The Canadiens drop in The Athletic’s prospect rankings

Charles-Alexis Brisebois
The Canadiens drop in The Athletic’s prospect rankings
Credit: Joseph Weiser/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

Scott Wheeler ranks prospects—it's his thing. He evaluates them, I suppose… but he ends up ranking them.

These days, he takes the top prospects from every NHL team and compares the different teams. The teams are ranked from 1 to 32, of course.

And at the end of the 2025–2026 season, the Habs are ranked ninth in his list, published on The Athletic this morning.

In 2025, the Canadiens were in the top 3. But obviously, the fact that the excellent Ivan Demidov has left the prospect rankings (and the fact that the Habs didn't draft in the first round in 2025) brings the whole thing down.

That's normal.

That said, we need to put things into perspective. The Canadiens have an excellent team led by young players who were part of that very ranking just a few years ago.

And they still have some good prospects.

Jacob Fowler, Michael Hage, Alexander Zharovsky, and David Reinbacher are in the “Tier 1” of prospects, meaning they're among the best young prospects in the NHL.

The first is already in the NHL, and the second could arrive soon.

When you have guys like Bryce Pickford and Adam Enstrom who don't have a spot in the top-4, and when you have the youngest team in the NHL (or nearly so) that's virtually guaranteed a playoff berth, it means your organization is in good shape.

Things are going well right now. And this isn't an April Fool's joke.


In a nutshell

– Interesting.

– Do you like it?

– He's off to the pros.

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