Montreal Canadiens: Why Calling Up Cole Caufield Isn’t As Simple As It Seems

Montreal Canadiens star prospect Cole Caufield has been sitting on the NHL team’s taxi squad for nearly a week.

He has shown that he is capable of scoring goals at every level below the NHL. He did this by piling up 30 goals in 31 games for the Wisconsin Badgers in college hockey this season. He proved it again by scoring three times in just two AHL games last week.

With the Canadiens mightily struggling for some offence, why haven’t they tried Caufield in the lineup yet?

Well, the NHL has a bit of an odd rule where teams are only allowed to call up four players from the minor league team, or taxi squad this year, after the trade deadline. It is supposed to avoid a situation where a team basically ices a minor league roster late in the season knowing they won’t make the playoffs and also hoping to get a better draft pick.

For that reason, to avoid tanking, the rule does have some merit. However, it probably could be slightly higher than four, since there is usually 20 or so games left in the regular season after the trade deadline.

Also, don’t fans love seeing their young players get a shot down the stretch in a lost year anyway?

Of these four call ups that are allowed, the Canadiens have already used three. They put Alexander Romanov and Paul Byron on the taxi squad on the day of the trade deadline and immediately called them back up afterwards. This helped save a little bit of cap space to free up enough room to add Jon Merrill and Erik Gustafsson before the deadline passed.

However, the Canadiens lost Victor Mete on waivers that day, and weren’t eligible to use either Merrill or Gustafsson as they had to quarantine for a week before joining the team.

So, they had to call up Xavier Ouellet to play April 12th against the Toronto Maple Leafs. That means, shortly after the deadline passed, the Habs had called up Romanov, Byron and Ouellet. That is three of the four recalls they are allowed to make between deadline day and the end of the regular season.

That means, the Canadiens can only call up one more player for the rest of the season.

Now, there are a few exceptions. If a team doesn’t have enough healthy players, they can use an “emergency recall” which is what they did for Cayden Primeau. With Carey Price injured, Primeau will remain on the NHL roster as an emergency recall and not count as a regular call up.

However, if the Canadiens were to insert Caufield into the lineup, they wouldn’t be allowed to recall Jake Evans for the rest of the season, unless injuries pile up. They also couldn’t recall Michael Frolik or anyone else from the taxi squad for that matter.

With Joel Armia rejoining the team after suffering from Covid and Ben Chiarot healing up from his broken hand, and the new defenders joining, the Canadiens do have a full roster. They just can’t call up Caufield, unless they want to ensure Evans doesn’t play again this season.

What is Staal continues to struggle? Then they would need Evans, but if they turn to him now, they can’t call up Caufield until injuries pile up.

It’s a bit of an odd rule, and the Canadiens more or less painted themselves in a corner to save one more days pay to Romanov and Byron. Of course, they also put Evans on the taxi squad the day after the trade deadline, and now he is stuck there.