If I was the Habs GM since 2003… the team would be the favourites to win the Stanley Cup this year…
By drafting properly in the first round between 2003 and 2007, the Habs would be alarmingly better than the reality we see today… if the Habs would have made just five different 1st round selections …
So, instead of Andrei Kostitsyn in 2003, they could have had Zach Parise; instead of Kyle Chipchura in 2004 they could have had Mike Green; instead of Carey Price in 2005 they should have drafted Anze Kopitar, instead of David Fisher (this one really hurts), they could have had Claude Giroux in 2006, and they made two selections, Ryan McDonagh and Max Pacioretty, which they could have used to take David Perron in 2007.

By drafting more wisely, they wouldn’t have had to trade for Scott Gomez’s gigantic longterm contract that eats up valuable cap space, wouldn’t have had to waste their time signing (over paid and over the hill) Jaroslav Spacek, … and they wouldn’t have had to give away Jaroslav Halak in a fire-sale trade this past summer. You can try and argue that Gionta or Cammalleri wouldn’t have signed last year without Gomez in tow, but that would be stupid… in my ‘what if’ lineup, we would have three centres that would guarantee playoff dominance …

Centre Left Wing Right Wing
Anze Kopitar Michael Cammalleri Brian Gionta
Zach Parise David Perron Claude Giroux
Thomas Plekanec Benoit Pouliot Maxim Lapierre
Jeff Halpern Travis Moen Mathieu Darche
Dustin Boyd

Defence
Andrei Markov, Mike Green,
PK. Subban, Roman Hamrlik
Josh Gorges, Hall Gill
Ryan O’Byrne, Alexandre Picard

Goalies
Jaroslav Halak
Alex Auld