A new 2023 NHL redraft has put fresh attention on Montreal Canadiens prospect David Reinbacher, with the exercise suggesting he would not go as high if teams were picking again today. Summer redrafts are a familiar offseason talking point, and this latest version has sparked discussion because Reinbacher appears to have lost ground compared with where he originally came off the board.
The reevaluation was done by The Athletic's Scott Wheeler, who revisited the 2023 class using what has happened since draft day. That kind of ranking is built on a larger sample than teams had at the time, so movement up or down is expected as players begin to develop and separate themselves.
For Canadiens followers, the key takeaway is that an early drop in a redraft does not automatically mean the original decision was wrong. The short description around the ranking makes that point clearly: after only a few years, there is still plenty of time for a young player to change the conversation, especially when development paths are rarely linear.
In that sense, Reinbacher's placement says more about how quickly opinions can shift than it does about his long-term ceiling. Redrafts can be useful for measuring early returns, but they are still snapshots rather than final verdicts, and Montreal's evaluation of its 2023 pick will ultimately be judged over a much longer timeline.
