If the Blackhawks and Penguins move on to the conference finals, the Montreal Canadiens will enter the NHL Entry draft with the 25th, 34th, 36th, and 55th picks in the first two rounds.
That's a wealth of high mid-range picks, to add to the wealth of mid-range prospects the Canadiens already have due to excellent picks by Trevor Timmins. But the Canadiens are on the verge of contender status, and a high impact player next year or the year after is likely worth a lot more to the organization than a bunch of mid to high impact players 4-5 years from now.
With that in mind, it seems that the Canadiens are in the unique spot of having a lot of assets to move up at the right time. But should they?
The brilliant Eric Tulsky at Broad Street Hockey wrote just under a month ago about what it costs to move up on draft day.
Using 46 trades between the 2006 and 2012 drafts, Eric found relative values for each pick in the draft as general managers value them.
Using his table, we can see that the 1st overall pick has a value of 100, while the 2nd overall is valued at 69.9. Using Eric's methodology, we can add together the Habs' top 4 picks and see where it gets them on draft day.
