Montreal Canadiens focused on moving forward as injury bug hits for another season
Montreal Canadiens head coach Martin St. Louis isn’t dwelling on the injuries to his lineup despite the nightmare he dealt with last season.
The Canadiens led the league in man-games lost with 751, according to mangameslost.com. This season they’re off to a rough start with second-line centre Kirby Dach already out for the season with ACL and MCL tears in his right knee and key defenceman Kaiden Guhle day-to-day with an upper-body injury.
St. Louis says he has confidence that his team’s depth can withstand the absences.
“We move forward, we don’t stop what we’re doing because we lost a player,” said St. Louis on Thursday at the Canadiens’ practice facility.
“I know it’s hard to continue when you lose players as much as we did last year, but the rest of the league doesn’t care if we’re injured, the league moves forward.”
“I think we have more depth, more experience than last year, so I’m not worried.”
The Canadiens’ announcement Thursday that Guhle was day-to-day was relatively good news considering the injury to Dach, but he could still be out of the lineup for several games.
Johnathan Kovacevic, Guhle’s defence partner in all three games this season, said “hopefully he’ll be back in a couple weeks.”
“It sucks. It sucks for me. Getting to play with him, being close to him as a friend, that’s just something that you
never want to see, I’m wishing him a speedy recovery,” said Kovacevic. “Unfortunately, it’s part of the game with it just being a fast, physical game, things happen, so just unlucky.”
Guhle, who did not practise on Thursday, left Tuesday’s 5-2 loss to the Minnesota Wild late in the second period and did not return. When or how the injury occurred was not clear.
The 21-year-old from Edmonton has one assist and is plus-four through three games this season.
Last season, Guhle had the fourth-highest ice-time on the team at an average of 20 minutes 31 seconds as a rookie, but also missed time due to a knee injury and a high ankle sprain. The 2020 first-round draft pick finished with four goals and 14 assists in 44 games.
“We had a lot of trouble with injuries in the last couple years,” said goaltender Samuel Montembeault. “We were hoping this year would be better but we’re three games in and we already have two big injuries.
“I said it last year, I hope there isn’t still a fan who’s casting spells on us. It’s unlucky, but it’s a contact sport.”
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