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Montreal Canadiens

Player Of The Month: Elite Sniper Cole Caufield Is Scoring At Will

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1 year ago

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Montreal Canadiens forward Cole Caufield

June 21, 2019.

Rogers Arena, Vancouver, British Columbia.

The NHL Draft is in full swing, featuring an abundance of U.S. National Development Team (USDP) players, including a small but talented player named Cole Caufield.

The Montreal Canadiens are set to draft 15th overall, which usually translates to selecting a player that has potential but is far from a blue-chip prospect.

The USDP players start to hear their names. Jack Hughes is selected first overall, the first of eight USDP players drafted in the first round.

As the Draft unfolds, team after team passes on Caufield despite a record-setting season, owing to his diminutive size and the fact that the rough-and-tumble St-Louis Blues had just won the Stanley Cup.

Having forgotten the lesson taught by the talented, yet small sniper Alex DeBrincat in 2016, Caufield remains available for the Canadiens, who quickly snatched up the player who set scoring records at every point in his career.

As the media assembles around Caufield for a post-draft interview, his coach, John Wroblewski, dashes out to the podium and interrupts the scrum to congratulate his player and give him the type of hug that a proud father would give to his son upon graduation.

“You guys just got a hell of a player,” he explains.

“I’m shocked he dropped to 15,” I reply. “He’s too talented to ignore.”

“That’s their loss,” he says with a wry smile. “This guy is going to do great things in the NHL. Trust me.”

Fast forward to the first month of NHL action in 2022. Lo and behold, Wroblewski’s prediction rings true.

Caufield sits second among all NHLers in goals scored, trailing only the generational talent known as Connor McDavid.

With 7 goals in 9 games, Caufield has scored over 25 percent of the Canadiens’ goals this season. But his goal-scoring prowess isn’t just due to pure talent.

Thanks to excellent chemistry with the newly-minted captain, Caufield and Nick Suzuki are quickly becoming one of the league’s most offensively talented and exhilarating duos.

You could easily argue Suzuki, who is tied with Caufield for the team lead in scoring, should be co-winner of the Player of the Month Award, but given how well the Canadiens’ new captain is playing, he’ll undoubtedly take home the honours in the near future.

Therefore the Player of the Month Award for October, a.k.a. The Brian Savage Award, goes to the player that continues to prove the most essential quality a prospect can have is raw talent.

Everything else can be taught.

Talent is innate, as evidenced by Cole Caufield.

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