It is that time again. The 2018 Montreal Canadiens Top 25 Under 25 is about to get underway, and you can have your say in the final rankings.
After the pool of eligible players dwindled to just 39 for last year’s series, this summer there are 45 players under the age of 25 to rank, and 43 of them will still be eligible in 2019. This year saw a large boost to the number of prospects in the organization, and that number is only projected to grow over the next year.
With a spectrum ranging from newly drafted teenagers to what can be called NHL veterans, for this series, your rankings should be based on a combination of the current skill of the players as well as the impact they are likely to have at the NHL level. You will be judging how a prospect’s ceiling stacks up against what other players are already contributing at the NHL level, and ranking by the value you give each of the 45 players as a result.
Any obvious troll ballots (e.g. placing a current NHL player at #45, ranking 2014’s third-round pick at #1) will be disqualified. The hundreds of community votes we receive will be averaged together to form one of the ballots — a wisdom-of-the-crowd ranking — we incorporate in the final rankings.
Two EOTP members have been granted individual ballots this year. To choose them, I counted the individual comments made on our weekly prospect reports this year and picked the top two, limiting candidates to those with no warnings on their account in the past 12 months, and who hadn’t had a vote in the series previously.
This year, the community representatives will be canadianboy12345 and joepocket, who were engaged in the conversation regarding the young players in the organization all year long.
We also ran a contest during the NHL post-season, with a prize of an individual ballot to the winner of our Bracket Challenge. Unfortunately, the participants were listed by the first name field only, so we don’t know who actually won. A request for assistance from the NHL went unanswered. You can claim your vote in the series if you can prove that you submitted this winning bracket:
If you would like a bit of a refresher before making your submission, you can read up on David St-Louis’s Catching The Torch series, Patrik Bexell’s European Prospect Report, and our comprehensive coverage of the 2018 NHL Entry Draft.
The survey will close at 11:59 EDT on Friday, July 20, or after 1000 submissions have been made (whichever happens first), with preliminary articles beginning on Monday, July 23.
Ballots can be edited after submission (so long as you use the same device and don’t delete the survey site’s cookies or clear your browser’s cache), but it’s probably best if you don’t second-guess yourself too much. Please take your time to consider each player. It’s also a good idea to keep a record of your list to reference throughout the series.
Now let’s get this thing under way, shall we?
The survey, a drag-and-drop ranking of the 45 players, with a desciption of the criteria to keep in mind, can be found here:
