Ron Hainsey has won the Stanley Cup as a member of the Pittsburgh Penguins, 17 years after being drafted 13th overall by the Montreal Canadiens in the 2000 NHL Entry Draft.
In doing so he becomes the second Canadiens first-round pick in almost 30 years to put his hands on the National Hockey League’s ultimate prize.
A long road
Hainsey made his professional debut at the tail end of the 2000-01 season as part of the Canadiens’ AHL farm team, the Quebec Citadelles, when his NCAA season came to an end.
He had his first crack at the Canadiens lineup at training camp in 2001, but fell to the numbers game as the Habs were quite deep on defence at the time with Stephane Quintal, Patrice Brisebois, Craig Rivet, Stephane Robidas, Andrei Markov, Sheldon Souray, Patrick Traverse, Karl Dykhuis, and Francis Bouillon ahead of him on the defensive depth chart.
Hainsey spent his rookie season in Quebec, where he played in the AHL All-Star Game and made the All-Rookie Team. He followed that up with a very promising World Junior Championship with Team USA.
Fast forward to the 2005-06 season, and Hainsey had spent multiple seasons splitting time between the Canadiens and the new AHL farm team, the Hamilton Bulldogs, but was growing frustrated with his inability to make the Habs full-time. Once again he was demoted by the team as the last cut from training camp, favouring rookie Mark Streit in the role of seventh defenceman.
Hainsey, knowing he had to go through waivers to head back to the AHL, had hoped that after what he thought was a good training camp some other team would claim him. He would go unclaimed however, and once again he would have to bide his time in the AHL.
His career took a sharp turn on November 29 when, down three regular defencemen (Markov was suspended, Mike Komisarek was on personal leave, and Souray was out with a groin injury), the Canadiens placed Hainsey on re-entry waivers in order to recall him.
This time Hainsey didn’t clear as he was claimed by the Columbus Blue Jackets.
Re-entry waivers, an unpopular addition to the 2005 NHL Collective Bargaining Agreement (and since eliminated in the 2012 version), meant that the Canadiens still had to pay half of Hainsey’s salary for the remainder of the season against the salary cap.
Hainsey spent two and a half seasons in the Columbus organization before signing with the Atlanta Thrashers during the 2008 off-season. A five-year stint saw him move with the team to Winnipeg, where he grew increasingly unpopular with the fans who shone a spotlight on his mistakes.
In 2013, as a free agent, he signed with the Carolina Hurricanes, but it wasn’t without first wondering if any organization would hold resentment towards him after he was so instrumental in the NHLPA-side of the CBA negotiations in 2012.
He was traded to the Pittsburgh Penguins as a rental player this season to be an emergency depth player for the defending Cup champions, but as injuries accumulated he saw his way into the lineup for the playoffs, playing 20 minutes per game on average.
Is the curse broken?
Ever since Turner Stevenson won the Stanley Cup with the New Jersey Devils in 2003 as a 1990 first-round draft pick, no other Habs opening-round selection had won a Stanley Cup until Hainsey did it this year. This spans almost 30 years of first-round picks who have barely tasted Stanley Cup victory.
The most prominent player on this list includes Saku Koivu (1993) who toiled with the Canadiens during their darkest period, which included a well-documented string of first-round busts including Brent Bilodeau (1991), David Wilkie (1992), Brad Brown (1994), and Terry Ryan (1995). Despite his long career, Koivu never made it past the second round in the playoffs, even after leaving the Canadiens for the Anaheim Ducks. As for those other players, none of them came even close to establishing themselves as NHL players in any way.
This string of terrible picks by the Canadiens seriously affected their ability to field a competitive team and cost long-time Head of Recruitment, Andre Boudrias, his job in October of 1995 when Team President Ronald Corey fired the entire Hockey Operations department, sensing the Canadiens were crumbling as an organization.
Hiring Rejean Houle as General Manager did little to fix the situation, unfortunately. Under Houle, long-time scout Pierre Mondou was named Director of Recruiting, but drafted only twice, picking Matt Higgins (1996) and Jason Ward (1997) in the first round. Two busts.
Pierre Dorion took over the role just prior to the 1998 Entry Draft, but fared no better initially, picking Eric Chouinard over Simon Gagne, which earned him a lot of scorn. Houle had seen enough and traded away the first-round pick in 1999 for veteran forward Trevor Linden, rather than risk drafting another lemon in a weak draft year. Chouinard had a brief NHL career with the Habs, falling well short of any playoff aspirations with the Canadiens of the early 00s.
In 2000 and 2001 the Canadiens benefited from four first-round picks — two in each year — picking first Hainsey, then Marcel Hossa in 2000, and Mike Komisarek and Alexander Perezhogin in 2001. Pierre Dorion oversaw the first draft, Martin Madden the second after he took over the responsibilities for amateur scouting. Besides Hainsey, Komisarek had a long NHL career, but never made it past the second round in the playoffs. Hossa and Perezhogin didn’t amount to much in the NHL.
Madden was in charge in 2002 when the Canadiens picked Chris Higgins, the first-rounder who had come closest to the Stanley Cup out of everyone listed thus far as a member of the Vancouver Canucks, who lost the final in seven games to the Boston Bruins in 2011.
By 2003, Trevor Timmins had taken over the role under General Manager Bob Gainey, a role that Timmins occupies to this day. He has overseen the selection of several prospects who’ve gone on to have several seasons of NHL experience with varying degrees of success, such as Andrei Kostitsyn (2003), Kyle Chipchura (2004), Ryan McDonagh (2007), Max Pacioretty (2007), and Nathan Beaulieu (2011). He has also picked a few lemons, such as David Fischer (2006), Louis Leblanc (2009), and Jarred Tinordi (2010).
Of this crop McDonagh with the Rangers has strong odds of winning a Cup as the team remains a perennial contender. He made it to the Stanley Cup finals, losing in five games against the Los Angeles Kings in 2014. Meanwhile Pacioretty and Beaulieu, still with the Canadiens, also remain active in their quest for the Cup. Everyone else is no longer in the NHL.
The latest crop of first-round picks, under new General Manager Marc Bergevin, now hold the hopes to lifting the Cup as first-round picks of the Montreal Canadiens. Alex Galchenyuk (2012), Michael McCarron (2013), Nikita Scherbak (2014), Noah Juulsen (2015), and Mikhail Sergachev (2016) all, at the very least, hold the promise of an NHL career, so their stories are yet to be written.
That’s a lot more than was said about the first-round picks under previous administrations and a major reason why only one first-round pick in 30 years has hoisted the Stanley Cup.
Note: This article has been updated to reflect the fact that Turner Stevenson did not win the Stanley Cup with the Canadiens in 1993 as was initially written. He won it with New Jersey in 2003.
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