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The Habs had a fair bit of turnover in their prospect pool in recent months with 11 new players joining the fold while the team parted way with 10 more.  Here are our annual prospect rankings for the 2024-25 season.

Normally, we release the rankings in groups of five but that hasn’t worked so well in recent years so we’re going to try something different this time around and put out the full rankings first.  Then, over the course of the next few months, we’ll go into more detail by each position.  Think of it as something like our annual Depth Assessment series except this time, the focus will strictly be on the prospect pool.  The rankings were set late in the preseason.

Overview

Here are the criteria that each player had to meet to be eligible to be in these rankings:

1) The player must be 24 years old or younger as of October 1, 2024
2) The player must have no greater than 40 games of NHL experience (including regular season and playoffs)
3) The player cannot be signed to an AHL contract

Here are the departures from last year’s list (previous ranking in parentheses):

Graduated – NHL GP: Rafael Harvey-Pinard (9), Jayden Struble (14), Cayden Primeau (20)
Traded – Jan Mysak (24), Nathan Legare (30)
Released – Mattias Norlinder (18), Cedrick Guindon (23), Blake Biondi (28), D Petteri Nurmi (31), F Rhett Pitlick (32), D Miguel Tourigny (36), D Nicolas Beaudin (39), F Jakov Novak (45 though still on an AHL contract)

Rankings

The biggest risers this season were a pair of 2023 draft picks in Volokhin and Eriksson.  Volokhin had a stellar showing at the Russian junior level last season and while it looks as if he might spend a fair bit of time there again this season (not necessarily the most ideal), the Canadiens can certainly afford to be patient with him.  As for Eriksson, he was impressive at the second-tier Allsvenskan level once he was re-assigned, showing there is an offensive game to work with to go with a decent defensive game he showed in the SHL for half of last season.  He’s still more of a project at this point but there’s more than token upside.

On the flip side, Kidney, Farrell, and Miller are the biggest droppers.  Last year, I overestimated Kidney’s ability to step in and play right away in Laval.  I thought he’d be an impact piece quickly (like Joshua Roy, for example) but that didn’t happen.  There’s still time for him to turn things around but it can’t be justified keeping him as high as last season to wait to see if that happens.  Farrell had a decent rookie year with Laval but injuries didn’t help his cause.  He turns 23 next month so time is starting to run out while it feels like he’s probably not among the first few recalls as things stand.  Miller, meanwhile, drops by virtue of what could be a season-ending shoulder injury.  He needs to sign by June 1st and missing most (or all) of the year makes that outcome a lot less likely.

As for the top defenceman, my original inclination would have been to leave Reinbacher ahead of Hutson.  I think Reinbacher could still be a top-pairing all-around key piece and a right-hander in that role has a lot of value.  But with his knee injury almost ending his season (he might get a few weeks in at the end), he’s a bit too much of a wild card for now to keep in the top slot for a rearguard.  Hutson, meanwhile hasn’t looked out of place with the Canadiens in limited action and certainly has earned the top blueline seed.

How well will these hold up over the course of the season?  We’ll find out in the coming months.