Scott Wheeler believes Jacob Fowler will surpass Jakub Dobes

Charles-Alexis Brisebois
Scott Wheeler believes Jacob Fowler will surpass Jakub Dobes
Credit: Joe Hrycych/Getty Images

Yesterday, Scott Wheeler released his list of the top 100 NHL draft prospects. Three players from the Canadiens' organization (Michael Hage, Alexander Zharovsky, and David Reinbacher) made the list.

The reason Jacob Fowler wasn't on the list is that Wheeler always ranks goalies separately. That's a good thing: evaluating goalies is so different from evaluating skaters.

So we had to keep an eye on his list of goalies to see where he would rank the Canadiens prospect.

And upon reading his article this morning on the top 20 goaltending prospects, we noticed that the columnist for The Athletic ranked Fowler first.

Wait, let me rephrase that: we noticed that the columnist at The Athletic ranked Fowler as the only player in the “Tier 1” category on his list. In other words, Fowler is in a class of his own.

Wheeler has always had good things to say about him, and last season certainly didn't change the analyst's perception—he's viewed Fowler as a top prospect for the past five years.

If Fowler can get to the puck, he'll stop it.

“He has a good chance of being one of the best goalies in the NHL, and there aren't many goalies his age (or a little older) about whom I'd say that.” – Scott Wheeler on Jacob Fowler

The analyst acknowledges that Jakub Dobes deserves credit, but he still believes the American is the Canadiens' goaltender of the future.

The good news for the Habs? The door is open for Fowler to do what Dobes did to Samuel Montembeault: take his spot in the coming years. A little internal competition can be a good thing.


In a nutshell

– To be continued.

– That's a long time.

– Well done.

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