Montreal Canadiens: Predicting the Final Few Cuts at Training Camp

The Montreal Canadiens began training camp just over two weeks ago with 70 players on their list of invitees.

They still have six days until their first regular season game, but that number has been drastically reduced in the past few days.

Last night, it was brought down by four more when Michael Pezzetta, Rafael Harvey-Pinard, Gabriel Bourque and Gianni Fairbrother were sent down to the Laval Rocket. Pezzetta will need to clear waiver first, but the other three were sent directly to Laval.

So where does that leave the Canadiens? Well, they are likely going to start the season with a 23 man roster. Most teams carry three extra players and many of those teams choose to have two extra forwards on the roster and one extra defender. So, the usual roster is made up of 14 forwards, seven defencemen and two goaltenders.

With their most recent cuts, the Canadiens still have 17 forwards in camp, though Paul Byron and Mike Hoffman are injured.

That leaves Josh Anderson, Joel Armia, Alex Belzile, Cole Caufield, Jonathan Drouin, Christian Dvorak, Jake Evans, Brendan Gallagher, Artturi Lehkonen, Cedric Paquette, Mathieu Perreault, Ryan Poehling, Nick Suzuki, Tyler Toffoli and Jesse Ylonen. That is 15 forwards battling for 14 spots, meaning only one of those names is likely to be sent down before the regular season begins.

The most likely players to be sent down are Belzile and Ylönen. It’s really just a matter of time before both of them end up in the AHL. My guess is Ylonen goes down right away and then Belzile joins him when Hoffman returns from injury in a couple weeks.

On defence, there are technically 11 names still on the roster but Shea Weber is one of them and he won’t be playing this season. The other 10: Ben Chiarot, Joel Edmundson, Kaiden Guhle, Brett Kulak, Sami Niku, Mattias Norlinder, Jeff Petry, Alexander Romanov, David Savard and Chris Wideman are vying for seven spots.

It sounds like Edmundson’s injury is going to cause him to miss a few weeks, so the other nine are in contention for seven spots. This problem could solve itself if Norlinder and Niku remain injured to begin the season. If not, I’d still expect Norlinder to go back to Sweden for one final year. The final cut should be Guhle. He is the only one that does not require waivers and he is eventually going to find his way back to the WHL this season after playing just 12 games last year.

It doesn’t make sense to expose Niku or Wideman to waivers just to keep Guhle around for a handful of games. Once Edmundson comes back, then we could see Niku on waivers with the intention of sending him to the Laval Rocket.

In goal, Carey Price, Jake Allen, Samuel Montembeault and Cayden Primeau are still on the roster, but the jobs go to Price and Allen if healthy. Of course, Price is not healthy so someone else will start they year on the NHL roster and that will surely be Montembeault. He can serve as Allen’s backup for the first few games while Primeau takes over the starter’s role for the Laval Rocket.

At the end of training camp, I think we will see Ylonen, Norlinder, Guhle and Primeau cut from the Canadiens camp. They still have one more preseason game to try and prove themselves, but the writing is pretty much on the wall for most of these guys.