The Montreal Canadiens had a tough time of it during the 2021-2022 season. After making the Stanley Cup Final in July, the team spectacularly collapsed with Shea Weber being put on LTIR and Carey Price only coming back towards the end of the year.
Over the course of the season, Montreal had to use five goaltenders aside from Price: Jake Allen, Samuel Montembeault (who was a timely waiver pickup), Cayden Primeau, Andrew Hammond and Michael McNiven.
Without its two pillars, the Marc Bergevin built Canadiens finished dead last and won the only thing that was a must win for them that year; the draft lottery.
A Dark Horse
Meanwhile on the international stage, a young Slovakian player was starting to attract quite a bit of attention and make his way towards the top of the International skater’s list. Juraj Slafkovsky’s dominant performance at the Beijing 2022 Olympics would seal the deal.
The six-foot-three forward wasn’t even an adult yet when he took part in the Olympics, but he wasn’t intimidated at all stepping onto the grandest stage of them all with the world watching.
For a second Olympics tournament in a row, NHL players weren’t released by their team to compete, which had an impact on the level of hockey on offer. Still Slafkovsky was a teenager taking on grown men and he shone brightly.
The Olympics
In Slovakia’s first preliminary round game against gold medal-winning side to be Finland, the 5.5 million inhabitants nation was crushed by a score of 6-2, but it was Slafkovsky who scored both of his team’s goals.
In his team’s second game against Sweden, another defeat, this one by a score of 4-1, the teenager was once again his team’s sole goal scorer. He scored less than two minutes before the final whistle. Simon Nemec, who would be the second-overall pick at the 2022 draft, assisted on that marker.
The Slovaks ended their preliminary round with a 5-2 win over Latvia in which Slafkovsky added another goal, giving him four in his team’s three games. With a single win, the Craig Ramsay coached team had to go through a playoff game against Germany to make it to the quarterfinals. The Germans offered very little resistance and Slovakia qualified for the quarterfinals with the future first-overall pick being held off the score sheet for the first time of the tournament.
In the quarterfinals, Slovakia upset the USA 3-2 to qualify for the semis with the youngster scoring his country’s first goal. In the semifinal, they took on Finland for the second time of the tournament and while they lost once again, it wasn’t a massacre unlike in the preliminary round. The Slovaks put together a solid effort, limiting the Finns to a pair of goals, the second of which came in the dying minutes in an empty net.
The loss sent the Slovaks to the bronze medal game and they dominated Sweden taking a two-goal lead in the second period before sealing the deal with a pair of empty net goals late in the day. In this 4-0 victory, Slafkovsky scored another pair of goals, the first one which turned out to be the game-winning goal and the third.
The Consecration
For a team that had been starved for offense for so long, this fantastic display by the youngster was the clincher. Seven goals in as many games and a bronze medal-winning goal were fantastic accomplishments for the underaged forward. A few months later, when GM Kent Hughes announced the Canadiens’ first-overall pick in a packed Bell Centre, those who had watched the Olympics weren’t shocked.
Neither were they when New Jersey opted for blueliner Nemec, making it the first time ever the first two picks were Slovakians and the second time they were Europeans from the same country. Alexander Ovechkin and Evgeni Malkin in 2004 were the first pair to accomplish the feat, 18 long years before. In the end, Slovakia has three players selected in the first round when the Canadiens opted for Slafkovsky’s friend Filip Mesar with the 26th-overall pick.
