Introduction

It’s time to begin Eyes On The Prize’s 16th annual Montreal Canadiens Top 25 Under 25!

The series focuses on the top young talent in the organization, projecting their skills to identify who will compete (or not) for places on the NHL roster in the future, slotting them in among those who are already stars with the Canadiens. Any player born after September 15, 2000, taking us back as far as the 2019 NHL Draft class, was eligible for inclusion. The pool totals 55 players, setting a new record. Given Montreal’s new status as a playoff contender, this could be the high-water mark for the foreseeable future.

Eligible players

The players considered for this year’s ranking, sorted from oldest to youngest, were:

Player
DOB
Age
Pos
Eligible for 2026

Cole Caufield
2001-01-02
24.6
RW
No

Kirby Dach
2001-01-21
24.5
C
No

Alex Newhook
2001-01-28
24.5
C
No

Arber Xhekaj
2001-01-30
24.5
LD
No

Jakub Dobes
2001-05-27
24.2
G
No

Alexander Gordin
2001-07-31
24.0
RW
No

Jayden Struble
2001-09-08
23.9
LD
No

Sean Farrell
2001-11-02
23.8
LW
Yes

Kaiden Guhle
2002-01-18
23.5
LD
Yes

Ty Smilanic
2002-01-20
23.5
LW
Yes

Luke Tuch
2002-03-07
23.4
LW
Yes

Jack Smith
2002-07-06
23.1
C
Yes

Jared Davidson
2002-07-07
23.1
C
Yes

Dmitri Kostenko
2002-09-25
22.9
RD
Yes

William Trudeau
2002-10-11
22.8
LD
Yes

Bogdan Konyushkov
2002-12-20
22.6
RD
Yes

Luke Mittelstadt
2003-01-22
22.5
LD
Yes

Zachary Bolduc
2003-02-24
22.4
LW
Yes

Daniil Sobolev
2003-03-03
22.4
RD
Yes

Riley Kidney
2003-03-25
22.4
C
Yes

Oliver Kapanen
2003-07-29
22.0
C
Yes

Joshua Roy
2003-08-06
22.0
RW
Yes

Sam Harris
2003-10-14
21.8
LW
Yes

Adam Engström
2003-11-17
21.7
LD
Yes

Emmett Croteau
2003-12-07
21.7
G
Yes

Filip Mesar
2004-01-03
21.6
RW
Yes

Owen Beck
2004-02-03
21.5
C
Yes

Lane Hutson
2004-02-14
21.5
LD
Yes

Juraj Slafkovský
2004-03-20
21.4
LW
Yes

Florian Xhekaj
2004-06-27
21.1
LW
Yes

Vinzenz Rohrer
2004-09-09
20.9
C
Yes

David Reinbacher
2004-10-25
20.8
RD
Yes

Filip Eriksson
2004-11-05
20.7
C
Yes

Jacob Fowler
2004-11-24
20.7
G
Yes

Quentin Miller
2004-12-23
20.6
G
Yes

Makar Khanin
2005-03-17
20.4
RW
Yes

Yevgeni Volokhin
2005-04-06
20.3
G
Yes

Rasmus Bergqvist
2005-06-05
20.2
LD
Yes

Tyler Thorpe
2005-08-11
20.0
RW
Yes

Ben Merrill
2005-11-04
19.7
C
Yes

Maxon Vig
2005-11-17
19.7
LD
Yes

Ivan Demidov
2005-12-10
19.6
RW
Yes

Alexis Cournoyer
2005-12-13
19.6
G
Yes

Mikus Vecvanags
2006-01-17
19.5
G
Yes

Owen Protz
2006-02-07
19.5
LD
Yes

Bryce Pickford
2006-04-02
19.3
RD
Yes

Michael Hage
2006-04-14
19.3
C
Yes

Logan Sawyer
2006-05-06
19.2
LW
Yes

Aatos Koivu
2006-06-22
19.1
C
Yes

Hayden Paupanekis
2007-02-04
18.5
C
Yes

Alexander Zharovsky
2007-02-22
18.4
RW
Yes

L.J. Mooney
2007-03-08
18.4
RW
Yes

Carlos Händel
2007-03-31
18.3
RD
Yes

Andrew MacNiel
2007-07-25
18.0
RD
Yes

Arseni Radkov
2007-08-05
18.0
G
Yes

Methodology

To determine the order, EOTP staff members were offered individual ballots, and two members were chosen from among our commenters, with past participants and those with poor moderation histories passed over to find our selections. Joining nine of our contributors on the voting panel are FlowerPower60 and Nilan4, whose ballots carried just as much weight in determining the order.

A final vote came from the hundreds of members who submitted a ballot. We received 484 responses this time around between staff and readers, so thank you to everyone who took the time to evaluate players and participate in the project.

The 11 individual panellist ballots were removed from the sample used for the EOTP vote. From those that remained, any ballots that had fewer than 25 players ranked were removed, and any ranks on the remaining ballots that went beyond the number a person said they had ranked (e.g. ranks 36-55 for someone who answered “35” for the length of their list) were disregarded.

The result was 221 partial lists and another 248 that ranked all 55 players for a total of 469 ballots making up the EOTP submission. Ranks for each player were averaged across all ballots that had the player in question ranked, and those averages were sorted from lowest to highest to make the community vote.

The same procedure of averaging the results was ultimately used to determine the 2025 order from the 12 total ballots included.

What’s next?

If you didn’t save your list and would like to follow along as the players are revealed, make a request in the comments of this article, and it will be sent to the email address associated with your EOTP profile.

Before we begin counting down the players in this year’s series, next we’ll take a look at how the pool changed from last year to this, while looking back at the histories of players who are no longer eligible for the project.