2024 Montreal Canadiens Top 25 Under 25: Graduates, departures, and newcomers
Introduction
The Montreal Canadiens organization saw significant change in the seasons following their trip to the Stanley Cup Final. Career-ending injuries to Carey Price and Shea Weber brought any hopes of a contending window to a halt, and the Canadiens began trading veterans and acquiring picks and prospects to begin a rebuild. The result is the largest pool of young talent the organization has seen in the 15-year history of this project as the team works its way back to competing for a playoff position.
At the NHL level, this has been a fairly quiet off-season with the team not looking significantly different from the one that began the 2023-24 campaign. We didn’t get the usual draft-day deal that brought in a promising young player, though not for a lack of trying from general manager Kent Hughes, who is still rumoured to be in on a couple of forwards.
Despite adding 10 players to the organization at the 2024 NHL Draft, the pool remains the same size as last year, at 54 players under the age of 25.. Part of that is the club choosing to part ways with prospects who would have typically been signed in the past, but there were also some graduations for players we’ve been ranking for several years now. In total, four players who made the official Top 25 Under 25 countdown last summer aren’t in the mix this time, including the one who topped the 2023 list.
Nick Suzuki
Suzuki’s four-year reign at number one has come to an end. His run is tied with that of Alex Galchenyuk in this project, but while Galchenyuk’s standing was mostly about his potential to be a great player, Suzuki is already a star in the NHL, the best player among some very good ones who promise to bring the Canadiens back to contention. Suzuki is the team captain, just had a 33-goal season while flirting with the point-per-game mark, and has some pundits pencilling him into a deep forward corps for Canada at the upcoming Winter Olympics.
At the time of writing, he also happens to still be under the age of 25, with a birthday of August 10 that falls about a month earlier than the starting date for this project. He’s still a young player who is getting better every season, and his finish to the 2023-24 campaign left a lot of people eager to see what’s in store when fall arrives.
Rafaël Harvey-Pinard
A stellar NHL stint in 2022-23 led to Harvey-Pinard rising up to 13th in his final year of eligibility, his highest position in the project. He had followed up a good opening part of the season in the AHL with surprisingly good offensive numbers in an elevated role for the injury-ravaged Habs, looking like a middle-six player for the team.
He wasn’t nearly the same player last year, with just two goals and eight assists in 45 games, and even the relentless work ethic that had earned him his NHL shot the previous season wasn’t as often on display. He said at the end of the season that he got away from the style of play that he excels at, and he was unable to make the impact he wanted.
With the desire to get back to basics for this season, his plans went awry with a broken leg that required surgery a few days ago. He will need four months to recover from that serious injury, and then needs to get himself into game shape to jump into the action mid-season. Fortunately for him, the forward depth at the NHL level is quite thin so he should have no problem getting into the lineup. That won’t be the case for much longer in the organization, so this final season of his current contract could be a big one.
Cayden Primeau
The narratives couldn’t have been more different between Harvey-Pinard and Cayden Primeau last season. Voters had all but given up on Primeau at the end of the 2022-23 season following more discouraging outings at the top level. It didn’t look like he was ever going to figure out how to be an NHL goaltender, and after years sitting in the top half of the Top 25 countdown — once as high as sixth — he plummeted to 29th in 2024.
He only began the season with the Canadiens because his waiver exemption was up. Despite his struggles, he had been stellar in the NCAA and showed good things in the AHL, and the Habs didn’t want to lose him for nothing on waivers. Thus began a much-talked-about three-goalie rotation in Montreal that saw all of Primeau, Samuel Montembeault, and Jake Allen starting games.
Through all the discourse about how the lack of playing time was ruining his development, Primeau was working on the two things that had held him back: his glove hand, and, more importantly, his mental game. He started the season getting the majority of his starts away from the pressure of the Bell Centre, but, following Allen’s trade at the deadline, got more chances to play on home ice, and he showed what he could do when the team needed him to be the official backup.
His first start following the Allen trade was a 41-save shutout of the Columbus Blue Jackets on home ice, “Just the beginning,” he promised following that performance, and ended the season with at least a .900 save percentage in eight of the 10 post-deadline starts he received. He ended the season with the highest save percentage (.910) of the three goalies who started the year in Montreal. He is also still 24, celebrating his 25th birthday a day after Suzuki will, and that’s especially young for a goaltender. If Primeau can maintain the form he showed last season, he could still be an important player for the team.
Jesse Ylönen
Ylönen displayed all the tools needed to become an everyday NHL player. He was an exceptional skater with a great shot, flashes of vision and playmaking, and underrated defensive ability. At times in the AHL, he looked like he was connecting them all together. At NHL training camp, he would show the promise to be an offensive contributor for the Canadians. When the season arrived and there were three games a week that needed to be played, his lack of consistency was the biggest hurdle between him and an NHL career.
He was still eligible for the project, what would have been his seventh and final year of eligibility, but the Canadiens chose to let his contract expire despite his restricted-free-agent standing, allowing him to find a new team. He is now in the Tampa Bay Lightning organization where he will either face the Habs a few times this year, or, should be clear waivers, play versus the Laval Rocket as a member of the Syracuse Crunch.
Lias Andersson
Andersson was very excited for the opportunity to sign with Montreal, hoping he could finally claim an NHL role on his third team. He did put together a solid season in Laval, co-leading the team with 21 goals in 53 games played, but that didn’t result in a call-up to the Canadiens. He will play in the Swiss National League with EHC Biel-Bienne this year, leaving the organization with one placement at 25th in the countdown last year.
Mattias Norlinder
Like Primeau, Norlinder tumbled right out of the Top 25 last year after being no lower than 16th in his first four years, and as high as fourth after some great offensive performances in Sweden.
At training camp in 2023, he looked like that dynamic rover who captured so much interest when he played overseas. If spots had been handed out simply on merit of play in the weeks before the season, he would have been on the NHL roster. Despite being sent to the AHL, he said he had rediscovered the joy of playing the game, and looked forward to getting back up with the main club.
That call never came because he posted a mere two goals and seven assists in the minors. There was little of the dynamism in his game that turned heads in NHL pre-season, and his poor defensive play was what stood out as he struggled to play the puck out of his own zone. His time with the Canadiens came to an end as a promise of great things never fulfilled. He remains without a contract for 2024-25.
Jan Mysak
Mysak was drafted in the middle of the second round in 2020 as a player with NHL habits who had a lot of offensive potential. He was even brought in to play with the Laval Rocket a few months later as COVID-19 wiped out the OHL season. A 64-point season with the Hamilton Bulldogs the next year suggested that the offensive game was coming around, setting him up for the proper start to his professional career.
The first full AHL season brought just nine points. Things went a bit better last year, as he had 13 goals though 48 games in Laval, but the Canadiens lost faith in his ability to grow into the middle-six role initially envisioned for him, and he was traded to the San Diego Gulls at the trade deadline. He had one point in 14 games with his new team.
Cedrick Guindon
Guindon going unsigned was somewhat of a surprise when it was announced at the end of the season. A 200-foot player who showed offensive ability in the Junior ranks would have automatically been signed in the past. The offence had never taken a step for Guindon since he was drafted in 2022, however, never reaching the 30-goal mark again that he set that year, and that was a red flag for the Canadiens. Perhaps after seeing what had transpired with Mysak, a player with a very similar profile, they decided to pass and save that contract spot for someone who shows more upside in the future.
Nicolas Beaudin
Beaudin was acquired in a change-of-scenery trade for Cam Hillis the previous season. Hillis was a once highly regarded player by the Habs’ amateur scouting department, Beaudin was a first-round pick of the Chicago Blackhawks back in 2018. Neither team had seen its player develop into what they initially expected.
Beaudin started off very well in Laval with 25 points in 39 games a season ago following the trade. But midway through his second year, having six points in 16 games, his contract was terminated and he went to play in the Czech league, where he remains this season.
Miguël Tourigny
The Canadiens took a flyer on an offensive defenceman who was neither very big nor very fast with their final pick of the 2022 NHL Draft. He had a good season in Slovakia the next year, and a fair one with the Lions de Trois-Rivières last year, but didn’t have the NHL projection to warrant a contract.
Petteri Nurmi
The other seventh-round pick in 2022 met the same fate, not undergoing the major transformation teams are taking a chance on in the latter rounds. He will continue his professional career in Liiga.
Jacob Perreault
It’s no secret that the Canadiens have been looking for offensive talent over the past year, and they were looking to add some to the Rocket with the return for Mysak. Perreault was the 27th overall pick of the Anaheim Ducks in 2020 after a 70-point OHL season, and has been in the professional ranks ever since.
He had an encouraging 17 points in 27 games in his first year in San Diego, and got to play his first NHL game the next year after contributing 37 points in 57 games with the Gulls. The offensive totals have dropped since then, and that led the Anaheim Ducks organization to try out a new prospect.
Perreault had just one goal and one assist with Laval in 13 games after the trade. This is the final year of his entry-level contract, and his first as a player in this project.
2024 NHL Draft class
Montreal may not have made the usual big trade at the draft, but the club made its splash at fifth overall. Several teams put together trade packages for the Columbus Blue Jackets trying to select Ivan Demidov before the Canadiens could, but none of those offers proved enticing enough. Céline Dion made the announcement that Montreal had selected the Russian phenom, arguably the second-best player of the draft class.
Hughes still made his customary draft-night deal by moving up to 21st later in the opening round to select Michael Hage, another dynamic offensive player.
With the main goal of adding top-end offensive talent achieved, the rest of the draft was spent selecting more flawed players who will need a lot of development over the next several years to become true prospects.
Outlook
Trading up and taking more high-risk gambles may become the norm with the prospect pool overflowing. This year we saw more long-shot prospects with significant flaws taken in the middle rounds instead of high-floor players like Mysak and Guindon. The focus has shifted from needing to fill the ranks with decent players to hoping one or two projects can blossom into top-end players who bump someone from higher up in the order.
We may have seen the top player move on from the project and start to head more toward veteran status, but the remainder of last year’s top 12 players, and 22 of the Top 25, are still around. Only one player, Jordan Harris, is set to graduate from the rankings before this time next summer. Unlike previous years, the majority of those 22 aren’t players who have just a shot at making the NHL; it’s a question of where they will play in a lineup.
There are currently 10 picks in the Canadiens’ possession for the 2025 NHL Draft, with another two conditional selections. The prospect pool doesn’t need than many new prospects, so we’re likely to see a trade or two during the season to turn some of this draft capital into NHL players, to supplement a rebuild that has accumulated plenty of current and future NHL talent over the past few years.
We’ll be profiling the best players in the organization over the next several weeks. Tomorrow we’ll look at the players who are the farthest from achieving their NHL dreams with those who ranked the lowest on our ballots this year.
Click the play button below to listen to our Top 25 Under 25 opening podcast – Departures, with Matt Drake and Patrik Bexell
Timestamps:
3.20 – Nick Suzuki
7:15 – Rafaël Harvey-Pinard
12:10 – Cayden Primeau
16:20 – Commercial Break
16:30 – Jesse Ylönen
19:20 – Mattias Norlinder
23:05 – Jan Mysak
25:35 – Cedrick Guindon
27:30 – Nicolas Beaudin
28:05 – Miguël Tourigny and Petteri Nurmi
21:15 – Lias Andersson