He is one of the biggest Slovak talents of recent years. In the draft, he was given priority over the Czech shooter Jiří Kulich, for example. However, hockey forward Filip Mešár does not fulfill the requirements at all.
The 2022 draft brought historic successes to the Slovaks. For the first time, they had the overall number one and three players in the first round – Juraj Slafkovský, Šimon Nemec and Filip Mešár.
But while Slafkovský already belongs to the stars of Montreal and the German is collecting starts for New Jersey, Mešár remains behind expectations.
In Montreal’s training camp, where he tried to follow Slafkovski, it quickly became clear that the bosses did not count on him for the main team. Out of six preparatory games, he started in only one. In almost thirteen and a half minutes on the ice, he entered the main statistics only with a two-minute penalty. This was followed by a departure to the farm AHL.
That Mešár’s current ineligibility for the best league in the world is not just Montreal’s opinion is proven by a recent ranking by a renowned overseas media.
The online newspaper The Athletic published a so-called re-draft, in which it ranked the players from the 2022 talent auction according to their current quality or prospects.
While Slafkovský remained number one, the German dropped only a few places, from second to fifth, and Kulich even flew from 28th to 19th, originally 26th. Mešár fell completely. He is missing among the 115 named. Unlike Czech defensemen David Špaček and Tomáš Hamara, he did not even enter the category of players in the 58th to 115th position who “have a chance to play games in the NHL“.
Horrible drop.
Mešár caused it because he did not show a significant shift after moving from the Slovakian Poprad A team to North America.
Although he shone in the national team, he finished the two basic parts of the junior OHL with 51 and 52 points in a similar number of games. The last playoff, where he was Kitchener’s most productive player, he didn’t save it.
Montreal expected much better numbers from the winger, who measures – for a hockey player – only 178 centimeters, but excels in speed and skill. As a tough guy in the fourth line, it will be difficult to use him.
“Writing Mešár off is terribly premature,” pointed out Stu Cowan from the Montreal Gazette.
From the bottom half of the first round of the 2022 draft, which is a total of 16 hockey players, only four have started in the NHL so far. Including Kulich with six starts and one goal. From this point of view, Mešár is no exception. He may be on a worse path than others right now, but that could change.
“Players get to the NHL in different ways. Slafkovský was able to do it in the first year. It took me longer, but I still believe that I have what it takes and that I will be able to do it in the coming years,” said the still only 20-year-old Mešár.
“I don’t pay attention to what is being said around me, because sometimes they are not nice things,” he also confided. “I’m just trying to do my job on the ice, focus on the game. But I’m definitely thinking a little bit about the fact that they selected me in the first round. I want to prove that it wasn’t just for nothing.”
At the beginning of the season, he is doing well. He collected five points (1+4) in four games for the Montreal farm in Laval.
