In an X post yesterday, BarDown asked which of the Montreal Canadiens, Columbus Blue Jackets, or San Jose Sharks had the best 25-and-under core. In less than 24 hours, the post received nearly 200 replies, with not everyone picking the same team. Let’s take a closer look at those three teams’ young core.
San Jose
BarDown identified the six following players as part of the Sharks’ young core: Macklin Celebrini, Will Smith, William Eklund, Michael Misa, Sam Dickinson, and Yaroslav Askarov. One thing jumps out at you right away: the presence of a generational talent in Macklin Celebrini. Some stopped their analysis there, saying that settled the debate; San Jose was the best because of his presence. That to me is a bit shortsighted; a great individual does not make a great team. If that were the case, Conor McDavid would have won multiple Stanley Cups already.
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I remember one year, when Russia was still allowed to play in the Olympics. They were hosting the games in Sochi, and they lost to Finland in the quarter-finals despite having what could only be described as an All-Star team with Alexander Ovechkin, Evgeny Malkin, Andrei Markov, Alexander Radulov, Pavel Datsyuk, Ilya Kovalchuk, Sergei Bobrovsky, and Semyon Varlamov.
It doesn’t come down to just having the best players; it comes down to having great players who complement each other well. The six players identified as the Sharks’ young core by BarDown have a total of 334 NHL games under their belt and are far from done developing.
It's worth noting that it includes three centers, and if they all do pan out, that will give them tremendous depth at center, which is generally a must to build a perennial contender. Right now, however, at 22, Eklund is the oldest of the group, and the most points he has gotten in a season so far are 58 points. Celebrini had 63 in his only season so far.
The one defenseman they’ve included in the Sharks’ core has yet to play a single game in the NHL. Granted, he was great in the juniors, scoring 91 points in 55 games. At 6-foot-3 and 210 pounds, he certainly has the shape of an NHLer, but will he adapt well to the top league? It’s a bit too early to say.
As for the goaltender, there’s a lot of hype around Askarov, and when he was available for a trade, many teams came knocking, but so far, he only has five wins in 16 NHL contests with a 3.01 goals-against average and a .899 save percentage. His stats are better in the AHL, but there’s a significant gap between the difficulty level in the AHL and the NHL, as the Cayden Primeau experiment showed in Montreal recently.
Columbus
The six players identified as the Jackets’ young core are Adam Fantilli, Cole Silinger, Kiril Marchenko, Dimitri Voronkov, Cayden Lindstrom, and Kent Johnson. These are all forwards. There are no defenseman and no goaltender.
This group has 854 games of NHL experience, making them much more seasoned than the Sharks’ core. Columbus seems to have all of its chips on their forward group, and experience tells us that overlooking the other positions is not a recipe for success. The Edmonton Oilers, with their numerous first-round pick, spent years going all in on forwards and eventually realized they needed more than that to win. The other extreme isn’t better, though; the Canadiens also failed to put all their chips on goaltending with Carey Price and invest heavily in their blueline while neglecting the offense.
For a team that is so invested in the attack, it’s interesting to see that they’ve only got 526 points in those 854 games of NHL experience. Marchenko had their most productive season with 74 points. As things stand, Voronkov and Silinger are third-line players, and I’m far from convinced they both have top-six potential.
If these youngsters cannot take over Sean Monahan and Boone Jenner’s roles sooner rather than later, this is not a very convincing core if you ask me. Monahan is only 30 years old, but he has a well-documented injury history. Last year, he could only skate in 54 games. The last time he played 82 games was in 2016-17. As for Jenner, he’s 32 and has never reached the 50-point mark, and yet, he plays on the Jackets’ top six rather than some of their young talent.
This group has more experience than the Sharks’, but despite being all about the attack, they fall short of firepower and real top-six talent. If I had to choose between the two, San Jose would get my vote, even with their inexperience.
Montreal
Like San Jose, Montreal boasts a more diverse core than Columbus, featuring players like Ivan Demidov, Kirby Dach, Juraj Slafkovsky, Cole Caufield, Lane Hutson, and Nick Suzuki. This group is by far the most experienced, with 1,297 NHL games under their belt, but an argument could be made that Dach shouldn’t be in the group, as he hasn’t yet proven himself worthy.
The main weakness here is the lack of depth at center; the Canadiens need to find a second-line center before they can even think about depth at that position. The upcoming season will be a big one for Dach, who’s playing the last year of his contract.
The presence of Lane Hutson on the blue line is a massive plus for the Canadiens; they are the only one of the three teams with a proven points producer on the blueline. He might have only played one season, but Hutson improved as the year went on. Proof that even though the teams started knowing him more, they couldn’t find a way to keep him in check, the elusive blueliner just kept finding ways to keep going.
The Canadiens also boast a pure sniper in their group in Caufield, even though he’s yet to hit the 40-goal mark. I firmly believe that he’ll get there this upcoming season. He would have done it last season had he not lost his favourite power play spot to Laine. The experience was beneficial, however, and contributed to making him a more well-rounded player.
Montreal also has a power forward in the making in Slafkovsky. He’s yet to find the consistency to be a fully fledged power forward, but he knows what he has to do to get there, and it appears to be coming.
Overall, this six-player group has put up 896 points, showing great offensive potential. While the lack of a goaltender can somewhat hurt their nomination as best young core, that’s easily solved by replacing Dach with Jacob Fowler. The netminder has yet to play an NHL game and, therefore, is even less proven than Askarov, but he still would have deserved to be included in that group. Even Kaiden Guhle and Noah Dobson would have belonged in the group before Dach.
In my book, Montreal is the winner here for now, at least. Perhaps the Sharks’ group will mature very nicely as it picks up more experience, but as things stand, the Canadiens have the best young core.
Photo credit: Jerome Miron-Imagn Images
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