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Juraj Slafkovsky is neither as bad as his critics say nor as good as his fans believe he can be.

The pressure is on Slaf big time right now and that’s totally normal. Sure he’s just a 19-year-old kid, but he’s also a No. 1-overall draft pick and with that comes very close scrutiny, especially in Montreal. The 6-foot-3, 230-pound winger was the Habs’ first No. 1 draft pick since Doug Wickenheiser in 1980 and Canadiens fans of a certain age all remember how that one turned out.

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For younger readers, the quick recap is Wickenheiser never developed into the big power centre the Canadiens — and most everyone else in the National Hockey League at the time — believed he’d become. Worse, a fellow named Denis Savard was passed over by the Habs, even though he’d been tearing it up in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League right under the noses of Canadiens’ management with the Montreal Juniors. Even worse than that, for the Habs that is, Savard was an immediate sensation in the NHL with the Chicago Blackhawks, who picked him third overall.

So Slafkovsky is under the microscope for very good reasons, and so far the brutal reality is what we’ve been seeing isn’t very good. He finally scored his first goal of the season Saturday in St. Louis, after head coach Martin St. Louis bumped him up to the top line alongside Nick Suzuki and Cole Caufield.

Slaf played his best game of the season Saturday, even if his goal was hardly highlight-reel material. It was basically a whiff-ball of a shot that somehow made it past Blues goalie Joel Hofer. He was also pretty good Tuesday in the Canadiens’ 5-3 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning at the Bell Centre.

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But there was one play Tuesday that told part of the Slafkovsky story. In the second, he just crumpled to the ice after a big hit by tough Tampa forward Tanner Jeannot, a hit that led to a fight between Jeannot and Arber Xhekaj. Slafkovsky, in spite of his size, rarely seems prepared for the hits along the boards.

He just doesn’t play big. The good news is I think that can be taught. So what is the Canadiens’ coaching staff waiting for?

Yes there are problems. With 20/20 hindsight, it’s 110 per cent clear he should have started with the Laval Rocket last season. Kent Hughes made a mistake. Hey it happens to the best of us. It appears as if they kept him with the big club ’cause he was the No. 1 pick, in other words for PR reasons.

But he’s not as bad as his record. Jean-Nicholas Blanchet had an excellent but devastating column in Le Journal de Montréal this week saying that Slaf has the worst record in terms of production in his first 50 games of any first-overall pick in the last 26 years. Ouch!

Today, after 51 games over two seasons, he has five goals and seven assists and any way you slice that, it’s terrible. It doesn’t help his rep that Logan Cooley, picked third in the same draft by the Arizona Coyotes, looks like a stud (eight points in 12 games so far this season).

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Keep in mind that until two games ago, Slafkovsky was on a disaster of a line, with Alex Newhook and Josh Anderson, neither of whom were doing anything to help the Slovak winger.

But like all the fans I spoke to at La Cage beside the Bell Centre on Tuesday just before the Tampa game, I still believe in Slafkovsky. He has only played 51 games and he’s 19 years old. You don’t give up on a guy that early. As fan Antoine Milette-Gagnon quite correctly noted, the CH can’t afford to make the same mistake they did with another recent high draft pick, Jesperi Kotkaniemi. He was drafted third overall in 2018.

Then-GM Marc Bergevin gave up on Kotkaniemi after three years, was slow to sign him, leaving the field open for Carolina to make a hostile offer for the young player. He had a good year last season for the Hurricanes and is doing downright great so far this season with 12 points in 13 games.

Montreal needs Slafkovsky to be good if not great. First-off, he is the only decent potential power forward on the roster. (Please let us not mention Anderson. He is there to do one thing, score goals, and is incapable of doing so. This is a disaster.)

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Slafkovsky has looked way more lively on the ice since joining the top line and I think he is a good fit there, in theory. He can be the big guy who creates space and gets the puck to two dudes who can score. But he will have to get his hands dirty in the process. That also can be taught.

I think sending Slaf down to the Laval Rocket at this point is no longer an option. It would’ve been fine last season but now it’s too much of a demotion, too much like telling Slafkovsky he’s failing in the big leagues. Most believe coach Claude Ruel destroyed Wickenheiser’s confidence in his rookie season and the last thing you want to do is have Slafkovsky second-guessing himself.

The best news here for Habs fans is that Slafkovsky’s coach is a guy whose top quality might just be his uncanny knack for inspiring young players. Just ask Caufield about that.

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