The Canadiens have 64 players at training camp

The Montréal Canadiens will have 64 players at training camp, and that sounds really busy. Feels a little overloaded. And I know about the extra bodies needed for the pre-season games, but still…

Some of the guys from the rookie camp I've described as ‘no-hopers’, like Tanner Eberle and Zach Yuen and Evan Wardley, they get to move on to the next stage, and fight for a spot on the Bulldogs.

And no dark horse unsigned junior player survived the cut, the giants Tyler Hill and Matt Shmaltz, the skillful Alex Goulet and Phillippe Gadoury, the heavyweight protégé of pugilism proponents Bokondji Imama. We don’t steal a draft pick from next season’s crop.

On Saturday, Stéphane Leroux of RDS explained that the Canadiens debated at the 2012 draft on whether to spend a seventh-round pick on Sven Andrighetto, but relented and traded the pick to the Panthers instead. Eventually, they spent a third-round pick on him in 2013, and not a round too soon, since the Colorado Avalanche are reported to have been targeting him early in the fourth round.

Had the Canadiens pulled the trigger in 2012 in the seventh round, or even offered the kid a contract as an undrafted free agent that summer, we’d have been that much further ahead. Of course, this is with hindsight, the team wanted to see more from the kid, and when he had another great season, they picked him up at the next draft.  But it would have been nice to pick up what turned out to be a third-rounder for free, essentially.