Eyes On The Prize
Home ice of Carey Price
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2026 Montreal Canadiens Top 25 Under 25: #3 Juraj Slafkovský
Introduction “How many more tiers does Juraj Slafkovský still have before he reaches the peak of his powers?” That is what we asked last year after a second consecutive 50-odd-point season cemented the Košičan as a cornerstone of the Montreal Canadiens’ forward corps. Well, we didn’t have to wait long to find out. In 2025-26, Slafkovský set new career bests in goals, assists, and points, becoming only the 10th member of the Canadiens to hit the 30-goal plateau in a single season...
Wednesday Habs Headlines: Optimism abounds
Montreal Canadiens news and notes Despite a quiet off-season, Canadiens fans have a lot to be optimistic about. [ Montreal Gazette ] Five players to watch when Canadiens’ rookie camp opens on Friday. [ Montreal Gazette ] A look at who’s at rookie camp … and who isn’t. [ La Presse ] Why Lane Hutson is the most underrated defender in the NHL. [ Hockey Tactics Newsletter ] Previewing the 2026-27 campaign. [ RG.org | Daily Faceoff ] Mikus Vecvanags is a man on a mis...
2026 Montreal Canadiens Top 25 Under 25: #4 Michael Hage
Introduction It was somewhat of a surprise that Michael Hage elected to head back to the University of Michigan for his Junior season, but there’s no doubt that the Wolverines’ coaching staff will be thrilled to have their star player back. The Montreal Canadiens’ 2024 first-round pick has been a massive part of their program for the past two seasons, scoring over a point per game as a freshman before becoming a top-five scorer in the country as a sophomore. Habs fans were expecting ...
Tuesday Habs Headlines: The Boys Are Back in Town
Montreal Canadiens News and Notes It might have been a holiday, but Sam Montembeault, Jakub Dobes, and Jacob Fowler were hard at work. [ TVA Sports ] The goalies weren’t the only ones around, as Juraj Slafkovsky has returned to Montreal. [ TVA Sports ] There aren’t a lot of big names expected at Montreal’s rookie camp, and that’s not because of poor drafting. [ TVA Sports ] Six questions facing the Habs ahead of the season. [ TVA Sports ] One thing to keep in mind fo...
2026 Montreal Canadiens Top 25 Under 25: #5 Kaiden Guhle
Introduction Kaiden Guhle is an established mid-pairing defenceman at the NHL level. That’s the whole profile. You may now rush to the comments. All kidding aside, the joke is that while Guhle is undeniably a key part of the Canadiens and a talented, multifaceted player in general, it remains difficult to figure out where he fits in the Habs’ future as the defender prepares to turn 25. The Edmonton native has become a major cog on the Canadiens’ blue line, being used heavil...
Monday Habs Headlines: Ivan Demidov went against agent’s advice to sign eight-year deal
Montreal Canadiens news and notes Agent Dan Milstein says Ivan Demidov brushed aside his advice to sign an eight-year, team-friendly contract. [ Montreal Gazette ] Cole Caufield comes in at 31st on NHL Network’s top 50 players. [ NHL.com ] Will Oliver Kapanen reprise his role as second-line centre in 2026-27? [ Journal de Montreal ] A championship ring from the Montreal Hockey Club in 1893 was recently discovered in a private jewellery collection in Ontario. [ La Presse ]...
Sunday Habs Headlines: Aatos Koivu gets started with a goal
Montreal Canadiens news and notes Aatos Koivu has gotten off on the right foot with a showcase of his shooting talent: An absolute rocket from Aatos Koivu on the power play, his first goal of the season. This is the shot that #Habs fans has heard about, but has rarely seen. pic.twitter.com/6AeTwKFNSS — Patrik Bexell (@Zeb_Habs) September 5, 2026 Gleb Pugachyov will start the season in the MHL. [ TVA Sports ] Lane Hutson is a good candidate to take the vacate...
Saturday Habs Headlines: Canadiens announce rookie camp roster
Montreal Canadiens news and notes Montreal announced its 23-player rookie camp roster that will compete in the Prospect Challenge in Gatineau. [ Canadiens.com ] The bigger news is the prospects who aren’t going to be attending, with few top prospects and only a handful of AHL players. [ La Presse ] Alex Newhook has an important role of anchoring the second line this season. [ Sportsnet ] Andrei Markov believes that Montreal is set up well to be the team that ends Canada’s...
2026 Montreal Canadiens Top 25 Under 25: #6 Jacob Fowler
Introduction It can be hard to analyze goalies, let alone goaltending prospects, in this exercise. I have misjudged plenty of talents between the pipes for better and for worse, but for the first time in a long time there’s a goaltender who makes it easy to see what the future holds. From being the sixth goalie taken in his draft class to a World Juniors gold, the NCAA goalie of the year, a two-time All American, and already making his NHL debut, it’s clear that the sky is the limit for J...
Friday Habs Headlines: Twelve years of TVA
Montreal Canadiens news and notes The NHL announced a new 12-year French-language broadcast arrangement in Canada, with TVA Sports securing rights through a sub-licensing agreement between Rogers Communications Inc. and Quebecor Inc. [ Sportsnet | Montreal Gazette | La Presse ] Amazon announces its NHL schedule, including these seven Canadiens games you’ll only get on streaming. [ Montreal Gazette ] Are the Habs thin at forward? [ Radio-Canada ] How Lane Hutson’s def...
2026 Montreal Canadiens Top 25 Under 25: #7 Alexander Zharovsky
Introduction Every so often a prospect comes along whose stock climbs so fast you half-expect the scouts who passed on him to start updating their résumés. Alexander Zharovsky is that guy. When the Montreal Canadiens traded up in the second round of the 2025 NHL Draft, sending picks 41 and 49 to the Carolina Hurricanes to grab pick 34, the move raised a few eyebrows. Trading up to take a Russian winger with a KHL contract through 2027 and a frame you could describe as “still under co...
Thursday Habs Headlines: Growing expectations for the rebuild
Montreal Canadiens news and notes How patient are Jeff Gorton and Kent Hughes willing to remain with fan expectations continuing to rise around the rebuild? [ Montreal Gazette ] The solution to the Canadiens’ second-line centre dilemma could already be on the current roster. [ The Sick Podcast ] Former NHLer Steve Dubinsky says Hughes’s and Martin St-Louis’s complementary skills have the team poised for an extended run of success. [ Montreal Gazette ] Around the league ...
2026 Montreal Canadiens Top 25 Under 25: #8 David Reinbacher
Introduction David Reinbacher finally got the season he had been waiting for, even if it did take a few detours to get there. The Montreal Canadiens’ fifth-overall pick from the 2023 NHL Draft spent the 2025-26 season with the Laval Rocket, playing 57 games and recording five goals and 19 assists. He also finished with a plus-18 rating and 56 penalty minutes, numbers that give us a decent snapshot of a defenceman becoming more comfortable in his own end, increasingly willing to engag...
Wednesday Habs Headlines: Proving people wrong
Montreal Canadiens news and notes Going all-in on Cole Caufield has paid off in spades for the Canadiens. [ Montreal Gazette ] Revisiting the Nick Suzuki trade. [ The Hockey Writers ] A look inside the first two episodes of Season 3 of the Crave docuseries “The Rebuild”. [ Montreal Canadiens ] This will be a critical year for several members of the roster. [ RDS ] Jean-Philippe Pleau sees Martin St-Louis’s “aggressive patience” as a rich source of food for thought th...
2026 Montreal Canadiens Top 25 Under 25: #9 Zachary Bolduc
Introduction When Kent Hughes correctly identified his contingent of offensive defencemen as a position of significant organizational strength, he started working some trades to improve his roster up front. Enter Zachary Bolduc, acquired in a one-for-one deal with the St. Louis Blues for Logan Mailloux one year ago. Since then, Bolduc has held a top-10 spot on our annual list. Claiming victory on a trade less than one year after it gets completed is a dangerous prospect, but the retu...
Tuesday Habs Headlines: Where We Stand
Montreal Canadiens News and Notes With Cale Makar becoming the highest paid NHLer, the Habs’ contracts are looking even better than ever. [ Montreal Gazette | TSN ] While the Habs haven’t made improvements to their roster since the end of the season, it really might be for the best. [ La Presse ] Where things stand with Zachary Bolduc, Arber Xhekaj, and Mike Matheson, and others. [ Sportsnet | La Presse ] Xhekaj doesn’t have a contract yet, but he’s not sitting on the sid...
2026 Montreal Canadiens Top 25 Under 25: #10 Oliver Kapanen
Introduction After a very successful season with Timrå in the SHL, it wasn’t clear where Oliver Kapanen would line up, and with whom, on Montreal’s opening night of the 2025-26 season. Some on this site proposed that it would be with Ivan Demidov as Kapanen could defer to the dynamic Russian in the offensive zone and go straight for the net. In the end that was what happened, and Kapanen stayed on the second line for the majority of the year. At the end of the season, Kapanen was thi...
Monday Habs Headlines: The largest contracts in NHL history
Montreal Canadiens news and notes Looking at the biggest contracts in NHL history by salary-cap percentage. [ RG.org ] Patrik Laine could be limited to a professional tryout for the new season. [ IS.fi ] Around the league and elsewhere Wyatt Johnston kicks off NHL Network’s list of the top 50 players. [ NHL.com ] How will the Vegas Golden Knights respond to their third coach in a matter of months? [ NHL.com ] Las Vegas’s top prospects. [ NHL.com ] Jalen...
A new approach to analyzing the Montreal Canadiens’ penalty kill
Following the departure of key defensive players David Savard, Joel Armia, and Christian Dvorak during the 2025 off-season, the Montreal Canadiens looked to be trying to implement a new penalty-killing system last year. Results, diplomatically speaking, were mixed (with Eyes On The Prize ’s own Matt Drake being very outspoken about this subject on the Bottom Six Minutes podcast during the season). In order to take the next steps, to get home ice advantage in a tougher Atlantic Division and a b...
Sunday Habs Headlines: The goalie market gets rekindled
Montreal Canadiens news and notes Stu Cowan believes the goalie news in Winnipeg and Edmonton will kickstart the trade market, which could resolve the Samuel Montembeault situation. [ Montreal Gazette ] Arpon Basu wonders how Martin St-Louis and Derek Lalonde will approach the new season months after making it to the conference finals. [ The Athletic ] Around the league and elsewhere Daniel Brière says his offer sheet to Leo Carlsson didn’t reset the market, it was ju...
Saturday Habs Headlines: Kent Hughes’s work stands out amidst NHL mega deals
Montreal Canadiens news and notes Cale Makar’s new record contract shines a brighter light on the work Kent Hughes has done locking down his core. [ Journal de Montreal ] Around the league and elsewhere Makar’s eight-year contract extension carries an average annual value of $20.4 million. [ NHL.com ] Quinn Hughes, Zach Werenski, and Matthew Schafer now see what a top defenceman’s value is. [ NHL.com ] Comparing Makar’s contract to those of other star defencemen ...
2026 Montreal Canadiens Top 25 Under 25: #11 Gleb Pugachyov
Introduction The expectation was that there would be no new first-rounder in the Top 25 Under 25 after the Montreal Canadiens went to the Eastern Conference Final in the spring. We’d seen Kent Hughes deal two picks from the opening round the previous year to acquire Noah Dobson, and there were various rumours and reports of the general manager trying to land a top-six forward leading up to the draft, and even into the trade deadline. In the end, Montreal did trade the 28th-overall pi...
Friday Habs Headlines: The captain in the spotlight
Montreal Canadiens news and notes Nick Suzuki isn’t worried about his contract, the lack of off-season transactions, or the surge in NHL salaries. [ CTV | CITY | La Presse | RDS | Radio-Canada ] His PEI roots run deep for Canadiens defenceman Noah Dobson. [ Montreal Gazette ] The top Canadiens priorities heading into 2026-27. [ The Hockey Writers ] Ivan Demidov is poised to break out this season. [ The Hockey Writers ] The Habs feature prominently in a redraft of the...
2026 Montreal Canadiens Top 25 Under 25: #12 Adam Engström
Introduction Adam Engström has reached the point in his development where he seems to have learned everything he can from the levels below the NHL, steadily increasing his stock year after year. Four years after the Montreal Canadiens selected him 92nd overall in the 2022 NHL Draft, he has played professional hockey in Sweden, completed two full AHL seasons, and made his NHL debut. His development has continued moving in the right direction. After recording five goals and 27 points i...
Thursday Habs Headlines: Cole Caufield in a scoring class of his own
Montreal Canadiens news and notes No NHL player has scored more often than Cole Caufield over the past two seasons. [ Journal de Montreal ] Prospect Cooper Cleaves has the right-handed shot, good feet and puck-moving ability to make you sit up and take notice. [ Montreal Gazette ] The Canadiens are playing by the same salary-cap rules as everyone else, but those rules don’t necessarily create a level playing field. [ The Sick Podcast ] The success of the Canadiens these p...
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