Montreal Canadiens Prospect Countdown: #25 Jacob Olofsson

Montreal Canadiens general manager has compiled a long list of prospects. We are counting down the top 30.

Montreal Canadiens general manager Marc Bergevin has been building through the draft for the past three years. It has resulted in the Habs having one of the deepest group of prospects in the league.

So, we have been counting down the Canadiens Top 30 prospects.

This started on November 1 with the 30th spot going to Jack Gorniak. The 29th spot went to Jacob LeGuerrier, the 28th place was taken by Otto Leskinen, 27th went to Rafael Harvey-Pinard and 26th was Jack Smith.

According to our team of writers at A Winning Habit, the 25th best prospect in the Canadiens system is Jacob Olofsson. There was a fairly wide range of rankings for Olofsson, with Scott Cowan ranking him 21st and Teddy Elliott having him marked as the 31st best prospect in the Habs system. Sebastian High had him ranked 24th and I put Olofsson 22nd on my ballot.

The reason for that is simply that I don’t see enough offensive upside in Olofsson’s game to rank him any higher. Most of the players I have ahead of Olofsson I could see becoming either top four defensemen or top nine forwards. With his limited offence, I can’t see Olofsson ever being more than a fourth line player at the NHL level.

Also, I don’t know that he will be a centre either. He has been moved to left wing for his Swedish team this season.

Olofsson is playing for Skelleftea in SHL this season and he has just one goal and one assist in 13 games this season. Last season, also in Skelleftea, Olofsson scored two goals and nine points in 24 games.

The 20 year old was a second round pick in 2018. He still has age on his side, but it would be nice to see a little more offence from him soon. He has played on big stages for his country recently, including the World Juniors and Under-18s. At both events, he was a trusted, shutdown, defensive centre, scoring a total of three goals and three assists in 14 games at a pair of Under-18 tournaments and being held scoreless in five games at the World Juniors.

Olofsson has all the intangibles that management types love. He is big at 6’2″ and close to 200 pounds, he plays terrific defensively, possesses leadership qualities and by all accounts is a great teammate and coachable player.

However, the hardest thing to teach a player, no matter how coachable they are, is offence. It is much easier to turn a highly skilled player into a two way threat than it is to take a great defensive player and turn them into a consistent offensive threat as well.

If the Habs can get some offence out of Olofsson in a few years, he could turn into a fantastic third line centre. However, it appears he is trending closer to being the next Jacob de la Rose and not the next Phillip Danault.

That doesn’t mean he won’t play in the NHL in the future. It just means his offensive production predicts to be extremely low when he does.