Let's see if management were right to pick 'X' player instead of the next French Canadian drafted after that 'X' player

2013 :

55th OA : Arturri Lehkonen - 56th OA : Marc-Olivier Roy - 57th OA : William Carrier / MTL picked the right guy !
71th OA : Connor Crisp - 80th OA : Anthony Duclair / It would have been better to pick the French Canadian guy
86th OA : Sven Andrighetto - 95th OA : Félix Girard / MTL picked the right guy !

2014 :

177th OA : Hayden Hawkey - 183th OA : Keven Bouchard / MTL picked the right guy ! (MTL got a 6th round pick for trading Hawkey right's to EDM)

2015 :

26th OA : Noah Juulsen - 28th OA : Anthony Beauvillier / It would have been better to pick the French Canadian guy (tho injuries ruined Noah Juulsen)
87th OA : Lukas Vejdemo - 96th OA : Nicolas Roy / It would have been better to pick the French Canadian guy

2016 :

70th OA : Will Bitten - 78th OA : Frederic Allard - 80th OA : Brendan Gignac / It would have been better to pick the French Canadian guy (tho are not NHL regular)
124th OA : Casey Staum - 133th OA : Maxime Lajoie / It would have been better to pick the French Canadian guy
160th OA : Michael Pezzetta - 171th OA : Gabriel Fontaine / MTL picked the right guy !

2017 :

56th OA : Josh Brook + 58th OA Joni Ikonen - 60th OA : Antoine Morand / MTL picked the right guys IMO (both Brook & Ikonen ruined by injuries)
56th OA : Jacob Olofsson - 59th OA : Gabriel Fortier / It would have been better to pick the French Canadian guy

2018 :

46th OA : Jayden Struble - 57th OA : Samuel Bolduc / Too soon but both have potential to be NHLers
64th OA : Mattias Norlinder - 65th OA : Alexander Campbell / MTL picked the right guy !
77th OA : Gianni Fairbrother - 78th OA : Alex Beaucage / It would have been better to pick the French Canadian guy (even tho both won't be NHLers)
170th OA : Arsen Khisamutdinov - 178th OA : Félix Bibeau / It would have been better to pick the French Canadian guy (even tho both won't be NHLers)
206th OA : Kieran Ruscheinski - 217th OA : Jérémy Michel / It would have been better to pick the French Canadian guy (even tho both won't be NHLers)

2020 :

16th OA : Kaiden Guhle - 18th OA : Dawson Mercer / Too early to tell
124th OA : Sean Farrell - 135th OA : Elliot Desnoyers / MTL picked the right guy !
87th OA : Dmitri Kostenko - 97th OA : Olivier Nadeau / It would have been better to pick the French Canadian guy (still early to tell but doesn't look good right now)
142th OA : Daniil Sobolev - 147th OA : Justin Robidas / It would have been better to pick the French Canadian guy


2022 :

26th OA : Filip Mesar - 29th OA : Maverick Lamoureux / Too early to tell
33th OA : Owen Beck - 42th OA : Noah Warren / Too early to tell
92th OA : Adam Engstrom - 94th OA : Jérémy Langlois - 96th OA : Jordan Dumais / Too early to tell
130th OA : Jared Davidson - 132th OA : Frédéric Brunet / Too early to tell
69th OA : Jacob Fowler - 77th OA : Mathieu Cataford / Too early to tell
144th OA : Yevgeni Volokhin - 145th OA : Justin Gill / Too early to tell
165th OA : Filip Eriksson - 169th OA : Rudy Guimond / Too early to tell

French Canadian drafted by MTL since 2013

2013 : 36th OA : Zachary Fucale - 176th OA : Jérémy Grégoire
2014 : 147th OA : Daniel Audette
2015 : 177th OA : Simon Bourque
2016 : None
2017 : None
2018 : 133th OA : Samuel Houde
2019 : 201 OA : Raphael Harvey-Pinard
2020 : None
2021 : 113th OA : William Trudeau - 150th OA : Joshua Roy - 191th OA : Xavier Simoneau
2022 : 216th OA : Miguel Tourigny
2023 : 128th OA : Quintin Miller

Should management takes a different approched ?

I think it's fine, MTL should always pick who they feel is BPA/fits their positional need the best and being French isn't a factor for either

I also agree with the fact that you pick the BPA or that fits the plan, French or Other.
Nice job on your research but we can also do the same and pull all the French that were drafted high and did not bring the talent to NHL level
Daigle, Chouinard, Ouellette, Drouin, Morin, Gauthier, Poirier..... Just to name a few. Or if you prefer the latest Lafrenière instead of Stutzle, Byfield, Raymond...

The habs did lose one great opportunity to get a Frenchman recently by letting Dubois slip. We will never know if he really wanted to play in Montreal or what Hughes offered to try to get him. All i know is we gave a 1st and a 2nd pick for Dvorak, a 1st and a second for Newhook and a 1st for Dach. If we only take the two 1st round pics of Dach and Newhook and it would've most probably brought Dubois to MTL.

Nice post, but at the end, the managers have a business to run, French or not, they owe their fans the best teams on the ice

There was no way MTL could land PLD without trading Kirby Dach, which was a non-starter
PLD just wanted the bag, and LA offered him

I agree that it might of cost the habs Dach, and only time will tell which of the two is best. But for now :
Dach: 6'4'' 212 lbs 22yo 4 NHL seasons 210games 97pts = 0.46pts/gm and -24 Playoffs 6 pts in 9 games
PLD: 6'3'' 218lbs 25yo 7NHL seasons 434 games 302pts = 0.7pts/gm and +13 Playoffs 26pts in 38games Team Canada: 27games 27pts and +25

On paper PLD is way superior 7 good NHL seasons, consistent. Dach one good season in 4 years and not one season over 70 games (injury prone player)

Comparison will be difficult as both LA and the Habs are different teams with different goals. LA is in win now with players on the verge of retirement and Habs are finishing a rebuild but we will see who stays healthy and who helps his team

But like i said above, you take the best player available French or not but if you insist on having French players, PLD vs Dach or Newhook, i take PLD and he is French so 2 birds with one stone
Maybe his contract seems high but if he maintains his scoring pace he will be cheap at 8.5M$

But Dach broke out last season with Montreal
This is why Habs fans don't want to trade him

Yes the fans don't want to trade him
But in his breakout year 38pts in 58games = 0.66pts/gm which is still lower than PLD production and he broke down again
Anyhow, it's too late for PLD, lets just hope Dach can stay healthy. but 4 NHL seasons and not one complete, it not good. Especially that when you reach playoffs it's even tougher

Not saying that Dach is not good, but many factors come into play when building a Team. How many players with big potential saw their career shortened by Injury. Best example is Lemieux
If he would've remained healthy no one would be talking about the Great Gretzky.

Nice analysis, though I think it might be a bit of a stretch to call Dawson Mercer French-Canadian. I see that you haven’t offered French-Canadian alternatives to some of the players on their current roster (Caufield, Slafkovsky, Harris). I’m guessing you must have felt that the next French-Canadian player picked after them was too far down to be considered comparable. For those you did list, it looks like they would have done pretty much just as well if they had always gone with the French-Canadian.

Anyway, to answer your question, I would generally draft who I thought was the best player available, regardless of where he came from, but if it’s a decision between players who my scouts have rated within 5% of each other (maybe more in the later rounds), I’d go with the French-Canadian. I’d probably do the same with some of the other teams too, like picking Minnesotans for the Wild.

I’m not just thinking about the fans. With the problems some teams have had recently with pending free agents not wanting to sign extensions with them, I wonder if their chances of convincing a local guy to stay would be better.

Oh Well!!! It didn't take to much time. Dach is on LTR

Still rather have Dach then Dubois

The QMJHL (Most Quebec born are here) just isn't producing good talent anymore, there should be a great redo of the league as there's way too many teams diluting our talent. Would I like Montreal to draft busts only because they're Quebecers? Hell no. The Samuel Poulin, Beaudin, POJ, Comtois, Gauthier, Lapierre and others can be overlooked earlier in the draft because most of them just aren't hitting the mark. A broken clock is right twice a day so of course we'll hit somewhere with a Chabot or Mercer but most won't.