REPORT: Marc Bergevin WOULD NOT listen to his scouts when he drafted Jesperi Kotkaniemi
After making it all the way to the cup finals in 2021, the Montreal Canadiens bombed last season, finishing dead last in the league and have officially entered a rebuild mode. This time though, they are doing it under new General Manager Kent Hughes, who has shown great promise so far. The Montreal Canadiens had the first overall pick in the 2022 NHL draft and went with the power forward Slovakian forward Juraj Slafkovsky,
But let's backtrack a few years, under Marc Bergevin, the Montreal Canadiens were one of the worst draft and developing teams in the league. First round pick after first round pick were selected, and did not develop into NHL talents. There are exceptions like Max Pacioretty, Carey Price and PK Subban, and there is definitely the cases of Ryan McDonagh and Mikhail Sergachev who he traded away, and we have yet to see the full potential of Cole Caufield and Kaiden Guhle, but the fact is that this team could just not figure out their drafting.
In 2018, the Montreal Canadiens had the 3rd overall pick, and despite Brady Tkachuk being available, they chose to draft for ''need'' and took Jesperi Kotkaniemi with the 3rd overall pick.
Kotkaniemi played a few seasons with the Montreal Canadiens before being ''stolen'' from them by the Carolina Hurricanes in a revenge offer-sheet dating back to the prior offseason where the Montreal Canadiens offer-sheeted Sebastian Aho.
According to this NHL insider, the entire scouting staff of the Montreal Canadiens were telling Bergevin to not take Kotkaniemi but instead to take Brady Tkachuk, which looking back at today was definitely the better selection, but Bergevin refused to listen.
As per @PierreVLeBrun, apparently Marc Bergevin attempted to acquire Seth Jarvis from the #Canes in return for Kotkaniemi.
That's the same Bergevin who let Trevor Timmins pick Kotkaniemi despite nearly the entire scouting staff recommend the team pick Brady Tkachuk. #GoHabsGo� Patrick Lortie (@patrick_lortie) October 7, 2022
| POLL | ||
Should Bergevin been fired sooner? | ||
| yes | 221 | 92.5 % |
| no | 18 | 7.5 % |
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