The Calder Trophy won’t go into the hands of a Montreal Canadiens player this year, but the team gave many rookies valuable lessons on the ice in 2022-23.
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In fact, ahead of Thursday’s National Hockey League (NHL) games, no fewer than eight Bleu Blanc Rouge players ranked in the top 50 top scorers on the course among freshman skaters.
Despite being out for several weeks with an injury at the end of December, defender Kaiden Guhle leads his club in this column with his 17 points and is 20th in the league. Another guard, Jordan Harris, is 26th among rookies with 15 points, just ahead of teammate Rafaël Harvey-Pinard, who has eight goals and five assists for 13 points in just 24 games.
Then there are Arber Xhekaj (31st), Johnathan Kovacevic (34th) and Justin Barron (35th), three other men playing on the blue line who scored 13, 12 and 11 points in turn. Juraj Slafkovsky, first pick in recent amateur draft, holds Season 38; He had four goals and six assists in 39 games before his season was ruined by a lower body injury in mid-January. Jesse Ylonen is ahead of the Slovakian in 37th place with 11 points, including four goals, in 27 duels.
The Canadian’s omnipresence in the Seattle Kraken’s ranking of top scorers of the season, dominated by Matty Beniers (48 points), is the complete opposite of the hierarchy of the NHL’s most prolific players. The top-ranked team representative remains Nick Suzuki, 94th with 51 points in 68 games.