The Montreal Canadiens have one of the top prospect pipelines in the league, and much of the focus goes to Ivan Demidov from the 2024 NHL Draft. However, many people are heavily focused on Michael Hage as one of the top players emerging from the draft class. Elite Prospects Fantasy Hockey Contributor Victor Nuno recently released an article titled, "Is Michael Hage the steal of the 2024 draft?
Elite Prospects' site EP Rinkside has some great insight into the prospect world, and it should be a must-read subscription for any Canadiens fans who want to keep up with their growing pipeline. They always give Montreal love, including ranking them as the third-best prospect pool in the league during the offseason.
The ranking was before Hage's emergence at Michigan and Demidov's success in the KHL. It'll be interesting to see where the Habs rank next season after those seasons from their top prospects and an abundance of draft capital in the upcoming draft.
The article breaks down Hage's season by the advanced analytics, and uses some prospecting models to try and narrow down what type of player we could be seeing in Montreal in the next few seasons. The models have a differing range, but one predicts him to possibly be the next Jason Robertson.
Canadiens can only sit back and hope that the model comes true. He is tearing up the NCAA this season at over a point per game while playing only around 16 minutes per night. Hage will likely take another year at Michigan to further fine-tune his game, but he should arrive in Montreal ready to take a spot in the top-nine and produce effectively.
If advanced analytics aren't what interests you, Victor also set out to get some opinions on Hage from respected scouting voices around the internet. Mark Dube, who is a regional scout with McKeen's, gave a glowing endorsement of Hage's outlook.
"Hage projects to be a solid second-line NHL center, with potential to be very comfortable as a top-line center," Dube said. "He is in the mold of Nick Suzuki but not as defensively strong. He should be in the realm of 70-80 points at the NHL level and most certainly should join the Habs at some point in the future."
So, maybe Hage will become a valuable point producer like Robertson, as the models suggest. Maybe the eye test of him skating down through NCAA defenses looking like a young Jack Eichel will come true in the NHL. Or maybe he doesn't reach those levels and becomes a solid right-hand third-line center like Charlie Coyle. Regardless, Hage is a name Canadiens fans will be happy to see on the back of their team's jersey soon enough.