Montreal Canadiens Prospects Kaiden Guhle, Joshua Roy Invited to Canada’s World Junior Camp

The Montreal Canadiens are quickly looking to the future as their dream run in the 2021 postseason moves further into the rearview mirror and the realities of the 2021-22 season settle in.

The Habs are among the worst teams in the league as we pass the quarter pole of the season and Jeff Gorton was just hired to replace Marc Bergevin who was fired over the weekend.

This has fans believing the Habs could be looking to a rebuild, as Gorton recently took the New York Rangers through a reset of sorts that looks quite promising. The Canadiens could be looking to do something similar in the coming months, and they already have a pretty promising group of prospects.

Two of them were just invited to Canada’s World Junior training camp. Kaiden Guhle was part of the silver medal winning team last season and promises to be a huge part of the gold medal hopefuls blue line once again this year. He looks to be the only returning member of the defence and will likely play a ton of minutes while physically punishing opponents and shutting things down defensively.

Joshua Roy was also invited to the training camp, though he isn’t guaranteed to have a big role like Guhle. There are 21 forwards on the list of invitees and though Roy is having a terrific year in the QMJHL for the Sherbrooke Phoenix, he isn’t guaranteed a spot in the lineup at all. The 18 year old winger leads the QMJHL in scoring with 39 points in 21 games played.

Roy’s speciality is.. well, piling up points, but if Canada has visions of 19 years olds Cole Perfetti, Kent Johnson, Hendrix Lapierre, Xavier Bourgault as well as younger phenoms like Shane Wright or Conor Bedard leading the offence, is there room for Roy?

With the way he is playing in the QMJHL, Team Canada would be quite wise to find a spot for him in the middle six of the forwards as well as a prominent role on the power play where he is extremely dangerous. Roy leads the QMJHL with 17 power play points.

We all know what role Guhle is going to play, but it will be interesting to see where Roy fits. He doesn’t have much time to show off to Canada’s management team as their training camp is only four days long this year. It runs from December 9-12 in Calgary and the roster of 25 players will then be chosen from the 35 in attendance.

We know Guhle will be on that roster, and has a really good chance of being named team captain as one of just three returnees along with Perfetti up front and Dylan Garand in goal.

I though Riley Kidney may have done enough this season with his strong two-way game to earn an invitation and possibly sneak onto the bottom end of the roster. Apparently 32 points in 22 games while playing great defensively and being excellent on face-offs isn’t enough for the Habs second round pick.

Roy’s start caught the eye of Canada though and it will be interesting to watch if he can earn a big role up front with this team. Canada’s first game of the tournament is on December 26th when they face Czech Republic.