How to Build a Championship Roster Around the Most Exciting Offence in the NHL
What Is a Stack and Why Should You Care?
Before we get into the Canadiens, it is worth taking a moment to understand the strategy that has quietly built more fantasy hockey championships than any single draft pick, waiver wire move, or trade deadline acquisition in the history of the format.
Stacking is straightforward in concept and devastatingly effective in execution. You identify a team with a high-powered, interconnected offence. You draft as many of their top producers as your roster can absorb. The logic is sound: when a team scores, multiple players on that team benefit simultaneously. Points, assists, power play production, and plus-minus all accumulate across a roster built around the same offensive machine. When Nick Suzuki sets up Cole Caufield, who finds Juraj Slafkovsky, all three players contribute to your box score on the same shift.
The risk is equally real. If your stack hits a cold stretch, a team-wide slump becomes a lineup-wide slump. This is not a passive strategy. It rewards conviction, disciplined research, and the willingness to commit fully to a single offensive system.
It also rewards picking the right team. In 2026-27, the right team is the Montréal Canadiens.
Why Montréal?
The Montréal Canadiens are no longer a rebuilding franchise. They are a genuine contender, and the offensive production they generated in 2025-26 makes them the most compelling stack target heading into next season.
They finished with the sixth-best record in the NHL, reached the Eastern Conference Final for the first time since their 2021 Stanley Cup Final run, and did so behind one of the most productive offensive cores the franchise has assembled in decades. Nick Suzuki became the first Canadiens player to record 100 points in a season in 40 years. Cole Caufield scored 51 goals, becoming the first Canadien to reach that plateau since Stephane Richer in 1989-90. Lane Hutson posted 78 points in his second NHL season as a defenceman. And Juraj Slafkovsky and Ivan Demidov continued their development into two of the most dangerous young forwards in the Eastern Conference.
This is an offence built around elite skill, elite connectivity, and a coaching system under Martin St. Louis that maximises the production of every player involved. It is exactly what a stack is designed to exploit.
The Players: Who to Target and Why
Nick Suzuki — C — 27 G, 72 A, 99 PTS
The Montréal stack begins here. Suzuki is the offensive engine of this franchise — a playmaker of the highest order whose 2025-26 season represented a landmark moment in franchise history. He became the first Canadien since the mid-1980s to crack the 100-point threshold, finishing with 27 goals and 72 assists for 99 points in the regular season.
The 72 assists are the number that matters most for fantasy managers. That figure means that every time a Canadiens player scores, Suzuki is heavily likely to have been involved in the play. He finished third in the entire NHL in assists, led all centres in primary assists, and was a Hart Trophy finalist. At 26 years old and in the prime of his career, there is no indication that his production is anything other than sustainable. He is the non-negotiable anchor of this stack and one of the most reliable fantasy assets in the entire league.
Fantasy Outlook: 95 to 105 points. Top-five centre in the NHL. The first name on your stack list.
Cole Caufield — RW — 51 G, 37 A, 88 PTS
Fifty-one goals. Cole Caufield is no longer a promising scorer with elite potential — he is an elite scorer, full stop. He became the first Canadien to reach the 50-goal plateau since 1990, led the NHL in shots off high-danger passes, and developed one of the most productive two-player connections in the league alongside Suzuki.
Caufield is a pure finisher whose instincts in the offensive zone are among the sharpest in the game. He does not require elite setups to score, but when Suzuki is distributing to him from the top of the offensive zone, the results are consistent and prolific. At 25 years old he is entering the heart of his prime, and the structure around him in Montréal is not changing. He is the most reliable goal-scorer in this stack and one of the safest fantasy investments in the format.
Fantasy Outlook: 45 to 55 goals, 85 to 95 points. Top-five right winger in fantasy hockey and a legitimate first-round selection.
Lane Hutson — LD — 12 G, 66 A, 78 PTS
Lane Hutson won the Calder Trophy in 2024-25 and then posted an even stronger second season in 2025-26 — a progression that speaks to a defenceman still ascending toward his ceiling. In his second year he posted 12 goals and 66 assists for 78 points across all 82 games, averaging nearly 24 minutes of ice time per night and finishing third on the team in overall scoring. He then elevated his game further in the playoffs, leading all Canadiens skaters with 16 points in 19 games as Montréal reached the Eastern Conference Final.
Hutson controls Montréal’s power play from the blue line with a creativity and precision that makes the entire unit more dangerous. Advanced metrics confirm what the eye test shows: the Canadiens are meaningfully better in every possession category when he is on the ice. He is signed to an eight-year, $70.8 million extension through 2033-34, giving dynasty managers a decade of certainty at a position that is extraordinarily difficult to find at this level.
Fantasy Outlook: 15 to 20 goals, 80 to 90 points. Top-three fantasy defenceman in the NHL and a foundational dynasty asset.
Juraj Slafkovsky — LW — 30 G, 43 A, 73 PTS
Juraj Slafkovsky’s 2025-26 season was the breakthrough that Canadiens management always believed was coming. The first overall pick from 2022 posted 30 goals and 43 assists for 73 points — a statement season from a player who combines elite physical tools with the offensive instincts of a natural scorer. At 6-foot-4 and 230 pounds he is almost impossible to move off the puck, and his work alongside Suzuki and Caufield on Montréal’s top line produced one of the most productive forward trios in the Eastern Conference.
His ceiling in 2026-27 is a 35 to 40 goal season. His floor, given the system and linemates around him, is a 70-point player on a team projected to score at a high rate again. Both outcomes represent excellent fantasy value at a draft cost that has not yet fully accounted for what he has become.
Fantasy Outlook: 33 to 40 goals, 75 to 85 points. A top-fifteen winger in fantasy hockey with continued room to grow.
Ivan Demidov — RW — 19 G, 43 A, 62 PTS
Demidov is the dynasty centrepiece of this stack. The former fifth overall pick from 2024 finished his rookie season with 19 goals and 43 assists for 62 points — numbers that would be exceptional on any roster, let alone one where Caufield and Slafkovsky are already occupying the top forward positions. He operates on a second line that would function as a first line on the majority of NHL teams, and he possesses the offensive intelligence and skill set to produce at the top of the league as his game matures.
At 20 years old in his sophomore season, Demidov is projecting toward an 80-plus point campaign in a full, healthy year. He has signed an eight-year, $9.125 million per season extension with Montréal, locking him in as a cornerstone piece of this franchise for the foreseeable future. The dynasty value is significant and the cost to acquire him in most formats has not yet caught up to the production he is clearly capable of generating.
Fantasy Outlook: 25 to 30 goals, 70 to 80 points heading into 2026-27. A top-twenty forward now and a potential top-ten player within two seasons.
The Stack in Practice: How to Execute
The Montréal stack is most effective when approached as a deliberate draft strategy rather than a series of opportunistic picks. The recommended approach is as follows.
Draft Caufield in the first round. His 51-goal season and elite goal-scoring profile make him a legitimate top-ten overall selection in most formats. Take Suzuki in the first or early second round depending on your league’s scoring structure. Hutson belongs in the second round and should be valued as a forward given his points-per-game production. Slafkovsky is a third-round target who projects to significantly outperform that draft slot. Demidov is the late-round selection that completes the stack and provides the long-term upside that separates competitive rosters from championship ones.
In dynasty formats, the case for this stack is even more compelling. All five players are 26 years old or younger. All are signed to multi-year contracts with the same franchise. All are part of an offensive system that has demonstrated the ability to generate elite production across multiple roster spots simultaneously. The Montréal Canadiens are built to be a perennial contender under St. Louis, and the core of this stack will be at the centre of that contention for years to come.
The Risk
No stack analysis is complete without an honest accounting of the downside. The structural vulnerability of any stack strategy is concentration risk. If Montréal experiences a prolonged offensive slump — if Suzuki misses time with injury, if Caufield goes through an extended cold stretch, if the power play underperforms — the impact is felt across multiple roster spots simultaneously rather than isolated to a single player.
The mitigation is straightforward. Build three or four pieces of the Montréal stack and complement them with players from different teams who provide consistent floor production and insulate your roster against a team-wide slump. The stack should be the foundation of your lineup, not the entirety of it.
That said, the risk of a prolonged Montréal offensive slump in 2026-27 is lower than for most teams. The talent level is too high, the system is too well-constructed, and the age of the core is too ideal for extended underperformance to be a likely outcome. This offence is built for sustained production, and fantasy managers who commit to it fully are well-positioned to benefit.
Volume 2 of The Fantasy Stack Series is coming. Statistics sourced from NHL.com, Wikipedia, McKeen’s Hockey, TSN, Sportsnet, PuckPedia, and CBS Sports, July 2026.
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