Fantasy Sleepers, Breakouts and Busts From Every NHL Team: Montreal Canadiens

With camps opening around the league and puck drop just weeks away, fantasy draft season is officially underway. It’s been a busy summer of blockbuster trades, marquee signings and roster shakeups still settling into place.

To help you prepare, we’re breaking things down team by team, calling out a sleeper worth stashing and a bust who might not be worth what you’ll pay to draft him. Next up: the Montreal Canadiens.

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Montreal’s rebuild reached a new high point last season, with the Canadiens finishing 48-24-10 for the sixth-best record in the league, a major step forward after an unexpected playoff berth the year before. 

Nick Suzuki had a career year, posting 101 points and captaining the club to its deepest playoff run in years, knocking off Tampa Bay in seven games in the first round and Buffalo in seven in the second before finally being stopped by Carolina in the Eastern Conference Final.

With the Canadiens now viewed as a legitimate threat in the East rather than a rebuilding project, the offseason focus has shifted toward adding complementary pieces that could push Montreal from a promising playoff team into a genuine Stanley Cup contender.

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Rostered in just three percent of Yahoo leagues, a projected 50-point winger playing second-line minutes with Ivan Demidov while entering a contract year almost sounds too good to be true, yet that’s exactly the profile Alex Newhook fits. The 25-year-old, a former top-16 pick back in the 2019 NHL Draft, may finally be rounding into form as more than a mid-30s point player. 

Last season, playing alongside rising star Demidov, Newhook benefited more than ever before an injury cut his year short. He would go on to miss half the season but still finished with 25 points in 42 games, just nine shy of his career high. If Newhook can finally stay healthy, he’ll play top-six minutes and man the second power-play unit, giving him every opportunity to reach the 50-point mark his play last season suggested was possible. 

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If you’re not sold on the breakout just yet, he’s an easy name to grab off the waiver wire once the season gets underway.

Breakout: N/A

Montreal had plenty of players break out in a meaningful way last season, leaving the roster in a strange spot without many obvious breakout candidates beyond maybe Newhook. The closest thing to one would be Ivan Demidov, going roughly 86th overall on average, though his less-established linemates likely cap his upside and justify that price point. 

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Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, Lane Hutson and Juraj Slafkovský all had their breakout seasons a year ago and are being drafted at fair value, while Noah Dobson is also priced appropriately at around 95th overall on average.

After a fairly solid playoff run that carried the Habs all the way to the Eastern Conference Final, it appeared Montreal had found its goaltender of the future. That could still prove true, as the 25-year-old Czech import has posted solid numbers over his two NHL seasons, a career 36-14-7 record with a 2.77 goals-against average and a .904 save percentage. 

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The complication is what’s happening behind him in the depth chart. Montreal cycled through goaltenders for much of last season, and rookie Jacob Fowler earned a call-up and quickly produced strong numbers, going 9-6-2 with a 2.43 goals-against average and a .908 save percentage at just 21 years old. 

There’s a real chance Montreal ends up with a tandem arrangement similar to what Minnesota or Colorado has built, especially if Fowler, one of the most successful junior goaltenders in recent memory, continues forcing the issue. 

Dobes is going as early as 82nd overall on average, and while a tandem scenario is still a reasonably good outcome for him, there’s real downside risk if he struggles and Fowler proves talented enough to take the job outright. That’s not a risk worth taking when more established number-one options like Sergei Bobrovsky, Linus Ullmark and Juuse Saros are available rounds later at a much better price.

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