The Montreal Canadiens have been dealing with a bit of a logjam of forwards throughout the season. It made it difficult for young players to crack the lineup, though Juraj Slafkovksy was able to force his way onto the team.
Suddenly, the team is dealing with a rash of injuries to their forwards, and may not have enough to play this evening’s game.
Jonathan Drouin has been out of the lineup for ten games with an upper body injury. Mike Hoffman was just placed on injured reserve with a lower body injury, joining Paul Byron who has been out for the entire season so far.
It looks like Brendan Gallagher is the fourth veteran winger to be injured as he will miss tonight’s game as well. The team announced earlier today that he was going to be out of the lineup due to a lower body injury. That’s a pretty vague injury report, but it really does leave the team with a lot of openings on the wings, since they all play the same position.
The team is quite healthy on defence, and still have Kirby Dach playing the wing because all of their centres are healthy. However, their wingers seem to be getting bit by the injury bug more than anyone else.
As a result, the team may need to dress seven defencemen for this evening’s contest in Calgary against the Flames. They are carrying two extra defenders, but Chris Wideman took a few line rushes with the fourth line at practice this morning in case the team needs him.
The team also mentioned that Gallagher was still being evaluated for his injury, so there is no timeline for a return yet, or any idea of how severe the injury really is at this point.
With a player like Gallagher, you know he would not sit out unless he really could not play. Hopefully that doesn’t mean he will be out for a long period of time.
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