2023 NHL Draft: Top Five Prospects and the Dilemma of the Fifth Pick

It’s the strength of this year’s top five prospects that makes the 2023 draft such a promising vintage, even more so than the depth of talent available later in the first round. Beyond Connor Bedard, who will delight fans in Chicago, forwards Adam Fantilli, Leo Carlsson, Will Smith and Matvei Michkov all have the potential to become their team’s best player, and possibly franchise players. if they reach their full potential.

There seems to be in the eyes of the majority of observers a very clear demarcation between these five players and the rest of the cohort. Normally, the team that picks up fifth would therefore have the easiest job, that of picking up the hope that is still available within this quintet.

But the Michkov case brings such a gray area that the Canadian, who inherited the fifth overall choice on the occasion of the draw on Monday evening, finds himself possibly in the most delicate situation, and not the easiest. .

Michkov is seen as Russia’s top prospect at the draft since Alexander Ovechkin and Evgeni Malkin were the first two players chosen in 2004. He was named the U18 World Championship MVP at the age of 16, a tournament largely reserved for 17-year-old hopefuls. He had previously just collected the most points by a 16-year-old player in the history of the MHL, the Russian junior circuit.

And this year, after SKA St. Petersburg loaned him out to Sochi in December, he averaged almost 16 minutes and had 20 points in 27 games, helping him to achieve the highest points-per-game average by a player playing his 17-year-old season since the KHL’s inception in 2008.

Michkov has an undeniable scoring talent and he could fill the net for the Canadian. In the best of worlds, it would be the equivalent of grafting a Nikita Kucherov to his training.

On the other hand, Michkov is under contract in Russia until the end of the 2025-26 season, so that by selecting him, the Canadian would not see him arrive before the age of 21, and after having been forced to do trusted the SKA for three years to properly handle the development of Michkov.

And that’s without taking into account that the geopolitical tensions arising from the war in Ukraine could prevent the Habs from ensuring a close follow-up of their best hope, and that there is no guarantee that Michkov will be free to leave Russia once his contract arrives. due date.

Add to that the fact that Michkov’s father was found dead in a pond last month under still unclear circumstances, and you start to have several plot elements in which an NHL team hasn’t. necessarily want to play a role.

But even though there is a lot of talk about the fact that Michkov could not come to play in the National League before the 2026-27 season, a team cannot let this factor unduly influence its decision. The Canadian is looking for accelerators so as not to live too long a reconstruction, but the history of the contract should not take precedence over other criteria. It’s not how quickly a prospect can come to help his NHL team, it’s who will be the best player when these young men come of age.

In 2016, Finnish striker Jesse Puljujärvi was seen as a guaranteed top-3 draft pick. Puljujärvi was an embarrassed young man who did not speak English, but the CEO of the Columbus Blue Jackets, Jarmo Kekäläinen, is himself Finnish and he had been able to take advantage of a privileged contact with Puljujärvi to get to know him better. Ultimately, for reasons that were never made public, the Blue Jackets chose to ignore what appeared to be a consensus pick and set their sights on Pierre-Luc Dubois.

Kekäläinen may have noticed something the others had missed, and he was right.

Why do you remember this story? Because Nik Bobrov, the Canadiens’ co-director of amateur scouting, is of Russian descent, and he’s the only Russian to hold that status at the National League level. His passport has given him the opportunity this year to see more Russian players in action than his counterparts from other teams. It’s hard to say to what extent he was able to take advantage of this, but it is reasonable to believe that Bobrov is in a position to obtain a more detailed portrait of Michkov and thus either justify his selection or recommend that his superiors ignore it as the did Kekäläinen with Puljujärvi.

“Of course it scares us more than another prospect for obvious reasons, but I can’t tell you today,” said general manager Kent Hughes during the videoconference following the draw. spell.

“If it is determined that Michkov is much more talented than the other players available at the draft, we will have a decision to make. For the moment, we have a lot of work to do on his file, firstly as a player but also in relation to the risks that will come with him. »

In our eyes, the constantly cited irritants about Michkov are a bit like the tree that hides the forest. Ultimately, it must be reasons purely related to hockey that guide the choice of the Canadian. These reasons may lead him to the conclusion that Michkov is unavoidable. After all, his attacking exploits speak for themselves. But if not, the Canadian will have to demonstrate that this demarcation between the first five hopefuls and the others which are reported in the public sphere is not so real.

Teams drafting ahead of the Canadiens could all find justifiable reasons to choose Carlsson or Smith over Michkov. It would be much bolder on the part of the Canadian to go in another direction, because to give it up would be likely to hit him in the face afterwards.

There are still several hopefuls in the next lineup likely to give the Canadian a good hand, even if they are not all preceded by the same fanfare as Michkov.

It could be Ryan Leonard, the United States Development Program spark plug, who would be the perfect complement to Nick Suzuki and Cole Caufield on the top line.

It could be Dalibor Dvorský, a Slovak center who had an excellent U18 World Cup, or Austrian defender David Reinbacher, who was a revelation in the Swiss National League this year.

Not to mention Zach Benson who has his share of supporters because of his electrifying game.

Hughes said he thought he was unlikely to trade the fifth pick, though he didn’t close the door on that possibility, of course. Allow us to raise a hypothesis here.

If the Canadiens ever determine that Michkov isn’t worth the bother, and none of the players we’ve named have a real head start on the others, perhaps he should consider trading away his fifth pick and move back a few ranks in order to get your hands on an additional advantage.

In 2008, the New York Islanders agreed to reverse their fifth pick with the Toronto Maple Leafs’ seventh pick, and were awarded a third-round pick the same year and a second-round pick the following year. . For the CH, it would be a way to monetize the place that the draw gave him.

But all of this rantings start from the premise that the Blue Jackets and San Jose Sharks, in particular, are going to ignore Michkov themselves. We cannot take it for granted.

“Obviously if you’re lucky enough to pick fifth rather than sixth or seventh, you’d much rather pick fifth because you don’t know what the others are going to do ahead of you,” Hughes said. . In other words, at this level, it is not impossible for another team to solve their dilemma for them.

If Carlsson or Smith landed in his backyard, it would indeed be easier.

But otherwise, fifth is likely to be the most difficult position in this draft.

(Photo: Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)