Montreal Canadiens: NHL Cancels Winter Classic and All-Star Game
Montreal Canadiens players will have to wait a while before they hit the ice again. The league just cancelled two big events on its calendar.
The Montreal Canadiens have played ten games since the middle of March. They returned to play in the postseason as the 24th ranked team in the league and upset the heavily favoured Pittsburgh Penguins in the play-in series. They then fell to the Philadelphia Flyers in six games in round one.
Normally, their season would be just getting underway. We would be overreacting to every game -no, period – because there just wouldn’t be much to go on.
However, we are sitting here approaching the end of October and we likely won’t see the Canadiens in action for a few more months.
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The league announced yesterday that they have cancelled two big events on the NHL calendar. The Winter Classic that was supposed to take place between the Minnesota Wild and St. Louis Blues at Target Field has been called off. As has the All-Star Weekend that was supposed to take place in Florida in late January.
This doesn’t have a direct impact on the Canadiens, expect that we won’t see Shea Weber attempt to defend his crown at the NHL’s Hardest Shot competition. The veteran Habs defender rifled a puck 106.5 miles per hour at last year’s event and would be a good bet to represent the Canadiens again next season, if the All-Star festivities were taking place.
In good news, the league also said they are still aiming to begin next season at the same time – in early January. New Year’s Day has been their target date to begin next season, but it seems less likely with the cancellation of the Winter Classic.
Returning to action outdoors at Target Field would have been a pretty cool way to kick off the season. Of course, with the uncertainty around fans being allowed in attendance, it probably doesn’t make sense to have a game in front of 40,000 or so empty seats.
When you hear the league is cancelling things, it sounds like doom and gloom. However, it was pretty much inevitable that the Winter Classic wouldn’t work without fans and it doesn’t make sense to host an All-Star Game in a shortened, or condensed season.
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So, we can still hold out hope that the Canadiens training camp will start in the middle of December and their regular season will begin in early January.