The NHL Draft: A team effort

MONTREAL -- Serge Boisvert sat down, seemingly relaxed after a busy day.

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The longtime Canadiens international crossover scout had wrapped up a long day of meetings with other team members. It was the first full week of July, just a few days before the 2022 NHL Draft was set to take place. The Canadiens' brain trust gathered at the Renaissance Hotel in downtown Montreal to debate which prospects to select with the team's 14 picks.
It was no easy feat; not only were the Habs playing host for the Draft, but the team also owned the first-overall selection for the first time since 1980.
While all eyes in the hockey world were locked on the organization, Boisvert wasn't feeling the pressure. After all, he and his colleagues had done their homework and felt confident in the choices they were days away from making.
If anything, Boisvert was excited.
"It's crazy," he said. "Look, I've been with the Canadiens for 12 years and this is the first year that the Draft is in Montreal. It's exceptional."
He paused, then added with a twinkle in his eye, "and we get the first-overall pick."
A few days later, a packed Bell Centre crowd watched Juraj Slafkovsky become the team's No. 1 choice.

What they didn't see, however, was the breadth of work that took place behind the scenes leading up to not only the selection of the Kosice, Slovakia native but also the 10 other teenaged prospects who were added to the organizational depth chart over the course of two days in Montreal.
Until now.
The team recently released a documentary showcasing never-before-seen footage of the scouting meetings, NHL Combine interviews, Draft table discussions and more, providing insight into the work that went into evaluating prospects and completing the team's grid ahead of the most important Draft in recent Canadiens history.

It was a tall order to fill, and certainly wasn't a task for one person alone. As co-director of amateur scouting Nick Bobrov explained, it takes a team of professionals specializing in a multitude of disciplines to make decisions of this magnitude.
That's why the Canadiens relied on experts from fields ranging from sports performance and psychology to data science and analytics.
"No one is smart enough to do it alone," said Bobrov. "It's too hard and there are too many layers. You have to know so much about so many different disciplines. It helps you split the difference when you have a lot of experience from different angles surrounding you."
One of those perspectives came from director of hockey analytics Christopher Boucher, who became the first person to hold that role in organizational history when he was hired in May 2022. For traditional scouts like Boisvert, Boucher's expertise added another dimension to his process.
"I scout with my eyes, and I take notes, but he scouts with stats; zone entries, zone exits, the way a player retrieves the puck, one-on-one battles," he said. "He does all that. It gives us other tools to improve how we scout. I think it's very positive for the Montreal Canadiens."
Ultimately, projecting players into the future is not an exact science, but the Canadiens did their due diligence by consolidating all data available to them from scouting reports, physical testing, and prospect interviews.

Slafkovsky certainly impressed the Canadiens staff on all fronts. The 18-year-old winger is mature beyond his years, both physically, at 6-foot-4, 229 pounds, but also mentally. At his age, most teens are considering moving out of their parents' homes for the first time. Slafkovsky is already four years into that stage of his life, having moved to Finland on his own when he was just 14 years old to continue his hockey career, even handling his own cooking duties -- with an assist from his mother over the phone, of course.
His fearlessness and drive to rise to the occasion have helped him excel at every phase of his career to date, including leading Slovakia to an Olympic bronze medal with seven goals in as many games in Beijing.
"Hockey historians are paying attention to what this guy has managed to achieve at what age", said Bobrov during a pre-Draft scouting meeting at the Renaissance Hotel. "To be at the World Championship at the age of 16 is unprecedented. No one has done that, not even in the '80s and the '70s. And obviously, what he's done on the big stages this year is also pretty much unprecedented. He just has the personality to take the bull by the horns. He wants to own the moment, the situation."
Drafting the imposing winger also opened the door for the Canadiens to focus on smaller players who grabbed their attention in later rounds, as Boucher noted. Players like Filip Mesar (5-foot-10, 26th overall), Lane Hutson (5-foot-8, 62nd overall), Vinzenz Rohrer (5-foot-10, 75th overall), Cedrick Guindon (5-foot-10, 127th overall), and Miguel Tourigny (5-foot-8, 216th overall) offer a combination of speed, skill, and talent that were hard to pass up on at their respective positions.

Where their respective careers will take them will depend on many factors. But the Canadiens can look back at this Draft and take pride in their efforts to make the best selections.
"I think every team leaves the Draft thinking they just hit 14 home runs and got 14 Hall-of-Famers," said Bobrov. "So, time will tell. Walking away, knowing that you've done everything you could to support long-term interest of the franchise, that's success."