The Montreal Canadiens had to battle through a ridiculous three game road trip through the southern United States over the holidays.
Not only did the last place team in the Eastern Conference have to play against probably the three best teams in the Eastern Conference, they were forced to do it with a severely shorthanded lineup.
The Canadiens took on the Tampa Bay Lightning, Carolina Hurricanes and Florida Panthers, wrapping up the three game trip on New Year’s Day. That final game was played with just 11 forwards and five defencemen dressed because the team was decimated by injuries and a lengthy list of players being on the Covid protocol.
That list grew yet again as two more players were placed on the Covid list today. Cam Hillis and Michael Pezzetta were added to the ineligible to participate list and that makes it just about everybody on the entire team. They join Brandon Baddock, Paul Byron, Laurent Dauphin, Jake Evans, Rafael Harvey-Pinard, Mike Hoffman, Arturri Lehkonen, Tyler Toffoli and Jesse Ylonen as well as Louis Belpedio, Ben Chiarot, Joel Edmundson, Gianni Fairbrother, Jeff Petry, Alexander Romanov, David Savard, Chris Wideman, Jake Allen, Cayden Primeau and Samuel Montembeault.
Based on the timing of those entering the protocol, the Canadiens will likely have to dress Michael McNiven and Kevin Poulin in goal for their game on January 12th in Boston against the Bruins.
That is a total of 22 players currently on the Covid list, although some of them, including Lehkonen, Dauphin and Hoffman have been on the list for well over two weeks so they should be exiting the protocol very soon.
The Canadiens currently have activities shutdown and won’t be back at the Bell Centre until Friday. I’m guessing a handful of players will be able to test out of the protocol at that point, but it is odd that those three mentioned above haven’t already.