Nikita Kucherov doesn’t say much to reporters, so when he does, there’s a tendency to latch onto it. At the Tampa Bay Lightning’s media day, Kucherov was asked how hockey has changed over his career. “The game now is a lot faster, but dumb, I think that’s all I can say. Yes, it is faster, but it’s very dumb. Low IQ.” When a reporter asked him to explain in what way, he offered four words: “In a hockey way.” Thanks, Nikita. Very illuminating.
If the NHL really spent the last decade falling for speed and size while hockey sense went out of style, somebody should have been picking up the smart players everyone else left behind.
Somebody was. The Montreal Canadiens.
Let’s start behind the bench. Martin St-Louis went undrafted. Every team in the league looked at a 5’8″ forward from the University of Vermont and decided it could do better. He made the Hockey Hall of Fame anyway, mostly by seeing the play before the bigger, stronger guys around him did. Now he coaches a roster that looks a lot like the player he was.
Lane Hutson is the obvious example. The Canadiens took him in the second round in 2022, 62nd overall, after most of the league decided a defenceman his size was too much of a gamble. He won the Calder Trophy as the league’s top rookie in 2025 and is just getting started. Joe Sacco, coaching the Boston Bruins at the time, said what stood out about Hutson was “his feet and his brain.” That’s a pretty good scouting report wrapped up in five words.
Cole Caufield was a first-rounder, so he doesn’t get to claim he was ignored entirely. But TSN’s final 2019 rankings had him going ninth. He went 15th, and the reason was no secret. He’s 5’8″, and teams worried a winger that size would get pushed around in the NHL. Last season, he scored 51 goals, second in the league and the most by a Hab since Stéphane Richer hit 50 in 1989-90. Turns out knowing where to stand beats being hard to move.
And then there’s Jake Evans, the deepest cut on the list. Every draft has a guy who never hears his name called. In 2014, Evans didn’t hear his because he’d gone out to eat. With about 10 picks left, he was “a little angry,” so he went to get food. Montreal took him while he was gone, 207th overall, the fourth-to-last pick of the entire draft. Somewhere there’s a lesson about patience, but Evans turned out fine without learning it.
Players picked that late usually end up as trivia answers. Instead, in November, 2024, Evans became the first seventh-rounder in Canadiens history to reach 100 career points and he did it as the centre his coach trusts in his own end. That’s where his hockey sense shows most: he’s in the right spot before the other team gets a chance. Nobody makes a highlight package out of nothing happening, but coaches notice.
St-Louis, for his part, admitted he had no idea Evans was a seventh-rounder. “When you get to a certain age, the league doesn’t care what round you were drafted,” he said. Easy for the undrafted guy to say, but he’d know.
Put it together and you get a coach nobody drafted, a Calder-winner teams thought was too small, a sniper who slid in the first round and a late pick who became a critical shutdown player, all central to a team that reached the Eastern Conference Final last spring. It’s like finding the best movie at Blockbuster hiding behind five copies of the latest hit. Montreal just kept checking behind the new releases.
None of this means Kucherov is wrong about the league. Maybe he’s right, and the other 31 teams really have been chasing the fast guy over the smart guy. If so, the Habs would like to thank the rest of the league for their tunnel vision.
The Habs seem to think the game just fine. In a hockey way.
