2026 Canadiens Top 25 Under 25: Biggest rises and largest drops

Each year once the order has been revealed, we do a final reflection on the Montreal Canadiens’ Top 25 Under 25 to highlight the biggest movers from the previous summer, both those who had impressive years to climb higher and those who dropped lower with disappointing seasons.

In a year when the Canadiens announced to the other teams in the NHL that the rebuild was over by finishing sixth in the regular season and making it to the final four in the playoffs, there were still some stellar performances from prospects added to the system during the building phase.

It was an especially big year for defencemen and goaltenders within the organizational depth, as those two positions account for all of the double-digit rises from 2025. The player who improved the most from his debut last year did so in record-setting fashion.

Bryce Pickford (+18)

2025: #31 → 2026: #13

Tij Iginla, selected sixth overall by the Utah Mammoth in the 2024 NHL Draft, led the WHL in goals per game in 2025-26, scoring 0.854 per match over the 48 games he was able to play. In second place at 0.818 was defenceman Bryce Pickford, whom the Canadiens selected 81st overall as an over-age player in 2025.

Pickford was held without a goal in just 22 regular-season games, and he scored multiple goals on nine occasions, five of them coming in sequence from December 3-13, and he had three hat tricks. His 45 goals were the second-most ever scored by a blue-liner in the WHL, and his per-game rate stands as the highest all-time. For those exploits, he was showered with end-of-season honours, including the Four Broncos Trophy as the WHL’s top player and the CHL’s Defenceman of the Year award.

He left a legacy that will be tough to surpass in the WHL, but now he will be starting off fresh at a new level, set to play this year with the AHL’s Laval Rocket. The debut will be delayed as he recovers from off-season shoulder surgery, which raises two questions: 1) how will he respond to such a significant procedure to kick off his pro career, and 2) how many goals would he have scored in his final year of Junior hockey without being hampered by an injury?

Largest year-to-year rises

Luke Mittelstadt (+16)

2025: #42 → 2026: #26

Joining Pickford on the list of the largest year-to-year rises is another defencemen set for his first full season a professional, Luke Mittelstadt. The most significant portion of Mittelstadt’s season that led to such a rise just outside the Top 25 (tied for 25th, but losing the high-vote tiebreaker) was his play with Laval at the end of the season. He was billed as a defensive player, yet he had five points in the final nine games, and was one of the few Rocket players who hit the scoresheet in an abbreviated playoff showing, with two assists in five games.

Montreal just completed the Prospect Challenge, and Mittelstadt again impressed versus quite deep rosters for the Winnipeg Jets and Ottawa Senators. He showed good offensive instincts and looked natural leading a power play, so it seems Laval has the complete package in the 2023 seventh-rounder.

Alexis Cournoyer (+12)

2025: #41 → 2026: #29

Cournoyer’s story as a journeyman goaltender caught the attention of the Canadiens and voters with a relatively high 41st-place finish as a late fifth-round selection a year ago. All he’s done is continue to improve his stock as he rises through the ranks, and a .918 save percentage at Cornell University moved him just outside of the Top 25, with three panellists placing him inside.

Just replicating that performance in 2026-27 should be enough to place him in the official countdown a year from now, but given his rapid progress the last few years, we can probably expect an even better season with the University of Wisconsin.

Owen Protz (+11)

2025: #30 → 2026: #19

You won’t find the same offensive aptitude in Protz as you do in Pickford, but the former Brampton Bulldog plays a very effective shutdown game. After watching Montreal’s playoff performance, voters saw how that skill set could benefit the team, and that led to a rise of 11 positions.

This year we will find out whether his defensive game can hold up in the AHL, or if his lack of footspeed limits his effectiveness versus professional players. He will probably try to keep things simple in his first season as he adjusts, so the new coaching staff in Laval will need to make sure he continues to develop other parts of his game.

Yevgeni Volokhin (+10)

2025: #35 → 2026: #25

Volokhin had the benefit of a few more years in the organization over Cournoyer, so his strong season was enough to propel him to 25th and the title of second-best goalie under the age of 25 in the system. A .948 save percentage in the VHL is hard to ignore, and a .936 mark in the post-season indicates he can maintain that level in the most crucial moments.

In order to hold his position and stave off the climb of Cournoyer, and a couple of other netminders, he will probably need to play more games in the KHL this year and significantly improve on the numbers he posted in four games there in 2025-26.

Alexander Zharovsky (+7)

2025: #14 → 2026: #7

Zharovsky was a second-round pick in 2025, but a player the Canadiens said they had slotted as a first-rounder. Whether that was actually the case or just what a team says about their first selection of a draft, there’s little doubt about his calibre after his 2025-26 season. The KHL may not be the league it once was, but a teenager netting 16 goals and adding 26 assists is impressive in any professional setting, let alone ranking third on the team in scoring.

Seven places is quite a jump when already starting at 14th, though he likely would have been much higher last year if he had actually been drafted around 16th or 17th where Montreal was initially set to select. Zharovsky is looking like a future top-six offensive player, and if he is, the wings of the Habs’ top two lines will be set for the foreseeable future.

Michael Hage (+5)

2025: #9 → 2026: #4

The goal total was the same for Hage from his first year in the NCAA to his second, but improvements were made in every other area. He nearly doubled his assist total from 21 to 39, and was also a +15 after a -9 freshman year. His greatest impression was made on the international stage, leading the 2026 World Junior Championship in points by forming a highly productive duo with Gavin McKenna, who went on to be the first-overall selection in the 2026 draft.

His offensive play suggests he can be a second-liner, but we won’t know how his defensive game holds up until he plays versus professionals. He clearly had no trouble playing effectively versus the top under-20 players in the world, and he has the skating and awareness to be a good defensive player, so there’s no reason to think that will be what prevents him from reaching his potential.

Florian Xhekaj (+5)

2025: #19 → 2026: #14

The five-place rise to 14th for Xhekaj isn’t among the most impressive this year, but it is when you add it to how far he’s already climbed since getting drafted. Not much was expected of him when he was drafted in 2023 even if he was taken early in the fourth round. It seemed like the organization just added him because brother Arber had made Montreal look good by going from undrafted free agent to NHL player. In the years since, Florian has established his own identity, seeing the largest overall rise of the 228 players profiled in this series over the years.

The projection began to shift almost immediately (as you can see in the above table of year-to-year rises) when he scored 34 goals in Brantford after being drafted. Even that performance was improved upon when he became a pro, scoring a rather shocking 24 goals as an AHL rookie. Last year wasn’t as productive, but the caveat is that the team in general took a step back from the previous year. Xhekaj was still one of the top goal-scorers, and had about as many points as his two most common linemates combined.

From a long shot to become a physical fourth-liner three years ago, Xhekaj’s penchant for timely goals in the AHL suggests a higher role is not only possible, but even likely. I felt he should have made the Canadiens last year, and definitely should have been there this season to get accustomed to the NHL before the playoffs arrived. The addition of Chris Kreider makes that unlikely now, but Xhekaj should be at the very top of the list when the Canadiens look to the minor-league affiliate to find someone to fill in for an injured player.

Largest overall rises

All 2026 Rises

With six NHL players graduating from 2025, the default move was to go up in the order, and indeed over half of the players advanced at least one spot. There weren’t many drops as a result, and even fewer large ones, but that means any player who did fall several spots suffered a serious blow to any NHL aspirations.

Arseni Radkov (-10)

2025: #33 → 2026: #43

Radkov’s .918 save percentage in the MHL during his draft year seemed encouraging enough to place him 33rd. At the time, that slotted him third among the goalies in the organization. As we’ve seen, a number of goalies had strong 2025-26 seasons to boost their standing, while Radkov’s move to North America didn’t go as anyone hoped, failing to reach a .900 save percentage with either the Blainville-Boisbriand Armada or Saint John Sea Dogs. In 2026, he is the sixth-ranked goalie, and that with Jakub Dobeš’s graduation.

His poor performance isn’t what you’d expect from the third-round pick, but at least he’s at the opposite end of this year’s spectrum to the player selected immediately before him in 2025: Pickford.

Makar Khanin (-8)

2025: #45 → 2026: #53

Voters gave the amateur scouting department a reprieve a year ago after a regression from Khanin’s draft-year performance. The new group has shown an ability to find diamonds in the rough in Russia’s developmental system, and perhaps it was just a bad year from their latest gem. After nothing of note in his first season in the VHL, playing just 19 games with two different teams, there’s little faith that the Habs pulled off another steal of an undervalued prospect.

Already 21 and still in the VHL, it’s unlikely that there will be a sudden revelation that gives him an NHL projection. He can probably be slotted among the vast majority of late-round picks that never become members of the NHL teams that draft them, and evidence that the Canadiens’ new approach to drafting Russians isn’t as foolproof as it seemed.

Aatos Koivu

2025: #27 → 2026: #31

Koivu finished just outside of the Top 25 last summer, and at the time we said if we had held the vote following the World Junior Summer Showcase he would have maintained a place in the official countdown following his debut at 25th in 2024. Despite a cold start the season, there was still hope that rejoining his Finnish teammates would spark his play as it has done in that summer World Juniors preview, but that never happened at the WJC in Minnesota.

Through three games of the new Liiga season he has produced one goal, which is already a quarter of last season’s offence, so perhaps things will be better for him in 2026-27. It might have to be an incredible year to change the opinion of him as a prospect, however, because he’s now on a downward trend in the project, with doubt about an NHL future.

All 2026 Drops