The Montreal Canadiens have gone through a tremendous number of injuries already this season.
The team started the year without stars Carey Price and Shea Weber as well as Paul Byron and Joel Edmundson and none of the four have played a game yet this season.
As they approach the halfway point of a disappointing season, there really isn’t a single player that has avoided injury or illness all year long. The Canadiens once had 22 players on the Covid list and pretty much every roster player plus a pile of their call ups were on that Covid list at one time or another.
They have been getting closer to a healthy lineup recently, but it seems like they can’t go a whole game without someone else being hurt. While the organization was busy off the ice hiring Jeff Gorton as the team’s new Vice President of Hockey Operations and Kent Hughes as the team’s new General Manager, their doctors and therapists are probably the busiest people in the entire city.
Today was no different as an injury report stated that four more players were dealing with new issues.
Josh Anderson and Jeff Petry will be game-time decisions as the Habs face the Colorado Avalanche in Denver this evening. Nothing was noted about why they are game-time decisions so we don’t know what injuries they are dealing with but it is something that could keep them out of the lineup.
Jonathan Drouin will be out of the lineup as he was placed on injured reserve with an upper body injury. That means he has to miss either 10 games or 24 days, whichever happens first.
Samuel Montembeault, who has faced 104 shots in the Habs past two games, has suffered a minor injury and is listed as day-to-day. The team has called up Michael McNiven to serve as the team’s backup for tonight’s contest. Cayden Primeau will get the start.