Montreal Canadiens: Mike Hoffman Could Be Out Another Month

Montreal Canadiens training camp is underway with a handful of key veterans not in attendance at the moment.

Shea Weber is out for the year with various injuries. Joel Edmundson is out but is listed as day to day and should be back very soon. The same could be said for Brendan Gallagher who has been attending to family matters and should be joining the team today.

The same timeline won’t be in effect for one of the team’s newest free agent signings.

Mike Hoffman has been absent from camp after failing his medical with a knee injury. The veteran goal scoring winger signed a three-year contract with the Habs that has a cap hit of $4.5 million. It was hoped he would step right on to the top power play unit and turn an anemic man advantage into one with a little more punch.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t sound like that will happen anytime soon.

Canadiens head coach Dominique Ducharme met with the media yesterday and gave updates on his injured players. While there was good news for Edmundson and Gallagher, that wasn’t the case for Hoffman.

Ducharme said he expected Hoffman to be out at least two more weeks, and he was planning to be missing the sniper for four more weeks. With a slightly later start to the regular season, that still means Hoffman will miss a handful of regular season games.

The Canadiens first regular season contest is on October 13th which is exactly three weeks after training camp began. That suggests Hoffman won’t miss a lot of time but it does mean he will be trying to find chemistry on the fly during games that actually matter.

It would have been great if a newcomer like Hoffman could have played two or three preseason games to try and find his footing with a new team, but his injury just isn’t going to allow for that possibility.