Montreal Canadiens: Covid Comes Back to Bite Habs Once Again

The Montreal Canadiens have been through an insane number of injuries this season which hasn’t helped them as they dropped to last place in the NHL standings with a 7-25-5 record on the season.

It is not all injuries fault for their poor play, but it hasn’t helped matters when the team struggled to begin the season and then couldn’t find its footing.

Then, on December 2nd, Brendan Gallagher and Sami Niku entered Covid protocol and it signalled the beginning of a six week battle as an outbreak of Covid took out almost the entire team. At one point, 22 players were on the Covid list and the Canadiens had to stop playing games because they simply could not ice a lineup.

They even played one game, on New Year’s Day in Florida, with just 16 skaters in the lineup. They lost. But with a record of 7-25-5 they probably would have found a way to lose if they could put an extra skater on the ice for the whole game.

Not that they would ever be allowed to have extra skaters, but they were starting to finally inch closer to being an actual healthy roster. For the first time since December 2nd, the team announced yesterday that they had no players on the Covid protocol list.

Well, that lasted exactly one day. The team announced earlier this afternoon that Joel Armia and Cole Caufield have been added to the Covid list and will not be eligible to play tonight’s game against the Dallas Stars.

The Canadiens lost 5-2 last night to the Arizona Coyotes. Not only did they lose the game, but they lost pretty much all dignity they have left at that point. The Coyotes were built to be the worst team in the league and they looked to be in a class above the Canadiens.

Hopefully Caufield and Armia are feeling fine, but they certainly aren’t missing any important games with this team.