Montreal Canadiens Shuffle Lines; Place Brendan Gallagher On Injured Reserve

The Montreal Canadiens have shuffled their lines in the wake of losing Brendan Gallagher to a concussion. The scrappy winger was placed on injured reserve this morning.

The Montreal Canadiens had some new looking lines at practice this morning as they prepare to face the Tampa Bay Lightning tonight at the Bell Centre. It will be their first game back at home after playing seven straight road games surrounding their short Christmas break.

The Canadiens started that road trip extremely well, winning three of four games in western Canada over the Vancouver Canucks, Calgary Flames and Winnipeg Jets while falling 4-3 to the Edmonton Oilers. They struggled finishing the trip after Christmas with three consecutive losses to the Carolina Hurricanes, Florida Panthers and Lightning.

The Habs had built some momentum leading into their short break, but three straight losses was a demoralizing way to finish the calendar year. What could be even worse, was losing Brendan Gallagher to a concussion in their final game of 2019.

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Gallagher was hit by Hurricanes center Jordan Steal. As he fell, he hit his head on Ben Chiarot’s knee as he skated past. He hit his head hard and stayed down on the ice until they stopped play. Marc Bergevin announced this morning that he will be placed on injured reserve with his concussion.

That means Gallagher will be out of the lineup for at least a week. Not only will he miss tonight’s game, but he will not be eligible to return when the Habs take on the Pittsburgh Penguins, Winnipeg Jets or Detroit Red Wings in the next six days.

With Gallagher out, the Canadiens obviously needed to shuffle their lines. At practice, they went with these combinations:

Yes, that is Nick Cousins you see on the first line in Gallagher’s spot. Going from Gallagher to Cousins is like having your Lexus in the shop and they give you a Dodge Dart as a loaner.

There really isn’t a great way to replace to Gallagher. Especially when you factor in the injuries to Jonathan Drouin, Joel Armia and Paul Byron. That is four of the team’s top six wingers out of the lineup at the same time. Perhaps Cousins can play a shutdown role with Danault and Tatar, and leave the offense to the second and third lines?

The trio of Max Domi, Nick Suzuki and Artturi Lehkonen have been playing extremely well lately and will need to find the scoresheet regularly if Montreal is going to have any success this week. Jesperi Kotkaniemi playing with Ryan Poehling and Jordan Weal could add a bit of scoring from the bottom six as well. Poehling had a goal taken away that should have counted against Carolina and Kotkaniemi scored in each of the two games leading up to the Carolina loss.

The fourth line features the Habs two last call-ups Lukas Vejdemo and Dale Weise flanking Nate Thompson. I wouldn’t expect a lot of minutes from this trio as the Habs face a tough divisional opponent and need to get points after dropping four of their last five games.