The NHL Draft’s surprise No. 1 pick had Canadiens fans booing their own selection

It’s bad to have your own fans boo your draft pick. It’s even worse when it happens at home in front of them — and when you’re picking No. 1 overall, well, that’s tragic. On Thursday night the Montreal Canadiens managed to complete this trifecta when they stunned the hockey world by selecting Slovakian winger Juraj Slafkovsky first overall in the NHL Draft and not Canada’s Shane Wright.

Wright had been earmarked for years to be a future No. 1 pick and entered the night with the strongest resume. In the end, it all collapsed and he fell to 4th where he was eventually taken by the Seattle Kraken, and Canadiens fans remained stunned at what had transpired.

The possibility that Wright could slip wasn’t shocking, but seeing it actually happen is what defied belief. Rumors that Wright might slip past No. 1 were generally met with skepticism, but the concerns teams were having turned out to be very real. As Corey Pronman of The Athletic put it:

“The cold feet on Wright had been building for a while. Even while he was doing incredible things for an underage player and many scouts had him ranked No. 1, there was a nagging minority opinion that slowly ballooned about Wright over a period of years. That minority opinion came down to this: What’s so special about him other than the stats?”

Here you had a player who was seemingly destined for greatness for years. Was granted a special waiver to start playing in the OHL at age 15, and dominated by scoring 39 goals in 58 games in 2019-20. Wright could shoot, pass, skate and kill penalties — but all those fundamentals didn’t translate into excitement. Scouts didn’t see a spark, a glimmer that could foreshadow future league-dominating greatness. That’s why the Canadiens decided to take Slafkovsky, who, frankly, had a five goal resume more befitting a second round pick than No. 1 overall, but who they believe had a chance to blossom into a world-beater, rather than settle for Wright’s perceived high floor, low ceiling.

Our Canadiens blog Eyes On The Prize had Wright pegged as their No. 1 pick, but understands what the fuss is about when it comes to Slafkovsky.

“Slafkovsky stole the headlines at the top international tournaments of the year — the Olympics and World Championship — and the Slovak began to draw more interest for the top spot. Only time will tell which of he and Wright ends up being the better NHL player. Wright was the unanimous decision by the EOTP staff at number one in the SB Nation Mock Draft conducted a week ago, but there’s plenty to like about Slafkovsky’s power forward game and finishing ability.”

That international play is really what sealed Wright’s fate to fall out of the No. 1 spot. This was very much a “what have you done for me lately?” selection, and by this metric Slafovsky was tearing it up against future NHL competition, while Wright didn’t get to play in the 2022 World Junior Championships after it was cancelled due to Covid.

It had been fairly clear from the jump that the Devils would be targeting a defenseman at No. 2, especially after picking center Jack Hughes first a few years ago. So not taking Wright kind of made sense, but then why did he fall past Arizona at No. 3? The Coyotes decided to take center Logan Cooley rather than Wright, and honestly we don’t know.

The most likely scenarios are that either Phoenix caught the same cold feet that Montreal had, or they simply didn’t invest the energy into scouting Wright that they did Cooley, assuming there was no way Wright would make it to their pick. This caused them to stick to their plan, rather than make a last-second decision and switch from a player they were already comfortable with. Either way, the result was that Wright fell into Seattle’s lap at No. 4, and naturally the folks over at Davy Jones’ Locker Room are thrilled.

“Apparently Wright’s 94 points in 63 games with the Ontario Hockey League’s Kingston Frontenacs wasn’t good enough for the top three teams.

The Kraken now have Shane Wright and Matty Beniers as the present and future first line/second line centers.”

We’re left with one of the most fascinating draft nights in recent NHL memory. This was a class that lacked a clearly defined generational talent, which caused teams to gamble on upside over reliability. Now the wait is on to see if the Canadiens (in particular) made the right choice, or whether they passed on getting a 15-year anchor as a two-way center in favor of hoping Slafovsky’s international performance is indicative of future greatness. Either way, this is going to be a selection that is discussed years, and years into the future — especially if Shane Wright becomes the player everyone believed he could be back when he made the jump to the OHL.