At long last, the Montreal Canadiens' west coast trip is over, and the team got back to town on Wednesday after putting up a 3-1-0 record. Since Wednesday was a travel day, there was no practice or media availability, but the team still made a couple of roster moves.
Late on Wednesday night, the club announced that Joshua Roy and Marc Del Gaizo had been sent back to the Laval Rocket. The move wasn’t unexpected since the Canadiens had recalled the two players as an insurance policy in case more injuries occurred on the road.
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Thankfully, that wasn’t the case, and with the farm team so geographically close to Montreal, players can be recalled quickly when the team is in town. The Habs will play most of their games at home (8) in November, with a couple of away games interspersed (the New Jersey Devils on November 6 and the Columbus Blue Jackets on November 17). They’ll then head on another road trip to end the month on November 26, visiting the Utah Mammoth, the Vegas Golden Knights, and the Colorado Avalanche to wrap up the month.
Right now, the Canadiens have not been plagued by too many injuries. Kaiden Guhle fell to a lower-body injury in the fifth game of the season and is expected to miss between four and six weeks. As for Patrik Laine, he has played only five games so far this season, underwent surgery to repair a core muscle injury, and is expected to miss three to four months.
In other words, the Canadiens are not carrying any extra players on their roster right now, so if other injuries were to occur, they’d have to look to Laval as well; otherwise, nobody’s getting called up. The team currently has three lines working as well as they could be, and the remaining line, formed by Zachary Bolduc, Kirby Dach, and Joe Veleno, is showing signs of improvement, even though they were put together as the leftover players.
Bolduc and Dach have a lot of potential, and Martin St-Louis is likely to be patient with his new line, giving them plenty of opportunities to click, so to speak. Roy had four points in as many games with the Rocket when he was called up, but Laurent Dauphin now has the scoring lead with eight points in as many games, followed by Jared Davidson and Sean Farrel, who have seven and six, respectively.
Laval is currently ninth in the league and third in the North Division with 10 points in eight games. After making a deep playoff run last season, it’s not a bad thing for the Rockets to hold onto their more talented players and see the Canadiens thrive with their current lineup. As the Canadiens were sending Roy and Del Gaizo back, the Rocket was blanking the Leigh Valley Phantoms on the back of a 17-save performance by Jacob Fowler. Laval should soon be able to count on David Reinbach, who has been sidelined for four weeks now with a broken bone in his hand.
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