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We’re now really starting to see what Canadiens scouts saw in Juraj Slafkovsky before the team decided to take him with the No. 1 overall pick at the 2022 NHL Draft.

Heading into Saturday’s game against the Washington Capitals at the Bell Centre (7 p.m., SNE, Citytv, TVA Sports, TSN 690 Radio, 98.5 FM), Slafkovsky is on a seven-game point streak, during which he has 6-5-11 totals. In the last 25 games, the 6-foot-3, 230-pound winger has 10-12-22 totals.

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Slavkovsky now ranks fourth on the Canadiens in scoring with 12-17-29 totals in 54 games and is on pace to finish the season with 18 goals.

Not bad for a 19-year-old.

Centre Logan Cooley, selected third overall by Arizona at the 2022 draft after the New Jersey Devils took defenceman Simon Nemec with the No. 2 pick, has 7-19-26 totals in 52 games this season with the Coyotes. Centre Shane Wright, selected fourth overall by the Seattle Kraken, has 18-14-32 totals in 43 games this season with the AHL’s Coachella Valley Firebirds.

It’s still too early to make a final judgment on whether the Canadiens made the right pick, but it’s certainly starting to look that way.

“He’s a very impressive kid,” Martin Lapointe, the Canadiens’ director of player personnel and amateur scouting said after the team drafted Slafkovsky. “A very strong kid. Big. Still has lots of room to grow. He’s a kid that you want to be around. He’s got such a charisma. You want to be talking to him, you want to be around him. He wants to make a difference and that’s the way he plays the game.”

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Lapointe added Slafkovsky would need some teaching.

“He’s 18 years old … those players are kids,” Lapointe said. “They need to be taught the game. Positioning, just little tricks. And I think the fact that we have Martin St. Louis as our head coach and Martin is willing to work with younger players like that …. Martin is very open. He works with everyone and I think Juraj will benefit tremendously from that.”

That’s exactly what we’re seeing now.

The patience St. Louis — and Canadiens management — had with Slafkovsky while he had growing pains last season and at the start of this season is really starting to pay off. There were many — including me — who thought he’d be better off playing in the AHL with the Laval Rocket.

I’ll always remember this quote from Slafkovsky the day before the 2022 draft in Old Montreal when the NHL had a news conference with the top prospects and he was asked about possibly being the No. 1 overall pick.

“At the end of the day, I think it doesn’t really matter,” he said. “At the end, when I retire I want to be the best player from this draft.”

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The hit parade

I was chatting last month with the Canadiens’ Michael Pezzetta about him being in the top 10 in the NHL in hits and asked him if he checks how many hits he has after each game.

“I definitely look to see how many hits I had,” he said. “Sometimes it’s frustrating. I’m like: Geez, I had so many hits tonight and then you look on the sheet and I have two. I’m like: Who’s counting these hits? I swear I got to figure out what the definition of a hit is. I think it’s you got to hit the guy and he’s got to separate from the puck. But sometimes when you finish your hit they don’t count them. You can blow a guy up and you don’t even have a hit and you’re like: What? But I definitely look.”

Turns out Pezzetta wasn’t the only one wondering how hits are counted. The NHL announced this month it had done an audit on the number of hits that had been counted. The Athletic reported the audit was conducted by a third party and hit numbers were adjusted for every game, going back to the start of the season. The new hit numbers were updated on Feb. 6.

The Athletic reported the definition of a hit in the NHL is essentially forceful and legal body-to-body contact.

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Pezzetta had 29 hits added to his total on Feb. 6, boosting him to 157 from 128.

Pezzetta was credited with three hits in Thursday’s 7-4 loss to the Rangers in New York, bringing his season total up to 174, which ranks fifth in the NHL despite the fact he has been a healthy scratch for 11 games and averages a team-low 7:46 of ice time per game.

The only players in the NHL with more hits than Pezzetta following Thursday’s games were the Nashville Predators’ Jeremy Lauzon (250), the Vancouver Canucks’ Dakota Joshua (195), the Philadelphia Flyers’ Garnet Hathaway and the New York Islanders Cal Clutterbuck.

Lauzon was averaging 17:54 of ice time, Joshua 14:03, Hathaway 11:21 and Clutterbuck 12:35.

A rocky road

Pezzetta’s path to the NHL wasn’t easy after being selected by the Canadiens in the sixth round (160th overall) of the 2016 NHL Draft.

He started his first season as a pro with the Rocket in 2018-19, but was then sent down to the ECHL’s Maine Mariners for three games. Pezzetta didn’t play in his first NHL game with the Canadiens until 2021.

Arber Xhekaj was never selected at the NHL Draft, but was able to make the jump directly from the OHL’s Hamilton Bulldogs to the Canadiens last season. After Xhekaj was sent down to the Rocket earlier this season, Pezzetta spoke with him.

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“When I was in the AHL, I got sent down to the East Coast for a week or so,” Pezzetta recalled. “For me, I went down there, played a couple of games and you’re just like: I don’t want to be here. At that time, I knew I could play in the AHL. You go down there with the right attitude, you play hard, and when you come back — without even realizing — maybe you’re working harder than you were before. You’re putting in that little 5 or 10 extra per cent you maybe weren’t giving before and didn’t realize it because you’re like: I’m never going back there again.

“I told him that when he got sent down and I know he went down there and he did his thing,” Pezzetta added about Xhekaj, who posted 3-8-11 totals in 17 games with the Rocket before getting called back up. “I think it’s good. It’s a little different when you’ve had a taste of the NHL and you’re going down to the AHL. Once you get a taste of the NHL, you never want to get sent down again.”

Xhekaj appreciated the words of advice from Pezzetta.

“We have a good relationship,” Xhekaj said. “We’re good buddies. We understand each other’s game and each other’s role. He’s been through it. He’s taken me under his wing a little bit just how things work and the league works a little bit. We get dinner a lot. We have a good bond.”

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Pezzetta kept in touch with Xhekaj while he was in Laval.

“It was good to hear from him,” Xhekaj said. “I was watching his games up here and I would talk to him. He would call me or FaceTime me and we’d talk about the whole process and how it works. He reached out multiple times and it was good to hear from him.”

Five-year plan?

Canadiens management and St. Louis don’t want to put a timetable on the team’s rebuilding plan, which is now in its second full season.

But a five-year plan makes sense to me as a timeline.

Having said that, five years can seem like a long time to a 22-year-old player like Kaiden Guhle.

“I guess it would be long,” Guhle said after practice Tuesday when I asked him about a five-year plan. “But for me, I’ve learned throughout this whole process of playing in this league you’ve just got to take it day by day. Try not to think too far in the future and think too far ahead. It’s a long season. I think if you do that and you try to think that far ahead you’re just going to go crazy. For me, just try to take it day by day, week by week, and not look too far into the future.

“We know that we’re a young team and we know that people want to say rebuild,” Guhle added. “But we want to make the playoffs and we think that we can do that. With the guys we have in here we believe that we can do that. When we lost (Sean) Monahan (in trade to Winnipeg) I’m sure people would have asked what that means for us. The answer hasn’t changed. We still have the same goal, same mindset, still pushing for that (playoff) spot. Again, we know that we’re young, but we still believe in ourselves and we know that we can do it.”

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A valuable asset

One of the things that makes Guhle so valuable to the Canadiens is the fact as a left-hand shot he’s comfortable playing on the left or right side.

The Canadiens lack depth on the right side, which is part of the reason why they selected right-hand shot defenceman David Reinbacher with the No. 5 overall pick at last year’s draft.

Having a 22-year-old defenceman who is already comfortable playing both sides is a rarity in the NHL. Guhle was paired with left-shot defenceman Kaiden Guhle on Thursday night against the Rangers.

“I think he’s stayed on the right because of his behaviour on the ice and how he’s handled it,” St. Louis said after practice Tuesday when asked about Guhle playing on the right side. “We wouldn’t keep him there if he wasn’t performing or if he wasn’t in a good place. I don’t think it would be fair to just keep putting him in a (position) he’s not comfortable with. Guhls is a hockey player. You throw everything at him and he’s going to figure it out.

“I think his biggest strength is his feet and his compete level,” St. Louis added. “The one thing I like with Guhls is whatever happens in a shift — whether it was good or bad — the next shift is not affected by it. He just kind of moves on. He doesn’t get too high, he doesn’t get too low. I think that’s mental strength right there.”

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