Earlier this season, St. Louis Blues prospect Justin Carbonneau sat down with the coaching staff of his junior hockey team to review game video.
They weren’t watching clips of Carbonneau playing for the Blainville-Boisbriand Armada, where the 19-year-old forward has spent the past four seasons.
“We showed him clips of St. Louis to show him that if you want to play for Monty — I know details are important for all the NHL coaches, but for him, it’s really important,” Blainville-Boisbriand coach Alexandre Jacques said.
Monty, of course, is Blues coach Jim Montgomery, the coach Carbonneau hopes to be playing for in 2026-27.
The Blues are also hoping that their 2025 first-round pick is with them next season. But it’s a process — one taking place in junior hockey after Carbonneau chose to return there rather than play at Boston College.
The 6-foot-1, 200-pound forward has posted 25 goals in 27 games, which is tied for No. 2 in the QMJHL. However, there’s a lot of room to grow in other areas, as the coaches showed him in that video.
“In (Blues) training camp, that’s what the coaches wanted from him — not to be the last one coming back in the defensive zone,” Jacques said. “So we showed him how the guys were tracking back. It’s not bad intention. It’s just habits that he’s had success (with). He didn’t realize that sometimes it was costing him defensively.”
Carbonneau’s defensive issues are, in part, why he was not selected to Team Canada’s roster for World Juniors, which opened play Friday. Canada has plenty of skill and scoring on its top forward lines, so for him to make the team, it would’ve had to be as a third- or fourth-liner, a role that requires responsibility across the ice.
The World Juniors roster was announced Dec. 8, but Carbonneau learned about his omission a day earlier from his agent, Olivier Fortier of Wasserman Hockey, while they were driving to watch the Blues play in Montreal.
“I was not happy with it,” Carbonneau told The Athletic. “If you’re a competitive guy like me, you always want to make the team and play for your country, right? So I think it was normal for me not to be happy. But I do understand that the team is going to be incredible.
“It would be so easy for me to compare myself to this guy or that guy or say it was a bad choice, but there’s a different option than complaining, and that’s using it as motivation to improve myself and prove to people that that news fueled me.
“I could say, ‘Oh, I score goals. I hit. Everything is perfect.’ But I don’t think it is. I just turned 19 years old, and no one’s perfect at 19, but I have a lot to work on as a player and also as a leader. My D game needs to be more consistent, and that’s what’s going to make me play in the NHL sooner than later.”
So, yes, the snub was disappointing. But with it, there’s a growing receptiveness that could bode well for his future.
This is Jacques’ first season as Armada’s coach after serving as an assistant at Concordia University in Montreal last season. He was in the midst of accepting the job as Carbonneau was deciding whether to return or head to college.
Jacques scouted the QMJHL with Concordia but didn’t know much about Carbonneau, so he went back and watched some video. He saw a player who was hungry to score and powerful, with explosive skating and a devastating one-timer.
“But he had that passion and that drive, too,” Jacques said. “It’s one thing to have the skill, but it’s another thing to have that desire. So you combine those things, and that’s probably why St. Louis made him their first pick.”
Then Jacques met Carbonneau and came away thinking, “He’s a really confident person. He’s got that aura around him.”
The production matched. Carbonneau put up 77 goals and 148 points in 130 games over the past two seasons. He was also drafted No. 19, reinforcing the idea that that’s how coaches wanted him to play at that level.
“My role was to score goals and create offense because we were a young team,” Carbonneau said. “My game got defined as, ‘You’re going to score goals for us.’ Which is good, but when you want to win a championship and you want to go to the Memorial Cup, you can’t win just by scoring.”
Justin Carbonneau has 25 goals in 27 games this season. (Courtesy of Blainville-Boisbriand)
Those are the habits that Jacques knew would be hard to break.
“The way he sees that he can help the team is by scoring goals and doing things offensively,” Jacques said. “He feels, as he’s told us, that if he gets forgotten in an area and his teammates are able to spot him, he’s going to be able to put it in. And he’s right. If it happens, chances are the puck is going to be in the net.
“But it’s a challenge to explain to him that there’s no way you can wait on the opposite side of the puck because (opponents) are so good that your teammates are going to lose that puck. They need your support. So away from the puck, he needs to improve.”
Another area is Carbonneau’s defensive positioning on face-off plays. He’s always expecting to win the face-off, so he goes to a spot on the ice to be a shooter instead of helping win the draw.
“He still has that instinct of, ‘If I have my feet in movement once we have the puck, I’ll be gone,’ ” Jacques said. “But if he does that in the NHL, it’s not going to work. He’s realizing that right now, and he’s working hard. Is it perfect? No, but we’re seeing progress.”
The Blues see it.
Assistant general manager Tim Taylor and vice president of hockey operations Peter Chiarelli went to Quebec to watch Carbonneau play Dec. 5, and he had a two-goal night with a short-handed goal and a power-play goal in a 3-2 victory.
On the short-handed goal, especially, the work that went into it impressed them.
Who can stop Justin Carbonneau? 😱
Another ridiculous goal, despite the opponent’s pressure! @ArmadaBLB @StLouisBlues | #stlblues pic.twitter.com/hvBp8IA6SG
— QMJHL (@QMJHL) December 6, 2025
As Jacques described, Carbonneau “had an instinct of where that puck was going to be and was able to be at the right place to intercept that pass.”
Then, as Taylor added, “He split the D and fended off another guy chasing him, and (the shot was) bar down.”
“It was a typical Justin Carbonneau goal,” Jacques said.
When asked about it, Carbonneau chuckled.
“Yeah, scoring goals on the PK is going to be my new thing,” he said.
The power-play goal was a perfect illustration of Carbonneau’s one-timer.
A rocket by Justin Carbonneau, for his 2nd goal of the game! 🚀 @ArmadaBLB@StLouisBlues | #stlblues pic.twitter.com/zgNtHsvQKB
— QMJHL (@QMJHL) December 6, 2025
“It was a one-timer that (Washington Capitals captain Alexander) Ovechkin would have shot in his first couple of years in the league: a rocket off his stick, top shelf,” Taylor said. “He played an unbelievable game. He was the (prototypical) power forward, hitting everyone, skating.”
Carbonneau said it felt good to produce in front of the Blues staff.
“My mindset was, ‘No one is going to get past you. Keep your shifts short, stay in the structure, hustle on the puck, and the goals are going to come,’ ” he said. “It’s starting with my D game, and then the offense will come.
“Scoring goals is not my priority right now. I don’t want to say the word, so I’ll say, ‘Fudge the goals and take care of the details.’ When (the Blues) were here, it was a good example of why my mindset needs to keep improving.”
The next day, Carbonneau went to Ottawa to watch the Blues play the Senators. He spoke with Alexander Steen, who will replace Doug Armstrong as GM next summer, and said it was eye-opening to see the team’s inner workings.
“There’s the GM, assistant GM, PR people,” Carbonneau said. “You see how much of a big business the Blues are — how much people care about them and how they’re willing to do whatever it takes to help the team win.
“It was like, ‘OK, this is where I want to be.’ ”
Carbonneau was riding high, but he learned less than 24 hours later about the World Juniors snub. He’d met with Jacques, telling the coach he felt he had let down the organization and others.
“We told him, ‘You’re allowed to be disappointed for yourself, but you didn’t let anybody down,’ ” Jacques said. “Could he have been there? Yes, of course. But they decided, ‘Here’s our first line, second line …’ and for the third and fourth lines, they probably went with more specific roles.
“He would have to be playing on the first or second lines to be part of the lineup. But that doesn’t mean he’s not going to have a longer, better career than some of those guys.”
Carbonneau is using his World Juniors snub as fuel for his future. (Courtesy of Blainville-Boisbriand)
It’s a cliché, but Carbonneau agrees it could be a blessing in disguise.
“Yeah, I think like that,” he said. “My mentality is to just work as hard as I can in the next few years, so that I don’t experience that feeling ever again.”
Playing with his peers on an international stage would’ve been beneficial for Carbonneau, but the Blues are happy with how he’s responded.
“Our next focus will be to keep him doing the right things,” Taylor said. “We’re trying to get him to have some pro attributes, and that’s what the focus is going to be for the rest of the year for him. We feel he’s playing heavy and moving his feet — details that are going to win hockey games for him (in junior) and hopefully make him a better player when he comes to training camp for us next year.
“This might be disappointing for him, not going, but at the end of the day, we’re very happy with his progress.”
Carbonneau called it “a perfect world I’m in,” in which both the Blues and Armada have his back and are holding him accountable.
“Just be open to being better,” he said. “I want to be a leader, and if your leader doesn’t stop on every puck and isn’t consistent in his 200-foot game, it doesn’t bring a positive impact on the team. It’s something I realized lately, that I’m more happy if a teammate taps my pad because I blocked a shot than if I scored a goal. Yes, you want to be a better player, but you want to do it for the guy next to you.
“The thing I’m most proud of is the player I’m going to be at the end of the year, and I appreciate my coaches and teammates keeping me grounded with things that I have to work on. If I’m consistent in my details, not only will I have a chance to help (Armada) win this year, but I’ll also have a chance to play pro next year with the Blues.”