The Montreal Canadiens have dealt with an incredible number of injuries this season.
It isn’t the only reason they sit at the bottom of the NHL standings, but it doesn’t help when you have so many players injured that the team starts to look more like an AHL lineup than an NHL roster.
That was before the Covid wave went through the Canadiens locker room and added 22 skaters to the Covid protocol list.
The organization released an injury update today, and for the first time in about a month or maybe six weeks, it actually included some good news. It wasn’t all good, as we found out Carey Price is pretty much starting from scratch in his rehab from knee surgery, but there was some actual good news in the injury update.
First of all, it was confirmed that Josh Anderson would be back for today’s game and he played alongside Nick Suzuki and Mike Hoffman on the team’s top line.
For the first time since Artturi Lehkonen was added to the Covid list on December 18th, the team announced there was no one in Covid protocol anymore. That made it a day short of a full month with someone on the list, including a short time when 22 players were ineligible to participate in team activities.
It was also announced that Tyler Toffoli and Paul Byron will rejoin the team this week, which is much earlier than we expected to see Toffoli back in the lineup. Also, Brendan Gallagher is progressing well and will be back in 1-2 weeks from today.
It is already too late for the Canadiens to go on a playoff chase, but it would be nice to see an actual full NHL lineup compete on a nightly basis. It appears we will soon get to witness that once again.
At least if these injury updates continue to be positive in the coming days.