Cole Caufield looked like a little boy when the Canadiens selected him with the 15th overall pick at the 2019 NHL Draft.
It didn’t help that Shea Weber, at 6-foot-4 and 230 pounds, announced the pick and then the 5-foot-7, 165-pound Caufield stood beside the Canadiens’ captain at the time for photos on stage at Rogers Arena in Vancouver.
Size is the only reason Caufield was still available with the 15th pick after he scored 72 goals in 64 games the previous season with USA Hockey’s National Team Development U-18 team.
“If you’re going to do one thing, you’d better do it really well,” one scout said about Caufield in The Hockey News Draft Preview that year. “And he scores and he just scores and scores. His one-timer is outstanding. He is a true scorer. He can score in a number of ways, but his one-timer is elite.”
Former Canadiens general manager Marc Bergevin decided he couldn’t pass on Caufield and that was a very smart decision.
Caufield scored the winning goal for the Canadiens in a 4-3 overtime victory over the Kraken Tuesday night in Seattle, giving him nine goals in 11 games this season, which had him tied for the NHL lead. It was Caufield’s third game-winning goal this season and the 11th OT goal of his career.
Caufield has scored 127 goals in his NHL career. The only player selected at the 2019 NHL Draft with more goals is the New Jersey Devils’ Jack Hughes — the No. 1 overall pick — with 150. Hughes has also played 80 more games than Caufield.
Caufield is one of the parting gifts Bergevin left behind for Jeff Gorton, the president of hockey operations, and GM Kent Hughes when they started rebuilding the Canadiens almost four years ago. It was also Bergevin who selected Oliver Kapanen in the second round (64th overall) of the 2021 draft, Kaiden Guhle in the first round (16th overall) and Jakub Dobes in the fifth round (136th overall) in 2020, and Jayden Struble in the second round (46th overall) in 2019.
Of course, it was also Bergevin who had a long list of first-round picks that didn’t pan out, including Jesperi Kotkaniemi (third overall in 2018), Ryan Poehling (25th in 2017), Noah Juulsen (26th in 2015), Nikita Scherbak (26th in 2014), Michael McCarron (25th in 2013) and Alex Galchenyuk (third in 2012).
Gorton and Hughes put a big focus on player development when they started this rebuild and Caufield’s career took off after they hired Martin St. Louis to replace Dominique Ducharme as head coach. Caufield had only one goal in the first 30 games of the 2021-22 season with Ducharme behind the bench. After Ducharme was fired, Caufield scored in each of his first two games and finished that season with 23 goals. The 24-year-old hasn’t looked back since.
St. Louis got Caufield to fall in love with hockey again and his personality lights up the Canadiens’ locker room on a daily basis.
“The thing with Cole is first and foremost he’s a very enthusiastic kid,” St. Louis said this summer when he was a guest on the Missin’ Curfew podcast with former Tampa Bay Lightning teammate Shane O’Brien. “And to me, enthusiasm is the gas that you need for the season. So he puts a lot of gas on that and it’s contagious. I think it helps with the day-to-day of the NHL and you can see it — it trickles to the rest of the team.”
While the Canadiens drafted Caufield as a goal-scorer he has become much more than that. Now listed at 5-foot-8 and 175 pounds, Caufield has become a 200-foot player who is noticeable all over the ice. His stickhandling has become as impressive as his shot — as he displayed with his OT winner in Seattle — and he’s willing to go to the dirty areas to score goals.
On Missin’ Curfew, St. Louis spoke about how Caufield reminds him of his former Tampa Bay Lightning linemate Steven Stamkos.
“I remember having talks with Cole,” St. Louis recalled. “I’m not going to teach you how to score goals, but I’m going to help you to get more chances and I’m going to try to help you to become a complete player, and that’s what you need to win in this league. I see Cole very similar in the sense of his biggest assets, like a Stamkos. I played with Stammer for, I don’t know, seven years maybe. When Stammer came in the league, he was a goal-scorer. He didn’t right away, but it didn’t take long and he started scoring goals and eventually he developed his playmaking ability. I think I helped that, I think Kuch (Nikita Kucherov) helped that. But also he became a 200-foot player and, obviously, the run they had in Tampa (including Stanley Cups in 2020 and 2021) with him speaks volumes. I see in Cole a similar path in that.
“He’ll never forget how to score goals,” St. Louis added. “He’s going to keep becoming more complete and he’s on the right track and he’s very receptive. And, for me, everything starts with his enthusiasm each and every day.”
We’re definitely seeing that now.
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