Jan Mysak knows he wasn’t good enough last season

Tell me if I’m wrong, but in all the years I’ve been following the Montreal Canadiens, which is about the last ten years, the club has never had so many promising young prospects on hand.

It’s crazy how many exciting prospects you can name without even doing any research.

In no particular order, the Habs have Lane Hutson, David Reinbacher, Owen Beck, Logan Mailloux, Joshua Roy, Emil Heineman, Sean Farrell, Adam Engstrom, Filip Mesar, Jacob Fowler, Riley Kidney, Oliver Kapanen and more.

Having such a wide variety of prospects allows the CH’s various fans to each have their favorite prospects in whom they have more faith.

Generally speaking, it’s the performances of these different prospects that dictate the preferences of the team’s fans.

It doesn’t take much to become a favorite, but it also doesn’t take much to fall by the wayside.

One such prospect that has gone from exciting to forgotten is the CH’s second-round pick (48th overall) in 2020, Jan Mysak.

The 21-year-old Czech quickly tumbled down the Tricolore’s prospect bank due to his more-than-ordinary AHL performances with the Laval Rocket.

And Mysak knows it.

Indeed, as he explained in an interview with Nicolas Cloutier, Mysak is aware that he clearly wasn’t good enough last season with the Rocket.

His more than ordinary production of nine points (five goals and four assists) in 40 games really dampened fans’ expectations of him.

Fans drastically turned their attention to other prospects, and rightly so.

Still, Mysak is only 21 years old, and we shouldn’t give up on him just yet, even though he’s been a major disappointment since turning pro.

The CH prospect knows he can give more.

“It was my first year [full-time in the AHL] and I’m hard on myself, but I wasn’t good enough. I know I can give more. I agree: we haven’t seen my offensive game in the AHL yet.” – Jan Mysak

The big problem for Mysak, however, is that while he’s confident he could give more next season, he may not get the chance to do so, at least not in Laval.

Even if he has a good relationship with his coach Jean-François Houle, and the latter believes in him, the congestion of forwards in Laval could very well push Mysak out of the picture.

With the arrival of several prospects and players such as Joshua Roy, Sean Farrell, Emil Heineman (he only played 13 games with the Rocket), Nathan Légaré, Lias Andersson, Riley Kidney and Jared Davidson, Mysak could lose his place.

If Mysak was already a fourth-trio player last year, imagine this year with the addition of so many other players.

In short, as much as management would like to give Mysak a quality chance to perform, he’s likely to end up in the same chair as last year, that of support player, at best, or at worst he could take a turn in the ECHL with the Trois-Rivières Lions.

In short, Mysak is still a prospect who could break through given his offensive talent and hard-working nature, but it may be too little too late for that future to be in Montreal.

To find out more, here’s Nicolas Cloutier’s excellent article.

En Rafale

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