Canadiens Game Day: Game vs. Oilers postponed because of COVID
Game Day #GameDay
The Canadiens game scheduled for Monday night against the Edmonton Oilers at the Bell Centre has been postponed after Jesperi Kotkaniemi and Joel Armia were put on the NHL’s COVID Protocol Related Absences list on Monday afternoon. Both Canadiens players took part in Monday’s morning skate at the Bell Sports Complex in Brossard.
“The National Hockey League announced today that, as a result of two Montreal Canadiens Players entering the NHL’s COVID Protocols earlier today, the team’s game tonight against the Edmonton Oilers will be postponed,” the NHL said in a statement less than an hour before the 7 p.m. game was scheduled to start. “The decision was made by the league’s, NHLPA’s and club’s medical groups. The league will provide a further update tomorrow.”
Monday’s game was the first of three this week scheduled between the Canadiens and Oilers at the Bell Centre. The other games are slated for Wednesday and Friday.
The Canadiens announced late Monday night that they have cancelled a practice that was scheduled for Tuesday morning. Players will report to the Bell Sports Complex in the morning as usual for COVID-19 testing, but apart from that the facility will be closed. The Canadiens will have no media availability on Tuesday.
If Monday’s game had been played, the Canadiens also would have been without Tyler Toffoli, their leading goal-scorer. Head coach Dominique Ducharme announced Monday morning that Toffoli would miss all three scheduled games against the Oilers after suffering a lower-body injury late in the third period of a 3-2 overtime loss to the Vancouver Canucks last Friday night at the Bell Centre. Toffoli missed Saturday night’s game against the Canucks, which the Canadiens won 5-4 in a shootout.
“Tyler won’t be available for the series against the Oilers,” Ducharme said. “He’ll be re-evaluated, but he should be able to return in the days following the games vs. Edmonton. He got hurt near the end of the first game against Vancouver. We didn’t think he’d be available for the overtime, but he told me that he was good to play. He had some tests after the game. Obviously, he wasn’t really feeling the injury as much in the heat of the action. But things got worse the next day.”
Toffoli is now sidelined until at least Sunday, when the Canadiens are scheduled to play the Ottawa Senators to wrap up their six-game homestand.
Toffoli has 18-9-27 totals in 30 games this season and is tied for third in the NHL with 18 goals, trailing the Toronto Maple Leafs’ Auston Matthews and the Oilers’ Connor McDavid, who have 21 goals each. The Oilers’ Leon Draisaitl also has 18 goals. McDavid leads the NHL in scoring with 21-39-60 totals and Draisaitl ranks second with 18-32-50.
The Canadiens currently have two forwards on their taxi squad — Michael Frolik and Laurent Dauphin.
The Canadiens have a 2-1-0 record against the Oilers this season and have limited them to five goals in those three games. McDavid had no goals and two assists in the first three games against the Canadiens, while Draisaitl had no goals and one assist.
The Canadiens are in fourth place in the all-Canadian North Division with a 14-8-9 record and are 4-2-4 in their last 10 games. The Oilers (21-13-0) are tied with the Toronto Maple Leafs (20-10-2) for first place and are 7-3-0 in their last 10 games. The Leafs hold two games in hand on the Oilers.
Since losing three straight games to the Leafs — during which they were outscored 13-1 — the Oilers have a 7-2-0 record in their last nine games and are on a three-game winning streak.
“We just take it game by game,” Oilers coach Dave Tippett said Monday morning. “You can go back to those Toronto games, there’s things you learn about your team, there’s different ways games go. Every team has a little dip. We had a dip against Toronto and we’ve come back and played well. It’s no different than a lot of teams in the league.”
The Oilers are 18-7-0 in their last 25 games.
The lines
Here’s how the Canadiens forward lines and defence pairings looked at Monday’s morning skate:
Tatar – Danault – Gallagher
Drouin – Suzuki – Anderson
Lehkonen – Kotkaniemi – Armia
Byron – Evans – Perry
Frolik – Dauphin
Edmundson – Weber
Kulak – Petry
Romanov – Mete
Ouellet – Olofsson
Big challenge for Weber
You can expect the Canadiens’ defence pair of Shea Weber and Joel Edmundson to be on the ice a lot against McDavid and Draisaitl if the games are played later this week. Weber and Edmundson aren’t the fastest skaters, so it will be a challenge.
At age 35, Weber is leading the Canadiens in ice time this season with an average of 22:59 per game.
“It depends on situations,” Ducharme said when asked about what matchups he will use against McDavid and Draisaitl. “Same thing with Shea. The number of PKs and the power-play and five-on-five time. It depends where you’re at in the game, the score, where the faceoff is. There are many things. I don’t think there’s one player playing 100-per-cent healthy when you play that many games. So it’s the situation that every player has got to go through.
“I think it’s a five-man unit all the time,” the coach added. “Trying to match every time … they play big minutes, they play a lot, and we want to be playing our pace. I’ll say that everyone on our team needs to be ready to be playing against them.”
McDavid is averaging 22:26 of ice time this season to rank second among NHL forwards behind the Maple Leafs’ Mitch Marner at 22:44. Draisaitl ranks fifth among NHL forwards with an average ice time of 21:57.
Harris staying at Northeastern
Canadiens GM Marc Bergevin announced Monday afternoon that defenceman Jordan Harris will return to Northeastern University next season for his senior year.
The Canadiens selected the 5-foot-11, 185-pound defenceman third round (71st overall) of the 2018 NHL Draft. In his first three seasons at Northeastern, Harris has 10-43-53 totals in 91 games. This season, the 20-year-old had 6-13-19 totals in 19 games. Harris also played for Team USA at the world junior championship.
After discussions between the Canadiens, Harris and his family members it was agreed that returning for a fourth season of college hockey was best for his development.
What’s next?
The Canadiens and Oilers are scheduled to play each other two more times this week at the Bell Centre on Wednesday (7:30 p.m., SN, RDS, TSN 690 Radio, 98.5 FM) and Friday (7 p.m., TSN2, RDS, TSN 690 Radio, 98.5 FM). After a rare Saturday off, the Canadiens are scheduled to wrap up their six-game homestand Sunday with their first of four straight games against the Ottawa Senators (7 p.m., SN, RDS, TSN 690 Radio, 98.5 FM).
The Canadiens are scheduled to play the Senators in Ottawa next Tuesday (7 p.m., TSN2, TSN5, RDS, TSN 690 Radio, 98.5 FM) and Thursday (7 p.m., TSN2, TSN5, RDS, TSN 690 Radio, 98.5 FM) and again next Saturday at the Bell Centre (7 p.m., CBC, CITY, SN, TVA Sports, TSN 690 Radio, 98.5 FM).
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