After doing our annual countdown of the top 25 players under the age of 25 in the Montreal Canadiens organization, we have an indication of how the depth will shake out for the future. The NHL roster contains many more veteran players who don’t qualify for the series, but most of them will have moved on by the time the majority of the players we profiled are ready to play in the league.
With that in mind, we can sort our list by position to come up with a roster of the future, with the top-ranked players as the stars and the depth filled out as we go down the order. First slotting in number-one-ranked Ivan Demidov at right wing on the top line and going down to 23rd, this is what such a roster would look like:
This summer, the list had a good mix of players at the top of the order, so you only have to go as deep as Michael Hage at ninth to fill out the top line (Cole Caufield, Hage, and Demidov), top defence pairing (Calder Trophy-winner Lane Hutson, and David Reinbacher), and starting goaltender Jacob Fowler. It’s not so far-fetched that this will be close to what the Habs’ starting lineup looks like in a few years’ time, with the exception being Hage in a second-line role behind Nick Suzuki.
The deepest position in the organization is right wing, with the 14th-ranked player, Alexander Zharovsky, filling the fourth-line spot. The left side of the defence is second in terms of quality, and one of the left-shot blue-liners needed to be shifted over to the right side to fill out the pairings. Despite Montreal making more of a point to add right-shot defencemen in recent drafts, Bogdan Konyushkov down in 23rd place is the one who completes our 23-player lineup, and that’s after shifting Adam Engström over to the spot above him.
It takes a while to get to Hage at ninth to start pencilling in the centres, but then there’s a bit of a run on them with the depth filled in the span of seven places, and it could have been five if we hadn’t shifted Alex Newhook to the left wing. The lack of top-end talent down the middle is made up for with the quantity of established or NHL-projectable players.
Clear areas of improvement are therefore the centre position and right defence, but left wing could also stand to be reinforced with L.J. Mooney at 21st rounding out the depth. Unlike most of the other positions, there aren’t currently many veterans to help there this season. The roster could stand to have another addition or two that projects as a top-six forward.
Alternate version
The simplest way to address the all-important centre quality is to develop Ivan Demidov at that position. It’s one he’s played in his career, and he has the talents required to play it. At least to start his NHL career, it will make sense to let him work on the wing to get the most out of his offensive skills, but gradually increasing his responsibilities so he could be an NHL centre would balance the organization out well.
In this version, the starting lineup has six of the countdown’s top seven players, with #6 (David Reinbacher) leading the second defence pairing. It could be a contender-calibre alignment on its own without even thinking about Suzuki or Noah Dobson who are also going to be around for the the Canadiens’ competitive window.
With Demidov in the middle, the long quest to have an elite top-six duo would come to an end, and attention could turn to just the aforementioned areas of weakness on the left side of the attack and the right side of the defence for improvements. It’s not a thing they should force upon the fifth-overall selection from the 2024 NHL Draft, but definitely a challenge that should be offered to him.
