Ivan Demidov's Second Season Is the Whole Montreal Forecast
Ivan Demidov's second season will determine if the Canadiens' conference final run was just the beginning or the pinnacle of their success.
Every forecast written about Montreal this summer rests on the same assumption, usually unstated: that Ivan Demidov’s rookie season was a floor rather than a ceiling. Nothing else in the projection survives if that turns out to be wrong.
What year one actually was
Demidov, the No. 5 pick in the 2024 draft, put up 62 points in 82 games (19 goals and 43 assists), then added nine points in 19 playoff games as Montreal went 48-24-10 and reached the Eastern Conference Final. He made the NHL All-Rookie Team and finished second in Calder Trophy voting. He was 20 years old.
Montreal responded by signing him to an eight-year, $73 million extension on July 1, a $9.125 million cap hit running from 2027-28 through 2034-35. It was one of only seven eight-year contracts signed league-wide this summer, and after Sept. 15 the term will no longer exist: the new collective bargaining agreement caps re-signings at seven years and outside signings at six.
The second-season question is not about talent
Nobody in the league is arguing about whether Demidov is good. The forecast risk is narrower and more mechanical: 84 games instead of 82, more attention, and a much harder set of matchups.
A rookie who produces at that rate spends the following season being game-planned. Coaches who saw him for two or three games last year now see him four times if they are in the Atlantic, because the two additional games on the expanded schedule are divisional. Montreal plays 28 games against Florida, Tampa Bay, Buffalo, Ottawa, Toronto and Detroit, and the best of those clubs will have spent the summer deciding who plays against him.
The second thing is workload. Demidov played all 82 and then 19 more. His first professional season in North America ended in late spring, and his second one begins on Sept. 29 in Toronto.
What the market thinks
The futures board is not pricing a leap. Montreal sits between +1700 and +2500 for the Cup, roughly tenth on the odds despite ESPN’s panel ranking the Canadiens fourth. Demidov does not appear near the top of the Hart board, which opens with Connor McDavid at +250, Nathan MacKinnon at +350 and Macklin Celebrini at +640.
That is a reasonable position for a book to hold. Second-year forwards rarely win Harts, and the market has learned to discount conference final runs by young teams. The same gap between rating and price is what individual NHL betting picks on Montreal games will be arguing about from Sept. 29 onward.
The honest prediction
The likeliest outcome is a small step forward that looks like a plateau: production per game roughly level, total points up because there are two more games, and a larger role in situations that do not show up in a point total. Montreal does not need Demidov to score 85 points. It needs him to hold 62 through a harder schedule while Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, Juraj Slafkovsky and Lane Hutson (all signed below $9 million) do the same.
If he does that, the fourth-place ranking is defensible. If the number goes backwards, the +2500 end of Montreal’s price will have been the right side of the bet all along.
Odds and market references describe the situation at the time of writing. You must meet the legal gambling age in your province or territory. See responsible gambling. New to betting on the NHL? Start with our guide to hockey betting.