Canadiens Injuries Sustaining Tight Roster With Added NHL Rule

The Montreal Canadiens”s injury count has been historically high this season, but it’s also offering them significant flexibility.

The Canadiens currently have nine players either on Injured Reserve (IR) or Long-term Injured Reserve (LTIR) at the moment.

That number is problematic in its own right, but the Canadiens have another obstacle when it comes to their roster building to consider: there’s now a cap on regular call-ups.

New Age Outlaws

As of the NHL Trade Deadline, teams can exceed the 23-man roster limit, but can only recall four players from their farm team until the end of the year.

That number is static, which means that, once those recalls are made, you don’t get them back if the re-called player is sent back down to the AHL.

In the Canadiens’ case, they already used two of those call-up slots when they “papered” Rafaël Harvey-Pinard and Jesse Ylönen to the Laval Rocket last Friday.

That means that, between now and the end of the season, the Canadiens can only proceed to two regular recalls from their minor league team.

Although that may seem unfair, given the Canadiens’ roster situation, there is one exception to the rule; an exception the Canadiens have utilized before.

Montreal Canadiens Workaround

Alex Belzile, Harvey-Pinard, Ylönen, and Rem Pitlick were all recalled at some point this season under the pretext of an emergency situation.

This means that a club must have less than 12 healthy forwards or six healthy defencemen in order to be able to ice their roster.

In that event, the club can make an emergency recall, as they have several times this season, bypassing the NHL’s re-call limitation until the end of the season.

Here’s the ruling according to section 13.12 of the NHL’s CBA,

“Emergency conditions shall be established when the playing strength of the Loaning Club, by reason of incapacitating injury or illness or by League suspension to its Players is reduced below the level of two (2) goalkeepers, six (6) defensemen and twelve (12) forwards. Proof of the existence of the emergency conditions including the incapacity shall be furnished to the Commissioner of the League upon request made by him.”

The Canadiens already showed us they’d be willing to take advantage of this loophole moving forward, as they emergency re-called Frédérick Allard from the Laval Rocket on Sunday for the Canadiens’ game against the Vegas Golden Knights.

Due to Justin Barron and Kaiden Guhle being ruled out of the game due to upper-body injuries, the Canadiens only had five healthy defencemen. They were thus put in an emergency situation.

That allowed them to re-call Allard without sacrificing one of the two remaining recall options.

It, unfortunately, wouldn’t be possible to see all these youngsters at work without these untimely injuries. It’s given them a viable audition to gain traction within the organization’s hierarchy.

With the way this season has gone, players like Ylönen and Harvey-Pinard, who finished Sunday night’s game on the top line, deserve some time in the spotlight.

The good news? There may be more players on the way, with injured forward like Brendan Gallagher, Kirby Dach and Jake Evans still a ways away from playing again.