What if the Canadiens had drafted Brady Tkachuk instead of the Senators?

Every fan base has its share of ‘what if’ moments at the top of the NHL Draft.

In Montreal, they’ve often wondered how things would have played out if they selected Denis Savard instead of Doug Wickenheiser first in 1980. Senators fans ponder how their fortunes may have been altered if Ottawa drafted Chris Pronger instead of Alexandre Daigle in 1993.

These alternate realities provide great fodder for debate over a beer, especially since we have a couple of decades of hindsight to assist with our analysis.

But both of these franchises have a more recent ‘what if’ draft scenario that would drastically alter the complexion of each team right now.

What if the Montreal Canadiens selected Brady Tkachuk with the third pick in the 2018 NHL Draft?

It’s certainly a thought that has crossed the minds of fans on both sides of the fence, especially after Tkachuk went first in The Athletic’s most recent mock exercise of re-doing the 2018 NHL Draft. 

Buffalo fans are certainly happy with Rasmus Dahlin at No. 1. Andrei Svechnikov — taken second — has been a nice fit for a Carolina team that has morphed into a legitimate Stanley Cup contender.

But the real debate starts at No. 3, when the Canadiens selected Jesperi Kotkaniemi.

What would an alternate reality look like for both teams if the Canadiens selected Tkachuk in that spot instead?

With the Canadiens and Senators in the midst of a home-and-home series that doesn’t have a significant impact on the standings, our beat writers Arpon Basu (Canadiens) and Ian Mendes (Senators) thought it would be an ideal time to dive into the many layers of this question.

How different would Ottawa’s lineup be without Tkachuk in the fold?

For starters, we would probably be looking at a situation where Thomas Chabot is the captain of this team. Ottawa was legitimately debating between Tkachuk and Chabot for the captaincy in 2021, so it would seem logical that Chabot would end up wearing the ‘C’.

Not having Tkachuk’s relentless motor and net-front presence would be a major issue for Ottawa. On many nights he’s the pulse and heartbeat of this team, so it’s almost impossible to fathom a reality without No. 7 in their lineup.

And Tkachuk’s absence would radically alter their depth chart too.

Remember that when Ottawa drafted Tim Stützle, there was a legitimate debate if he was going to be a centre or a left winger. Tkachuk has emerged as a bonafide first-line left winger, which probably factored into the decision to slide Stützle into the middle last season with those injuries.

If Tkachuk isn’t around, maybe Ottawa considers keeping Stützle on the left side. But if Stützle is at centre, how thin would Ottawa’s left side look without Tkachuk?

Alex Formenton is not currently in the picture. Alex DeBrincat is there, but his long-term status is still up in the air. This team would be awfully thin at the left-wing position.

How different would Montreal’s lineup look with Tkachuk in their lineup right now?

Oof. Where do we start?

First off, simply put, the Canadiens’ lineup would be much better. Let’s get the obvious one out of the way.

Second, it is entirely possible, if not probable, that Phillip Danault would still be in a Canadiens uniform today if Kotkaniemi were not in the picture. When Danault was heading toward unrestricted free agency, there were a couple of factors influencing Marc Bergevin’s reluctance to sign him. First was his belief that Danault’s role was not worth a penny more than $5 million a season. Bergevin made a six-year, $30 million offer to Danault that was rejected. Danault ultimately signed with the L.A. Kings for six years and $33 million, or $500,000 more per year. Part of that was misreading Danault’s potential as a player, but part of it was also that he saw Nick Suzuki and Jesperi Kotkaniemi as the future down the middle. If he would eventually be paying them both like top-six centres, how could he pay Danault that much to play third-line centre? At least that was the thinking.

If Tkachuk is there instead of Kotkaniemi, there is no such logjam in the top six, and paying Danault $5.5 million a year, or even $6 million a year (he’d be worth it), would not seem so far-fetched.

The Canadiens would probably still make the Josh Anderson trade, but they might not have been so desperate to immediately sign him to a big extension with Tkachuk blossoming as a power winger. Anderson scored 17 goals in 52 games his first season in Montreal, which works out to roughly 27 goals over 82 games (same as his career-high season in Columbus), so maybe he gets that big extension eventually. But having Tkachuk would have opened up some options.

On the current roster, Christian Dvorak obviously wouldn’t be around because the Kotkaniemi offer sheet never would have happened (we’ll get to that next), but it’s worth wondering if the new management team of Jeff Gorton and Kent Hughes would have been quite as eager to go after Kirby Dach with Suzuki and Danault locked in long term at centre. And with the added size up front, Tkachuk would have made that less of a priority.

Who would Ottawa have drafted at No. 4 overall if Tkachuk was already off the board?

Let’s imagine a scenario where Ottawa is on the clock and Dahlin, Svechknikov and Tkachuk are off the board.

At the time, Filip Zadina was the consensus No. 3 prospect on most draft boards. In fact, Corey Pronman’s final draft rankings featured Zadina at No. 3, while Tkachuk was all the way down at No. 9.

If the Senators were adamant about adding a skilled winger to the mix, they likely would have been tempted to bite on Zadina at No. 4.

He was coming off a terrific World Junior tournament in which he scored seven goals in seven games for the Czech Republic. As Zadina’s former Halifax coach Jim Midgley told Pronman, “He has a drive to score. He wants to score goals, he wants the puck, he wants to be a difference maker. I haven’t coached many guys who love to score as much as this guy does.”

Remember that most Ottawa fans were pining for Zadina in this spot.

The other thing to consider is that Ottawa has a penchant for drafting players who have come through the U.S. National Development team program. And that makes Quinn Hughes an interesting name to consider in a re-draft.

If we’re going solely on hindsight, Hughes is the obvious choice here for Ottawa. He’s blossomed into a dynamic, offensive-minded defenceman who could hit the 80-point plateau this season. It seems like Zadina or Hughes would have been the logical options for Ottawa if Tkachuk wasn’t available.

Consider the following passage from Silver Seven’s draft analysis on the night Ottawa drafted Tkachuk in 2018:

“As good a player as Tkachuk may be, many fans were left disappointed with this pick, and for good reason. The context always needs to be taken into consideration, and in that sense, the Sens really messed up. Left on the board were players like Filip Zadina, who has the potential to be a top-six scorer next season with a significantly higher ceiling, and Quinn Hughes, who has scored above or equal to Tkachuk while playing for the same teams as a defenceman.”

If the Canadiens had Tkachuk, would that entire offer sheet episode have still played out with the Carolina Hurricanes?

The Hurricanes absolutely wanted Kotkaniemi far more than they wanted to get revenge on the Canadiens for the Sebastian Aho offer sheet. That was just a convenient marketing element to the whole thing. So with no Kotkaniemi around, do the Hurricanes go after Tkachuk? Probably not, since they could have just done that in 2021 and decided to go after Kotkaniemi instead.

The same reason they chose not to go after Tkachuk with the Senators would still apply with the Canadiens, namely that Tkachuk’s team would match any offer for him because he was an established star. What made Kotkaniemi so enticing, and therefore attainable, was that he was not established, and therefore matching an offer sheet was not an easy decision.

Simply, if the Canadiens drafted Tkachuk, the Hurricanes’ offer sheet likely targets whichever team drafted Kotkaniemi.

If the Senators selected Quinn Hughes in that spot, how would it have impacted their drafting in the future?

Let’s embrace the idea that Ottawa has used the No. 4 pick to draft Hughes in 2018. He’s clearly the best player on the board using hindsight.

If that’s the case, they’ve got a left side of the blue line that features Hughes and Thomas Chabot. So let’s fast forward to the transformational 2020 NHL Draft. Ottawa still has the No. 3 and No. 5 picks. Who do they take if they have Hughes in the mix?

My guess is they probably stay away from Jake Sanderson. It would seem pointless to add another left-shot defenceman if they’re well-stocked at that position. Would they have taken right-shot defenceman Jamie Drysdale? Maybe. But that would seem like a bit of a stretch because they would be pretty thin up front. Remember, if they took Hughes in 2018 and didn’t have a first-round pick in 2019 (traded to Colorado), Ottawa is suffering from a shortage of talent at the forward position.

So I think they would probably be inclined to select two forwards in these spots. Clearly, they would still take Stützle with the No. 3 pick. But after Detroit takes Lucas Raymond at No. 4, there is a bit of a drop off amongst the forwards.

Cole Perfetti and Alexander Holtz were the next two forwards to appear on Pronman’s final 2020 NHL pre-draft rankings. Considering Perfetti has been a touch more successful than Holtz at the NHL level to this point, let’s plug him into Ottawa’s lineup for the purposes of this exercise.

Let’s make a quick comparison here. Currently, the Senators feature a trio of Tkachuk, Stützle and Sanderson.

In this alternate reality, it’s a trifecta of Hughes, Stützle and Perfetti.

If they had taken Zadina in 2018, we’re probably looking at a trio of Zadina, Stützle and Sanderson.

No matter how you break it down, it’s a noticeably weaker trio without Tkachuk in the equation for Ottawa.

If Tkachuk is in the fold, do the Canadiens still sign Brendan Gallagher to that six-year, $39 million contract in the fall of 2020? Or do they feel like they’ve got their power forward of the future?

When Bergevin signed Gallagher to that extension, he broke down in tears. That contract was about much more than Gallagher’s role on the team or his goals and assists. It was about intangibles, leadership and dragging his teammates into the fight. It was also about emotions and nostalgia. None of that changes with Tkachuk around — if anything, the desire to have Gallagher there to help guide him might even be stronger.

No, the one contract that might have been impacted, as mentioned, would be Anderson’s.

If Ottawa doesn’t get Tkachuk in 2018, how differently are we looking at the Matt Duchene trade?

Tkachuk’s emergence as a young superstar has destroyed one narrative that could have been damaging for the Senators. Remember, Ottawa had the choice of giving Colorado either their first-round pick in 2018 or 2019 as part of the Matt Duchene trade.

The Senators opted to keep the pick in 2018 and select Tkachuk, sending the 2019 selection to Colorado. That also ended up being a No. 4 selection and the Avalanche took defenceman Bowen Byram.

Now let’s take a moment and imagine if Ottawa had taken Zadina in 2018. If Zadina developed the same way as he has in Detroit, that selection would have largely been viewed as a bust. And it would have only been magnified by the fact that Ottawa didn’t have a first-round pick in 2019.

Sens fans would be saying they should have given Colorado the first-rounder in 2018 and kept their own pick for 2019. At that point, Ottawa could have selected Byram themselves. Or more intriguing options could have seen them land Moritz Seider, Dylan Cozens or Trevor Zegras.

If Ottawa takes Hughes in 2018 this is probably less of a talking point. But if they had selected Zadina, this could have been an unmitigated disaster.

Would the Stanley Cup Final against Tampa in 2021 have played out differently if Tkachuk was on Montreal’s roster?

Not really. Tkachuk might have made the Canadiens a bit more competitive in that series, but he would not have been anywhere close to being enough of a difference-maker to close the wide chasm separating the Canadiens from the Lightning.

But at least we would have seen Tkachuk in the playoffs by now, and that would have been undoubtedly fun to watch.

Maybe we’ll see that someday.

(Top photo of Brady Tkachuk and Sam Montembeault: Chris Tanouye / Freestyle Photography / Getty Images)