HabsWorld.net -- 

After a training camp with some surprises of both the good and bad variety, the Habs officially announced on Tuesday their official season-opening roster featuring 23 players.

With both Byron Froese and Andreas Martinsen clearing waivers and being assigned to Laval of the AHL, Montreal was down to 24 active players on the roster.  Rather than waive another defenceman to get down to the max of 23, they’ve placed blueliner David Schlemko on injured reserve which gives the team more time to evaluate who the final cut will be.  The roster looks as follows:

Forwards

Paul Byron
Phillip Danault
Jacob de la Rose
Jonathan Drouin
Alex Galchenyuk
Brendan Gallagher
Ales Hemsky
Charles Hudon
Artturi Lehkonen
Torrey Mitchell
Max Pacioretty
Tomas Plekanec
Andrew Shaw

Defencemen

Karl Alzner
Jordie Benn
Brandon Davidson
Victor Mete
Joe Morrow
Jeff Petry
Mark Streit
Shea Weber

Injured Reserve: David Schlemko
Season-Opening Injured Reserve*: Jeremiah Addison, Noah Juulsen

Goaltenders

Al Montoya
Carey Price

* – SOIR is for players that are injured during the course of training camp.  Their cap hit is then determined by their type of contract (one-way or two-way), how many days they spent on an NHL roster last season, and how many NHL games they played last season.  In Addison and Juulsen’s case, neither were on the NHL roster at any time and are on two-way deals so they will not count against Montreal’s salary cap.

The Canadiens enter the season with plenty of cap room to work with as they sit $7,688,690 under the $75,000,000 Upper Limit.  They currently have 47 players under contract out of the limit of 50 although that number will drop to 46 if Victor Mete plays in nine or fewer games before being sent back to junior.

While the 2017-18 season officially kicks off on Wednesday, Montreal will have to wait one more day for their season opener as they’ll drop the puck on their campaign on Thursday night in Buffalo.