Canadiens Now Likely To Match NHL Record Set Last Season

With the injuries now mounting on a daily basis for the Montreal Canadiens, it’s looking likely that they’ll match an ominous record they set last season.

The Canadiens are currently clocked at having missed roughly 400 games lost to injury so far this season, and, with 27 games left to play this season, that number could increase drastically.

At the same time last season, the Canadiens were at 400 games lost to injury. The Canadiens eventually ended the 2021-2022 season with a staggering 720 games lost to injury in the NHL, which became a new NHL record.

However, those numbers were exacerbated by the NHL’s Covid protocol, which kept every regular outside of Nick Suzuki away from the team for almost two weeks.

This season, all those games lost are 99% due to on-ice injuries, which makes the accomplishment, for lack of a better word, even more remarkable in the worst possible way.

Every game the Canadiens play from here on out will see at least seven man games added to the total for the foreseeable future with Brendan Gallagher, Jake Evans and Kaiden Guhle expected to be out until March at the earliest, while Carey Price, Paul Byron, Cole Caufield, Juraj Slafkovsky and possibly even Arber Xhekaj all out for the season.

The health of Sean Monahan and Joel Edmundson also weighs heavy on this process, as every game that goes by creates further uncertainty as to their potential return to the Canadiens in the immediate future.

One should knock on wood so that the Canadiens can get some positive luck with injuries moving forward; as forward Nick Suzuki continues to be the team’s iron man since beginning his NHL career in 2019.

However, with the season now firmly lost and only pride on the line, there may be more instances of the Canadiens shutting down injured players for the season to avoid aggravation and jeopardizing their future with the club.

Typically, we see eliminated teams lose an average of 25% of their active roster between the NHL Trade Deadline and the end of March due to lingering injuries that require healing. Teams would rather allow the player to heal immediately to be ready for summer training, rather than delay the inevitable and negatively impact their preparation for next season.

The Montreal Canadiens did the same thing last season with the likes of Jake Allen, who was shut down with a month left into the season; opting that he simply ready himself for the season ahead.

The Montreal Canadiens smashed the previous record of 629 held by the 03-04 Los Angeles Kings by almost 100 games, and look to be on pace to surpass that number yet again this season.