QMJHL 2024-25 Season Preview: The year of the first-time draft-eligible skater
By nature, the CHL experiences a lot of volatility.
With teams being restricted to a set number of overagers and having, barring exceptions, a short five-year window in which to draft and develop talent before they age out, top teams rarely stay at the top for long. With a CHL-NCAA pipeline on the horizon, this will only continue, and the QMJHL won't be immune to any of these factors.
The Gilles-Courteau Trophy-winning team, the powerhouse Drummondville Voltigeurs, will likely struggle to maintain their stronghold after losing their three best defencemen in Maveric Lamoureux (Utah), Vsevolod Komarov (Buffalo Sabres), and Mikaël Diotte (New Jersey Devils). That leaves the title up for grabs.
The question of the scoring title race, however, is a lot less nebulous: The speedy, undersized, undrafted winger Antonin Verreault led the league in points by a margin of nine with 107 tallies in 68 games in 2023-24. With his runner-up, Justin Gill (New York Islanders), moving on to play in the AHL, Verreault has a great opportunity to earn back-to-back scoring titles with the Rouyn-Noranda Huskies, with only Mathieu Cataford (Vegas Golden Knights) and a couple of potential breakout candidates to nip at his heels.
In terms of the race for the Guy-Lafleur trophy, awarded to the QMJHL’s leading goal-scoring, the newly-drafted Justin Poirier (Carolina Hurricanes) won it comfortably last year with 51 goals in 68 games for the Baie-Comeau Drakkar and, although he’s losing his first-line centre, he is only going to get better at putting the puck in the back of the net.
On the draft-eligible side, the 2025 QMJHL class might be the strongest it has been in a decade. Headlining the race is 6-foot-2 centre Caleb Desnoyers of the Moncton Wildcats, who just finished winning three gold medals in 10 months with Team Canada.
After him, Émile Guité, the Offensive Rookie of the Year in the ‘Q, is likely to be a mid-to-late first-rounder. Alex Huang, his teammate with the Chicoutimi Saguenéens, is also likely to be the first QMJHL blue-liner off the board in the 2025 NHL Draft. With a bunch of solid talent following closely, such as Justin Carbonneau, Bill Zonnon, and Philippe Veilleux, the 2025 NHL Draft is shaping up to be the Year of the ‘Q.
As usual, our Stock Watch series will help you keep a close eye on the league’s top teams and players throughout the season, but while we wait for the 2024-25 campaign to play out, here’s a preview of what’s to come in the QMJHL.