2022 Montreal Canadiens Top 25 Under 25: Community Vote

It’s already been a busy offseason, with the 2022 NHL draft happening less than a month ago, then free agency starting a few days later — and still going on, with players signing every day. Now that we’re approaching two months until the start of the 2022-23 regular season, it’s time to begin our annual series that recognizes the top 25 players under the age of 25 in the Montreal Canadiens organization.

When this project began in the summer of 2010, 34 players met the age criteria for opening picks. In 2022, 30 forwards alone and 51 total players born after September 15, 1997, the cutoff date we borrow from NHL draft eligibility, will qualify for enrollment. That’s by far the most players we’ve had to rank, beating the previous record of 46 set in 2012 and 2019.

Players are separated by position below and sorted by age in descending order.

There have been multiple reports that the Canadians will not offer Brett Stapley a contract, allowing him to become a free agent. However, the team retains his rights until August 15, so he was included in the vote.

With a spectrum ranging from newly drafted teenagers (one of whom is under 18) to players who have been in the NHL for several years, some guidelines are needed for the project. The best way to approach the ranking is to consider the predicted value of the players.

Many people preferred the question “Would you swap player A for player B?” Method of weighing options in the past. One problem with this particular method is that you may end up placing more value on current NHL players than top-end prospects.

The goal of the project is to rank players according to their predicted impact at the NHL level. This doesn’t necessarily mean with the Montreal Canadiens and not necessarily for this upcoming season. Suppose each player has an open chance to claim a spot on a lineup that suggests their skills.

On the other hand, a player who is already third-tier in the NHL is likely to be more valuable than a longer-term prospect who has a slim chance of becoming a top-six player. Your decision in these situations will depend on how confident you are that a prospect will hit their projected ceiling.

With that in mind, instead of asking which player you’d rather trade, ask which player you would rather lose. If you’d be more upset about the organization parting with a particular prospect than you would a particular established NHL player, put that prospect higher on your list. The player at the bottom of your ballot should be the one the organization (and you) would least miss if he leaves. The player at the top will be the one you’d love to build your franchise around from the ground up, whether it’s a current top-six NHL forward, a minor league goaltender, or a teenage defenseman.

Any apparent troll ballot (e.g. placing a current NHL player 51st) will be disqualified. The hundreds of community votes we receive are averaged to serve as one of our panel entries – a ranking of the wisdom of the crowd – which we incorporate into the final results.

As we have done over the past few years, two members of the EOTP community will be granted individual ballots. To select them, I will be evaluating the individual comments made to our weekly prospect reports this year and narrowing down the nominees to those who have not had any strikes on their account in the past 12 months and who have not had an individual vote on the series past four years. The two representatives will be contacted so that their ballots are given equal weight with those of the employees in determining the ranking.

Should you decide to do some research for your pick, you can find out about Hadi Kalakeche’s Catching The Torch series, Patrik Bexell’s European Prospect Report and our comprehensive coverage of the 2022 NHL Entry Draft. I ask you not to discuss the specific or relative order of players in the comments of this article, so as not to influence the decisions of other members.

The survey you are asked to fill out has three questions.

The first asks for your EOTP username so we can validate ballots and find those of our panelists (all participating staff will also fill out the same ballot in the same window).

The second is a randomized drag and drop list of the 51 players. Move players around until you’re happy with their order, from best at the top to worst at the bottom.

The last question asks how many players you have ranked. You must have reached at least the top 25 players for your ballot to count on average. It would be ideal to rank all 51, and the more the merrier, but just rank as many as you like and let us know how long your list was so we can rank the players you skipped , disregard.

There’s no way to edit a ballot after it’s submitted like there was in years past, but you can save your progress and revisit it later. Please take the time to look at each player. It’s also a good idea Keep a record of your list for future reference throughout the series while the reveal is taking place.

The results are collected at 5:00 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, August 9with preliminary articles starting in the following days.

Your ballot can be filled out below, or you can open it in its own tab here: