Montreal Canadiens: Will Soon Have to Choose Between Cole Caufield and Alexander Romanov
The Montreal Canadiens finally beat the Calgary Flames on Monday night to greatly enhance their playoff chances.
They are now four points up on the Flames and have played one less game than the western team. A loss on Monday would have been three in a row against the Flames and really put them on the Habs heels. But a Habs win takes a lot of pressure off, at least for now.
With nine games left, the Habs only really need to go 4-4-1 to comfortably stay ahead of the Flames. The Vancouver Canucks have not been put to bed yet either, but their schedule is ridiculous over the next three weeks after a lengthy Covid pause.
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So, nothing is guaranteed yet, but the Habs have a really good chance of qualifying for the playoffs. Their last game was also the debut of Cole Caufield, who played quite well in his first NHL game. It was good to see Caufield looking comfortable at the NHL level, but it came at the cost of Alexander Romanov.
The Canadiens have painted themselves into a collective bargaining agreement corner. They picked up Eric Staal, Jon Merrill and Erik Gustafsson ahead of the trade deadline, inching them very close to the salary cap.
They also are only allowed to call up four players that are on the taxi squad, or in the minors, as the trade deadline passes. To save cap space, they had Romanov as well as Paul Byron on the taxi squad, and needed to call them up minutes after it passed. Since they had lost Victor Mete on waivers earlier that day, and couldn’t have Merrill or Gustafsson join the team without quarantining, they also needed to call up Xavier Ouellet that day as well.
That means they could only call up one more player between April 12th and the end of the regular season on May 12th. They had 18 games in 31 days and made sure it was nearly impossible to call up Jake Evans or Cole Caufield.
Well, they did find a loophole to get Evans and Caufield on the roster, but that was because it was an “emergency situation.” Essentially, the Habs didn’t have 12 healthy forwards so they were allowed to call up those two young forwards to fill the gap.
But they didn’t have the cap space to do it so they had to send Romanov down to the taxi squad to make it all work.
Now, when Jonathan Drouin and Paul Byron return to the lineup, which should be very soon, Evans and Caufield need to be sent down because of their emergency status.
With the Habs only allowed one more call up between now and the end of the regular season, they will have to choose whether to use it on Caufield or Romanov. They just don’t have the call ups available to use them both going forward. We could even see both of them stuck on the taxi squad together for a while before the team decides.
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One thing is sure, Cole Caufield and Alexander Romanov won’t play in the same game again this regular season and Marc Bergevin’s call ups on trade deadline day are to blame.