someone else.
And when Reinbacher was asked if he knew any of the young defensemen in the Canadiens’ system, his eyes instantly lit up and he smiled.
“Yes! Sure. Lane Hutson,” said Reinbacher. “He had a great win against us at the World Cup. I can’t wait to see him.”
Reinbacher’s profile would eventually make him a perfect match for Hutson, something like Logan Mailloux or Justin Barron — the top two young right-backs in the pipeline — It would not be.
“It would be incredible to play with him,” said Reinbacher. “I’m guessing he’s left-handed, so a perfect couple.”
Drafting and team building are different? Not so sure. Hughes denied that this pick was based more on team building than draft, and I’m not so sure.
But I’m also not so sure if team building shouldn’t play a role in the drafting either.
(Photo: Dave Sandford/NHLI via Getty Images)