The Montreal Canadiens season has not been successful. They have found ways to lose 30 of their 38 games so far which has them sitting in last place in the 32 team NHL standings.
It has been a disappointing, horrible season for the Canadiens. But, technically, it could be worse. I mean, it could still get worse, but it could already have been worse.
What I’m trying to say is the Canadiens had nine games postponed due to arena capacity limits and not having any healthy players left to play because 22 of them were in Covid protocol and the rest only avoided Covid because they were not around the team since they were already out with injuries.
So, instead of having 30 losses right now, the Canadiens could be much closer to 40 already if it wasn’t for postponements and cancellations. The disruptions really just stopped losing streaks in their tracks for the Habs.
The league did announce yesterday that they have scheduled all of the remaining postponed games. For the Canadiens, this means they will be quite busy in February, where there was once an Olympic break scheduled.
Canadiens’ revised schedule pic.twitter.com/GM1jH4Jezv
— Eric Engels (@EricEngels) January 19, 2022
Between February 8th and February 23rd, the Canadiens will now play eight games in 15 days to fill in that Olympic gap. Every one of those games, except for a February 20th trip to Long Island, will be at the Bell Centre in Montreal. Most of the postponed games were scheduled home games that were shut down because the Quebec government would not allow fans in the building.
The Canadiens next home game is now slated for January 27th, a week from today, when the Anaheim Ducks are in town. They also play host to the Edmonton Oilers on January 29th and Columbus Blue Jackets on January 30th.
There is no guarantee they will be able to have fans in attendance at those games, but it seems like they league is hopeful since they didn’t move any of them to later dates.
The revised Canadiens schedule from Feb to April. Heavy home schedule in Feb and then 29 games combined in March and April. pic.twitter.com/QPzYb0KQS5
— Arpon Basu (@ArponBasu) January 19, 2022
The Canadiens are off from January 31st to February 8th for the All-Star break. Their season now ends on April 29th instead of April 26th so there is not much of a delay to the end of the regular season. Habs fans will be happy about that since their misery does not need to drag on any longer than three extra days.