NHL Draft profiles: Masse QMJHL's 'top professional prospect'

This is the 17th story in a series of player profiles from the NHL's Scouting Combine in Buffalo, N.Y., focusing on potential second-round picks for the Penguins at 44th and 46th overall.

LAS VEGAS -- Winger Maxim Masse took home some hardware at the year-end QMJHL awards in each of his two seasons with the Chicoutimi Sagueneens.

In his rookie 2022-23 season, he won the QMJHL Offensive Rookie of the Year, the overall QMJHL Rookie of the Year, and the CHL Rookie of the Year (beating out the top rookies from the OHL and WHL) after racking up 29 goals and 33 assists in 65 games to finish No. 2 on Chicoutimi in scoring. This season Masse took home the Mike Bossy Trophy, awarded annually to the QMJHL's "top professional prospect." He led Chicoutimi and ranked No. 13 in the league in scoring with 36 goals and 39 assists in 67 games.

Masse, 18, is a 6-foot-2, 193-pound sniper of a right wing from Rimouski, Quebec. He's too young to remember Sidney Crosby's time in Rimouski -- he was born in 2006, when Crosby was already in the NHL -- but he remembers growing up looking up to Alexis Lafreniere when the eventual No. 1 overall pick was lighting up the league from 2017-20.

"I'm a two-way forward," Masse said of his own game. "I'm dangerous off the rush, just using my shot and creating plays for my teammates. And I think I love being in front of the net for rebound, and I think that's where I'm scoring most of my goals."

These four goals are all from a single game in January:

At the end of the season Masse went on to play for Canada at the U18 World Junior championship, finishing eighth on the team in scoring with two goals and three assists in seven game on the road to a gold medal.

So what's the catch?

Masse could just stand to improve his overall game away from the offense. His defensive game isn't particularly strong, and the QMJHL is notoriously very offense-first as it is. He's also not the strongest of skaters.

Looking at the rest of the summer, Masse wants to continue to get stronger, in particular adding more power to his legs. And he hopes to improve his overall skating. He mentioned that he underwent some testing to assess his skating, and that now he has "everything in my hands" to improve it.

Most rankings have Masse projected to hear his name called anywhere in the second round: 34th (FC Hockey), 39th (Bob McKenzie), 45th (Daily Faceoff), 54th (Elite Prospects) and 56th (Flo Hockey). He met with 29 teams at the combine, and the Penguins were one of them.

Masse has the makings of a potential middle-six winger in the NHL, as long as he can improve his skating and work on his overall game. He'll stay in junior for another two seasons due to the NHL-CHL transfer agreement, so he's got plenty of time to work on that power in his stride while improving on the other side of the puck.