Introduction

All of the Montreal Canadiens players confidently stated at least year’s pre-season golf tournament that they were aiming to make the playoffs. It seemed like too big a dream for many people in the hockey world, and only sounded more implausible when the team’s inability to keep the puck out of its net resulted in an 8-13-3 start. But the Canadiens recovered to finish with a 40-31-11 mark, being led by their top young talent to claim their first playoff berth since the run to the Stanley Cup Final in 2021.

The post-season appearance was a clear signal that the team was ready to emerge from its rebuild, and Kent Hughes responded by making two major additions this off-season. True to form, that didn’t mean older veterans who would only be around for a couple of years, but young, established players who would become immediate members of the core. To make that happen, Hughes had to part with two first-round picks, a forward who had just completed his rookie season, and a top defence prospect.

The result was more outgoing assets than incoming ones in those two trades, while the team also parted ways with a few prospects at the end of the season. But thanks mostly to another oversized draft class of nine new prospects, the number of players under the age of 25 in the organization rose from 54 to 55.

Graduates

Each summer there have been a few players who age out of the rankings, remaining in the organization but no longer being eligible after turning 25. Last year, despite having the largest pool the project has ever seen, there was only one player set to graduate, and he has since been moved to a different organization.

Montreal did add three players over the past year who would have been eligible for the 2024 version of this project but have already turned 25. Noah Dobson, the biggest piece added to the roster this summer, had his 25th birthday in early January, while Joe Veleno did so six days later. Defenceman Marc Del Gaizo, signed to help in the AHL, turned 25 shortly after the 2025-26 season began.

Departures

Logan Mailloux

The highest-ranked player from 2024’s list to leave the organization was Logan Mailloux, traded to the St. Louis Blues for Zachary Bolduc in a one-for-one deal. You can’t say it was a surprising move because Mailloux had been mentioned in nearly every trade rumour the Canadiens were part of since Kent Hughes and Jeff Gorton took control of the Canadiens’ hockey operations. Mailloux was reportedly part of a tentative deal for Trevor Zegras one year ago before Montreal selected Ivan Demidov. This summer, a move was made after the draft had taken place.

Mailloux rose to his highest ranking last year of the four he was part of the organization. He jumped six spots from 2023 thanks to a solid rookie season with the Laval Rocket that proved his offensive game could translate to the pro level. He made further strides last season with an improved defensive game, earning a second AHL All-Star nod and also claiming a place on the 2025 All-Prospects Team.

With defence an area of strength for the Canadiens — especially after adding Dobson ahead of the draft — Hughes was able to trade for a scoring forward to address an area of need. It’s a credit to Mailloux’s improvement that acquiring a 22-year-old player who scored 19 goals in 2024-25 didn’t require any extra assets.

Jordan Harris

Jordan Harris was the only player of the 54 included last year who was set to age out, but was traded away mere days after his profile was published. The trade brought in Patrik Laine from the Columbus Blue Jackets, as well as a second-round pick that Montreal still holds for the 2026 NHL Draft.

Harris had risen as high as ninth in our annual countdown, finishing there in both 2021 and 2022, but had started to fall in the last few entries as defencemen with more skills, like Mailloux, David Reinbacher, and Lane Hutson, moved ahead of him. A steady, serviceable player, Harris was an important part of the team when he first turned pro, but it was clear that a roster spot was only temporary for him.

He surely believed he would have an opportunity to maintain his playing time with Columbus, but he found himself on another team that has significant depth on defence. He got into just 33 games, averaged only 11:23 per game, and netted five points after seasons of 17 and 14 points to end his Canadiens tenure.

Harris is now a member of the Boston Bruins, hoping for a much better season with his second Original Six team.

Justin Barron

Like Harris, Barron’s went from a spot inside the top 10 (sixth in 2022) to a much lower placement over the past two years. In Barron’s case, the offence that earned him that high ranking immediately after he was acquired from the Colorado Avalanche wasn’t enough to keep him ahead of more reliable options in the defence corps. There are several weaknesses in his defensive play, and those became all too apparent when he was thrust into a big role with the Canadiens, even getting top-pairing duties with Mike Matheson.

Barron had a decent 45-game stint with the Nashville Predators after being traded for Alexandre Carrier, contributing five goals and seven assists. But even as a more defensive defenceman, Carrier beat that point total with 18 of his own with Montreal, had a +4 rating with his new team versus Barron’s -14, and was perhaps the biggest reason on the defensive side for the Canadiens overcoming a terrible start to rocket up the standings and claim a playoff spot.

Emil Heineman

After two years inside the Top 25, Emil Heineman slipped to 27th last summer following his first full AHL campaign. He clearly worked hard in the off-season, and forced his way onto the Canadiens’ roster not with the powerful shot that had been his calling card in previous years, but with his work ethic on defence and in transition.

His shot still featured in his game, and he had two goals on his stat line through three matches to begin his rookie season. He went on a tear on a line with Jake Evans and Joel Armia in December, and had 17 points though 35 games. However, a minor car accident in January led to a wrist injury, and he contributed just a single point in the final 27 regular-season games he played.

He was traded, along with the two first-round picks Montreal held, to the New York Islanders just ahead of the first round of the NHL draft for Noah Dobson. Islanders general manager Mathieu Darche is hoping that Heineman can be an answer for a team that scored the fifth-fewest goals in 2024-25.

Xavier Simoneau

It’s a bit strange to have Xavier Simoneau in this section because he hasn’t actually gone anywhere. He played last season with the Laval Rocket and will do so again in 2025-26. However, he won’t be doing so on an NHL contract but a minor-league deal instead, and therefore is no longer officially part of the organization.

His bid to earn his first standard player contract with Montreal wasn’t helped by a point total that had dropped from 38 points as a rookie in 2022-23 to just 21 last year. He’s a physical player who has had to battle through injuries, and that could explain the point totals, but it also makes it hard to commit a contract to him with so many other quality forwards in the system. A healthy, productive season with Laval will be the best way for him to keep his dream of playing in the NHL alive.

Jacob Perreault

Montreal swapped its own underperforming forward, Jan Mysak, for Jacob Perreault in a trade with the Anaheim Ducks on March 7, 2024. The 27th overall selection in the 2020 NHL Draft, Perreault played just 19 games for Laval, contributing a goal and an assist.

In early December, he was dealt to the Edmonton Oilers for defenceman Noel Hoefenmayer. Perreault had 14 points and was a -17 in 38 games with the AHL’s Bakersfield Condors over the remainder of the season.

Rhett Pitlick

Rhett Pitlick debuted inside the Top 25 in 2019, slotting in at 23. He dropped down the order in each successive edition of the project, finally reaching 40th last year. The Canadiens relinquished his rights just before last summer’s countdown began, while Pitlick moved from the University of Minnesota to Minnesota State for one more year of college hockey. He, along with brother Rem, has signed an AHL deal with Bakersfield for this season.

Blake Biondi

Montreal gave up Blake Biondi’s rights around the same time as Pitlick’s last year, and Biondi made the same choice to play for a different school in his final year of eligibility, going to Notre Dame. He joined the Chicago Wolves at the tail end of last season, and has signed a minor-league deal with the affiliate of the Carolina Hurricanes for this season.

Joe Vrbetic

Montreal drafted Joe Vrbetic out of the OHL in the seventh round in 2021 and their signing rights extended to four years when the goaltender signed a professional deal to play with the Lions de Trois-Rivières in 2022-23. He played four games with Laval in his first pro season, but didn’t reach the second tier of North American hockey again, playing exclusively in the ECHL. With his four years in the Canadiens organization now complete, he has made to decision to play for Concordia this season.

Newcomers

Zachary Bolduc

Typically in Kent Hughes’s tenure he’s tried to address the NHL roster by trading for underperforming players and hoping they find their true form in Montreal. Kirby Dach and Alex Newhook were such players, and have found varying degrees of success with the Canadiens. As mentioned previously, Zegras was close to being another one, but the GM ended up bringing in Laine later in the 2024 off-season instead. This summer the GM chose to go with players who have already shown more at the NHL level, first acquiring Dobson at the draft, then trading for Zachary Bolduc on the opening day of free agency. It’s a shift in approach for management, matching the more competitive nature of the team after its post-season appearance.

In Bolduc the Canadiens have a player who has almost 100 games of NHL experience and broke out in the latter half of the 2025-26 season, netting 13 of his 19 goals after the league resumed following the 4 Nations Face-Off. He had made a conscious effort to increase his work ethic after being drafted out of the QMJHL, and after hitting 50 goals in back-to-back seasons to end his Junior career, it seems he’s found a way to translate that finishing ability to the top level.

2025 NHL Draft class

For the first time since 2008, the Canadiens didn’t select a player in the first round of the NHL draft. Despite trading two picks away ahead of the opening round, they still came away with nine new prospects, and a class that was graded highly by various scouting outlets.

The first selection was Alexander Zharovsky, whom the Canadiens traded up to select with the third pick of the second round. Once the draft had concluded, both Nick Bobrov and Martin Lapointe said that Zharovsky was one of the players they were considering at 16th or 17th had those picks not been traded, and while many hockey ops people say similar things when the player they actually wanted was no longer on the board at their spot, you could tell there was genuine excitement about Zharovsky’s addition. Bobrov has given the Canadiens the upper hand over most NHL teams with his connections in Russian hockey, and by all accounts he has helped to add another high-quality prospect to the fold.

When Montreal’s next pick came at 89th overall, they selected Hayden Paupanekis, a 6’5″ defensive-minded centre who plays on the 2026 Memorial Cup-hosting Kelowna Rockets. The Habs know he has a strong base to build upon, and will be hoping the additions Kelowna makes to boost its quality for the CHL championship will give him some skilled linemates to help flesh out his offensive game.

After choosing a defensive forward they went with an offensive defenceman, selecting Bryce Pickford, who had 20 goals for the Medicine Hat Tigers in the regular season and added 13 in 18 playoff games. It was a sudden goal explosion for a player who had a combined eight goals through his first 121 WHL games, and the Canadiens want to know what the ceiling looks like for such a player.

The main theme for the 2025 draft was a focus on size, and Montreal added a few players to fit that trend like the 6’4″ goaltender Arseni Radkov at 82nd overall and 212-pound defenceman Maxon Vig with their last pick, in addition to Paupanekis. But the Canadiens have also had success with smaller players who were underrated in their draft years — Lane Hutson and Cole Caufield ranked first and second in scoring during Montreal’s brief playoff run with five and four points, respectively — and tried to make lightning strike thrice with the addition of L.J. Mooney in the fourth round. Mooney just completed his work with Team USA at the World Junior Summer Showcase, and could be on the roster when the World Juniors begin in December.

Outlook

We anticipated that we would have a large pool of players to rank this year because only one from the 2024 edition was set to age out. Now, thanks in part to Hughes’s efforts to acquire several players from the 2019 draft class, seven players will not be eligible in 2026. These also aren’t insignificant players: six of them ranked inside the Top 25 in 2024. It’s going to be a smaller selection of players in 2026 (which is probably a welcome development for everyone tasked with ranking 55 this year), with some names that have become very familiar no longer on the list.

It’s also true that the Canadiens aren’t going to be accumulating picks and prospects for veterans, but beginning to make moves in the other direction, something we’ve already seen with Dobson’s addition (which also kept the pool from hitting 58 players with Heineman and two new first-rounders).

Having said that, Montreal does hold nine picks for the 2026 NHL Draft, and while Hughes will probably once again treat his first-rounder as currency, he’s not the type of GM to just burn all of his selections to add any and every veteran player he can acquire. He’s been adamant about maintaining a consistent flow of prospects to balance the organizational depth, and will still be making a good number of additions next year, but probably not enough to offset the losses from the graduating class alone.

With the current regime’s efforts, not only do we see 55 players under the age of 25 in the organization, but there’s a high quality to them as well. In this year’s list, the number of players with realistic shots of being NHLers extends into the 30s in the final order, not so many years removed from when serviceable AHL players rounded out the Top 25.

We will be profiling the best players in the organization over the next several weeks. Tomorrow we’ll look at the players who are the furthest from reaching the NHL with those who ranked the lowest on our ballots this year.

If you would like to have your Top 25 Under 25 ballot sent to you, please leave a comment in the Introduction article for this season, linked below.