Montreal Canadiens: Alexander Romanov Recall Gives Habs Zero Flexibility
Montreal Canadiens defenceman Alexander Romanov has used up two of the Habs four post trade deadline call ups, without ever really being sent down.
In some questionable roster juggling, the Canadiens now find themselves in a position where they can not recall anyone else from the minors or taxi squad unless they don’t have enough healthy players to ice a full lineup.
The NHL has an anti-tanking rule that only allows teams to call up four players after the trade deadline. The Habs chose to use three of them just hours after the trade deadline.
Since then, they’ve only recalled players on an “emergency basis.” With injuries piling up at forward, they’ve been in an emergency situation for the past few games. This has allowed Jake Evans, Cole Caufield and Michael Frolik to play games over the past week. Once forwards return from injury, these players are going to need to be sent back down.
Tomas Tatar and Paul Byron missed last night’s game with injury but it sounds like they are day to day. When they are ready to come back into the lineup, two of Caufield, Evans and Frolik will have to be sent down.
If I were to guess, that would mean bad news for Evans and Frolik while Caufield would stay on the big club for the rest of the season.
The problem with that is the Canadiens would then have just 12 forwards to use for the rest of the season, but carry eight healthy defencemen and scratch two of them every night.
The Canadiens have lots of depth, but they simply aren’t able to use it because of the corner they’ve backed themselves into with all of the call ups made on trade deadline day.
Also, running right up to the salary cap, was the reason they needed to send Romanov down Monday to make room for Caufield on the roster. Of course, had they put Jonathan Drouin on long term injured reserve two days earlier, cap space would not have been a problem at all.
Next. A close look at the Habs upcoming UFAs. dark
We don’t know why that couldn’t happen a couple days ago, but we know that the Habs have no flexibility up front for their final eight games of the season. Expect Frolik and then Evans to be sent to the taxi squad when Byron and Tatar get back and then expect to see the same 12 forwards for the rest of the season.