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.
