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While the Habs didn’t draft a goaltender last month, they didn’t really need to as they have one of the deepest pools of players at that position league-wide.  That’s a good place to start in our new-format prospect rankings.

We’re going to try something a little different this year.  Rather than do five-player segments, we’re going to go position by position and then do a full 1-49 ranking at the end.

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, 2026
2) The player must have no greater than 50 games of NHL experience (including regular season and playoffs)
3) The player cannot be signed to an AHL contract

Goaltenders

1) Jacob Fowler, Laval (AHL)
Drafted 69th overall in 2023.

This one shouldn’t come as much surprise.  Fowler played his first professional season in 2025-26 and lived up to expectations.  He impressed with Laval while being the strong-side platoon option with Kaapo Kahkonen and did well enough to earn a couple of promotions to Montreal as a stabilizer.

The first came midseason when both Jakub Dobes and Samuel Montembeault were struggling.  He fared well early, then started to fade before being sent back down.  Stint number two when Montembeault played even worse saw him play a bit more consistently, albeit a bit more sporadically as well.

One of the big decisions management has to make is what to do with him for the upcoming season.  If Dobes is the true 50-game (or so) starter, does it make more sense for him to at least spend part of the year in Laval where he can get a heavier workload?  I tend to lean yes to that question, and if management does as well, that’s why Montembeault is still around, to give Fowler a chance to have that opportunity.  But Fowler has been considered Montreal’s goalie of the future for a couple of years now and hasn’t done anything to lose that distinction.

2) Yevgeni Volokhin (Khimik, VHL)
Drafted 144th overall in 2023.

I’m admittedly higher on him than most are but he might very well be the hidden gem of this prospect pool.  I wouldn’t put the odds of this happening as very high but there is a chance that Volokhin winds up being the best goalie in Montreal’s system.

But for that to happen, Volokhin is going to need to play at the KHL level regularly moving forward.  He was nothing short of dominant last season in the VHL where he was goalie of the year and posted a .948 save percentage with nine shutouts in 40 games.  He’s more than ready to move up.

The problem is that his KHL team, Spartak, can’t help itself from chasing the splashy veteran.  Last season was Alexandar Georgiev and this year, it’s Ivan Fedotov, which likely pushes Volokhin back to the number three role and back to the VHL level.  Ideally, they find a loan for him to go somewhere where he can play regularly, not unlike 2023-24 when he was with HK Sochi (and thrown to the proverbial wolves).  He wasn’t ready then but he is now.  And if he is going to live up to his full potential, Volokhin needs to be tested at Russia’s top level moving forward.

3) Alexis Cournoyer (Wisconsin, NCAA)
Drafted 145th overall in 2025.

Has he ever had an odd trajectory or what?  After being undrafted in his first year of eligibility, it took him another half-season to crack the QMJHL.  But he was arguably the top goalie in the league from there, resulting in the Habs taking a later-round dart throw on him.  That was an outcome he didn’t even think was going to happen as he had already agreed to go to another team’s development camp.

Cournoyer made the jump to college hockey last season and was quite impressive, quickly taking over the top job at Cornell while making the ECAC First All-Star Team.  He faltered a little bit as the season went on and he lost to Denver in the opening round of the tournament but all told, it was a solid freshman year, especially for someone who hasn’t had a lot of exposure to higher-level action.

I was a little surprised to see him enter the transfer portal to go to Wisconsin.  The good news is that the Badgers don’t have another goalie who’s starter-worthy so Cournoyer should get a chance to get tested in a tougher conference.  If he fares well again, he’ll be moving up the overall prospect rankings a year from now.

4) Emmett Croteau (Dartmouth, NCAA)
Drafted 162nd overall in 2022.

If you follow college sports at all, you know that the transfer portal is an absolute mess.  But Croteau is an example of why it was put there in the first place before it became a form of free agency.  Mired as a backup at Clarkson in his freshman year, he transferred to Dartmouth and has seen his stock improve since then.

He had a decent showing in 2024-25 and then last season, he put up above-average numbers as a starter, ranking fifth among qualifying netminders in GAA and 12th in SV%.  Not elite numbers for sure, but enough to the point where Croteau is believed to have at least considered coming out of school a year early.

He has one season of eligibility remaining and then it will be decision time for both sides.  Do the Habs want to sign him?  And does Croteau want to sign with Montreal or test free agency if there’s a better path to playing time?  Subsequently, if there’s uncertainty, do the Canadiens look to peddle his rights in a trade?  I’m not overly bullish about Croteau having NHL upside but the fact he’s now a possible trade asset moves him up a bit in the pecking order.

5) Quentin Miller (Western Michigan, NCAA)
Drafted 128th overall in 2023.

Things were looking up for Miller in the first half of the season.  He had just made the jump to college hockey and was the starting goalie for a perennial powerhouse in Denver.  After being waived out of the QMJHL the year before thanks to injury, he was turning his fortunes around.

And then he got hurt again.  And his fortunes went in the opposite direction.  Upon returning, he had lost the number one role and never got a chance to reclaim it as the Pioneers went all the way to win the Frozen Four tournament.  He entered the transfer portal soon after to join WMU.

The good news is that he’s staying in the NCHC and with a pair of true freshmen being their other goalies, Miller should be the starter again.  Having missed big chunks of two years now, playing time is needed more than anything.  He’s going to be on a much weaker team, however, so he has his work cut out for him.  Still, for someone who wasn’t on the radar at all not that long ago with how poorly things were going, he has done well to turn things around.  He needs a big year if he wants to start proving he’s worthy of being signed.

6) Arseni Radkov (Val-d’Or, QMJHL)
Drafted 82nd overall in 2025.

This was a dart throw that didn’t work out in year one.  Radkov made the jump to the QMJHL and it didn’t go well.  He started out the season in Blainville-Boisbriand and had a mediocre showing on a good team.  He was then moved at the trade deadline to Saint John and had a poorer performance on a bad team.  He played 40 games (and reps matter even more for goalies) but that’s about all that went right.

Radkov then reclassified his college entry year to 2027-28 and will stay in junior for one more season, but once again with a new team as he was dealt to Val-d’Or this spring.  The reclassification helps his value to the Habs as it should allow them to hold his rights longer, potentially as late as 2031.

That means there is a lot of developmental runway left to work with and as we’ve seen with goalies, a lot can change in a year.  But Radkov has a long way to go to be on an NHL radar.

7) Mikus Vecvanags (Victoria, BCHL)
Drafted 134th overall in 2024.

After a rough showing to start last season in the QMJHL, Vecvanags was waived out of the league and didn’t catch on anywhere else in the CHL.  That resulted in him ultimately having to drop a level where he caught on with Victoria.  The highlight of his time with them was a 78-save performance in a playoff victory but beyond that, his performance was not close to the level expected of an NHL-drafted prospect.

Like Radkov, Vecvanags isn’t starting his college career until 2027-28, giving Montreal a longer time to hold his rights in the hopes that he can turn things around.  As things stand, I’m not expecting that to happen.