habs first rounder suspended

[Devlin]

Suspended by OHL

Not a very smart pick

could have had him in the 3,4, round

[subban7677]

The Habs could have avoided all of this so easily. It's mind boggling.

[RGM81]

Suspended by OHL

Not a very smart pick

could have had him in the 3,4, round

It was a dumb pick, but by all accounts he would have gone in the 2nd round. There were teams that were still keenly interested. Bergevin, for whatever reason, decided that this was absolutely the player he needed to take. The rest is infamy.

[mikecole141]

It was a dumb pick, but by all accounts he would have gone in the 2nd round. There were teams that were still keenly interested. Bergevin, for whatever reason, decided that this was absolutely the player he needed to take. The rest is infamy.

The fact that other teams were going to pick him, and there is enough corroborating confirmation from multiple insiders to know that, is as bad as Bergevin & Montreal pulling the trigger.

But the blame can’t sit wholly on Montreal or those teams. The player asked to be taken out of the draft and the League refused, the teams that felt that they had been okayed to pick him where they thought he would be available, while not cleared of wrongdoing, are aided and maybe even eclipsed by the League’s failure to address this before it became an issue. The army of marketing and public relations people employed/contracted by the League and the teams who probably would have told them this was a bad idea are probably still scratching their heads over this. They also would have told them allowing Mailloux to pull his name from this year’s draft would allow the teams to avoid a PR nightmare, and allow the player to attempt to rehabilitate his image whether he truly wants to or just for the sake of appearances.