Montreal Canadiens: Goaltending Situation Leaves Rockets and Lions Facing Difficult Decisions

When the Montreal Canadiens recalled both Cayden Primeau and Michael McNiven, this left their AHL affiliate Laval Rockets with no more goaltenders. However, calling up Kevin Poulin from Trois-Rivieres doesn’t exactly fix anything either.

The Canadiens are without Carey Price (knee) until at least the new year, if not for the season. Jake Allen has been placed on COVID protocol along with three quarters of the club, which makes Samuel Montembeault the de-facto number one goaltender for the Habs leading into Tuesday’s matchup against Tampa Bay. If there’s a game.

Cringe.

Before going into full detail about the said goaltending situation, here’s the full injury list as of today:

Jeff Petry – COVID – January 6th

Chris Wideman – COVID – January 6th

Ben Chiarot – COVID – December 30th

Jake Allen – COVID – December 30th

Mike Hoffman – COVID – December 28th

Laurent Dauphin – COVID – December 28th

Artturi Lehkonen – COVID – December 28th

Sami Niku – COVID – December 28th

Brendan Gallagher – COVID – December 28th

Joel Armia – Undisclosed – Indefinite

Mathieu Perreault – Eye + Lower Body – Indefinite (Possible Season Ending)

Christian Dvorak – Lower Body – Indefinite

Tyler Toffoli – Hand Surgery – 8-10 weeks

Xavier Ouellet – Undisclosed – Indefinite

Josh Anderson – Upper Body – 8 weeks

Josh Brook – Knee – 4 weeks

Joel Teasdale – Knee – Indefinite

Joel Edmundson – Back + COVID – Indefinite

Paul Byron – Hip – Day-To-Day

Carey Price – Knee – Indefinite

Shea Weber – Ankle – Out For Season

Back to the goalies.

So Montembeault and Primeau will be in office while Michael McNiven will serve as an emergency backup through the reinstated Taxi Squad program.

Kevin Poulin has indeed been called up to Laval, more out of cautiousness since the team doesn’t play until January 5th. That being said however, the Lions play 4 games before Laval’s next game. You would think, ok, not a big deal, let them play and bring up their backup, right? Hold your horses Jimbo, Lions backup Philippe Desrosiers is a member of the Winnipeg Jets organization. The Manitoba Moose can easily call him up any day now which would then leave Carmine-Anthony Pagliarulo as their lone goaltender. As for Poulin, he’s under an AHL contract so the team pretty much had to call him up regardless.

Pagliarulo can’t be called up to Laval to backup Poulin because he’s under a Senior AAA contract and is on loan to the Lions. So the only way he can be called up is by either signing an AHL contract or an ECHL contract with a loan to Laval.

Jake Allen can’t be the quick fix because he’s on protocol until December 30th, therefore preventing McNiven to go back to Laval and have Poulin between the pipes for Trois-Rivieres’ December 28th and 29th games.

The only way out is for the Lions to get someone on loan from one of the senior circuits in Quebec. Which would make sense considering they are playing at home the next two games.

Confused? No worries. Every team in the NHL is juggling the same kind of situation in some way or another.