3. Montreal Canadiens – 88.3 Overall

Individual Breakdown:

The Montreal Canadiens are entering the final stages of their rebuild, and they’re doing it with one of the deepest prospect pools in the NHL. At the top of the list is 2022 1st overall pick Juraj Slafkovsky, who unexpectedly broke out in his D+2, and became a near point-per-game player in the latter half of the season. Following closely behind is 2022 62nd overall pick Lane Hutson, who had points in both of his two NHL games this season. The undersized offensive defenseman has beat the odds to get to the NHL, but his hockey IQ and craftiness seem to be enough to keep him in the league long term.

There’s a drop off after these two in our general consensus, with the third ranked prospect being fifth overall pick David Reinbacher, who received an overall ranking of 6.9. Owen Beck, Kaiden Guhle, Joshua Roy, Sean Farrell and Filip Mesar all received above a 5.

There isn’t anything more telling of the state of the Canadiens’ prospect pool than the bottom ~10 guys, many of whom were only ranked by one scout, but with a relatively high score. There is depth at every position, and with 30 draft picks at their disposal over the next three drafts, this pool will only grow.

Team Breakdown

The Montreal Canadiens seem to be building their team the right way, with a focus on character and culture. They have a lot of great guys in the pipeline, but despite the fact they have the third ranked pool in the entire league (per our rankings), they still lack top-end star talent. They will almost certainly draft a forward in Vegas this summer, completing the team’s eventual top-six.

If things go well at the draft, the Canadiens could be very scary very soon.