Montreal Canadiens Prospect Rankings No.20 – Filip Mesar

It’s time to discuss the top 20 Montreal Canadiens prospects, as voted by you, our fantastic community of Habs fans. We get going by analyzing an oft-maligned first-round pick, forward Filip Mesar.

As a reminder, to qualify for our list, Habs prospects must under 24 years old and have fewer than 75 NHL games under their belt.

20. Filip Mesar, Forward, Shoots Right, 21, Laval Rocket (AHL), 5’10”, 184 lb. Picked 26th overall in 2022.

It’s never easy to jump from a professional league to a junior league, and then back to yet another professional league, the exact situation faced by Mesar since the Canadiens drafted him in the first round of the 2022 NHL Entry Draft.

With that in mind, given Mesar’s pedestrian scoring rate in the OHL with the Kitchener Rangers, it’s not shocking that he only managed to produce four goals and 14 assists in 42 games during his rookie campaign with the Laval Rocket.

On top of dealing with the change in quality of competition, Mesar has had to deal with many more variables than most homegrown prospects, including adapting to life on a new continent, with a new team, a new coach, and a bevy of other factors that probably led to an overwhelming situation for the 21-year-old.

Le v’là! 🚨

Un 1er but avec le Rocket pour Owen Beck, sur une superbe passe de Filip Mesar 💪@RocketLaval
📺: RDS2 pic.twitter.com/RCdRpubpFZ

— RDS (@RDSca) October 19, 2024

That being said, it’s fair to suggest Mesar is yet to live up to his draft position, which hangs over his head like hockey’s version the sword of Damocles. If he was not a first-round pick, you could argue that his rookie season in the AHL was somewhat encouraging, but as it stands, most would describe his campaign as underwhelming, to say the least. A lot like his time in the CHL, Mesar offered varying levels of intensity on any given night in the AHL, which inevitably led to a lack of consistency, and a lower degree of trust from the coaching staff.

That’s not to say he didn’t show flashes of brilliance, but the step-up in competition meant that he could no longer exploit the open ice that was offered so freely in junior hockey. He also hesitated to head to the dirty areas of the ice, the cardinal sin for any prospect hoping to one day ascend to the NHL

By the time the playoffs rolled around Mesar was relegated to the press box, spending all but the final game of the postseason as a healthy scratch.

What Went Wrong For Filip Mesar

Mesar started his rookie season on the right foot, earning three points in the opening game of the season against the Providence Bruins. He followed it up with an assist versus Springfield and Syracuse, pushing his early-season totals to five points in four games.

That’s when the injury bug reared its ugly head, keeping Mesar out of action until mid-December, forcing him to miss roughly two months of the schedule. Once he returned, the play was moving very fast, and Mesar was having a hard time keeping up. To close out the season he scored just three goals and nine assists in 37 games,

Several prospects overtook him on the depth chart, including talented winger Sean Farrell, as well as rough-and-tumble forward Jared Davidson, players who were drafted in the fourth and fifth round, respectively. Regardless, Mesar did not have the drive and focus necessary to make up ground once he recovered from his injury. That being said, it’s important to keep in mind that both Farrell and Davidson are a couple of years older, and that Farrell was given an opportunity to play on the first line.

Understanding Filip Mesar The Player

Mesar was playing professional hockey in 2020-21, which explains some of the perceived frustration during his tenure in Kitchener and Laval.

At times, it must have felt like a step backwards, a situation made even more complicated by the fact that he did not have access to many of the creature comforts afforded to him in Slovakia.

We’re conditioned to analyze these young athletes as if they were hockey robots, but I will always have a significant amount of empathy for a younger player who had to cross the pond at just 18 years old.

And yet, if we remove emotion from the equation, there’s no doubt that Mesar finds himself in a precarious situation.

There’s still some runway left in his case, however, there’s also a clear risk that he may end up being left behind by the new crop of talented Montreal Canadiens forwards set to make their professional hockey debuts in the next few seasons.

The Next Step For Filip Mesar

I know this is a big ask, especially since I mentioned it several times, but ideally, we should forget that Mesar was drafted in the first round. It has no real bearing when it comes to his on-ice play, and it puts too much pressure on a player who is already having a difficult time treading water.

If he’s to restore his position among the top Habs prospects, he’ll have to focus on providing value every shift, and that won’t be easy, especially since he has a hard time finding open ice in the AHL.

The good news is that you can teach players how to provide a little more intensity, but Mesar’s innate hockey skills aren’t shared by many, which means it’s much too early to give up on him. When he manages to produce a reasonable shot rate, he immediately improves his scoring rate, the least shocking revelation in the history of hockey analysis.

A season without injuries would go a long way in establishing his true value to the organization, pointing to the 2025-26 season as a critical year for the former Poprad HK SKP forward.

Previously Published 2025 Montreal Canadiens Prospect Articles:

Canadiens Prospect Rankings: Introduction, 2024 Retrospective

Canadiens Prospect Rankings: The Departed And Traded

Canadiens Prospect Rankings: The Honourable Mentions

Do you agree or disagree with the Montreal Canadiens prospect rankings?  Let us know in the comments below!