The Montreal Canadiens have four second-round picks in the 2018 NHL Draft. The state of the Laval Rocket and the transition they have undergone so far this off-season makes this draft incredibly important. With that in mind, I have looked back through the second-round picks that the Canadiens have made with Trevor Timmins on the staff to inform where they are likely to look with these picks.

Their selections in the past have revealed what type of physical and statistical profile their interests will likely be piqued by, and what the pros and cons of it are. As well, I will discuss how successful they have been with these picks in the past. Timmins had some interesting things to say at the 2018 Scouting Combine about high-ceiling players being his focus when looking at prospects, and I think this lesson was learned after the 2013 draft, but was not a focus that was kept steadfastly with their second-round picks from 2003-2017.

From 2003 onward, the Canadiens have used 14 second-round picks, with as many as three in 2013, and used none in 2004, 2009-2011, and 2014-2016. With these picks, they have taken nine players from the Canadian major junior leagues (CHL), one from the U.S. National Team Development Program (USNTDP), three from Swedish leagues, and one from Finland. These players have been 6'½" on average, with none being smaller than 5'11".

In their draft year, these players averaged 0.81 points per game. This creates a profile of the average second-round pick by the Canadiens over this period being a CHL player who was about average height and produced just under a point per game, and would be a reasonable expectation for where they will look with their second-round picks in 2018.

What the Canadiens have avoided (either by opting for someone else or trading their picks for more immediate help) were the smaller, skilled players (such as Alex DeBrincat) who tend to fall out of the first round but can provide great value in a league that is rewarding teams that are fast and skilled throughout their lineup.

The advantage the Canadiens may see in their apparent strategy is that they get relatively safe players who can at the very least be expected to fill depth roles at the NHL level. However, these "safe" picks tend to fail to make it to the NHL, or only remain there for a short while, at an alarming rate. This player profile — average CHL point-producers for drafted players, lacking a true NHL impact — makes sense because if they could not stand out in their years leading up to the draft in their peer group, they are thus not likely to produce at that same average level against the greater competition of NHL players, let alone reach higher levels of production there.

With the NHL salary cap restricting a team’s ability to acquire all the players they need in free agency or via trades, they must extract value from draft picks. If they take risks in the second round, where you can still get skilled players who are undervalued for reasons that do not appear to affect their ability to produce in their pre-draft years, like size, they stand a better chance of acquiring impact NHL players through the channels the salary cap allows.

Therefore, the major issue with the Canadiens' conservative approach to their second-round picks is that it robs them of the ability to acquire difference-makers via the draft, by using their draft capital on players for depth roles that can be filled more cheaply in the later draft rounds or via free agency. The proof of this conservative approach failing to produce the impact players that must be acquired through the draft lies in the results from the last 15 years of the Canadiens' second-round picks.

Over this period those selections have averaged 131.8 games in the NHL. Of these players, excluding the picks from 2017 who are too recent to judge in terms of NHL games played, three players account for most of these games. These players are Maxim Lapierre, Guillaume Latendresse, and P.K. Subban — the only ones to top 200 NHL games, which has been cited as a rough Mendoza line for a draft pick.

This leaves the Canadiens with five of the 12 second-rounders from 2003-2016 who have never played an NHL game and another four not surpassing the 200-game marker. Of these players only, Jacob de la Rose and Artturi Lehkonen still have a good chance of crossing that arbitrary marker. That means the Canadiens' CHL-heavy approach to the second round has yielded seven whiffs on 12 picks, all seven of whom have been from North America, with six CHL players and one USNTDP player in Danny Kristo. Therefore, this approach has proven to be a failure in acquiring valuable NHL talent in a round where those players are still readily available.

This look into the Canadiens' second-round selections with Timmins on staff has shown some trends and troubling outcomes. The Canadiens have tended to avoid smaller players and favoured CHL players who produced at what I would deem is an average level. A lack of elite production from a highly drafted player is understandable if they are playing above their peer group as one of youngest players in the European pro ranks or as a U.S. college player, and can still bode well for their potential having gone through this adverse situation.

The CHL focus to their picks has yielded disappointing results with only three players crossing the baseline success barrier of 200 NHL games, with only two others having a chance of crossing this minimal level of success soon. With a hit rate of five out of 12, with two more who are still unknown, this CHL focus should be shifted. I believe the Canadiens should look elsewhere unless the CHL player is skilled and shows this by having filled up the net in junior, and look more closely at smaller, skilled players who are often overlooked and drafted too late.

They should shift their sights to Europe, the USNTDP, the United States Hockey League (USHL) and the U.S. college ranks, where players face more challenging conditions, while still looking for high production in the USHL where players are with their peer group. Their miss with the second-round selection of Danny Kristo from the USNTDP should not serve as a memory that causes the Canadiens to continue to look past this talent pool.

Overall, Trevor Timmins mentioned that of the three second-round picks from the 2013 draft, Artturi Lehkonen appears to be the best and was the smallest of the three. This player, and his relative success so far in the NHL as a second-round pick, should give the Canadiens confidence in taking even smaller players with skill who reside beyond North America or the CHL with their four second-round picks in the 2018 NHL Draft. This type of approach will hopefully lead to acquiring impactful players with the skills needed to become contributors for the Canadiens in an increasingly young NHL.