HabsWorld.net --
The Habs are going to be without a pair of core players for the foreseeable future following some announcements from the team on Friday afternoon. Meanwhile, the team also announced that Jared Davidson has been recalled from Laval.
On the injury front, Alex Newhook’s ankle injury sustained in Thursday’s loss to Dallas is indeed a significant one. He has already undergone surgery to repair his fractured ankle and will now miss the next four months. Meanwhile, Kaiden Guhle’s recovery from a partially torn adductor muscle hasn’t gone as planned so he has now had surgery and will miss another eight to ten weeks.
While Newhook had been relatively quiet over his first couple of seasons with the Habs, he became the ‘veteran’ (he’s still only 24) on a line with rookies Oliver Kapanen and Ivan Demidov. While that’s not necessarily the most compatible line in terms of matching skill sets, it has worked well. The youngsters are off to fine starts while Newhook has six goals and six assists in 17 games, a pace well ahead of any other year in his career.
His absence is also a blow to Montreal’s already iffy penalty kill. Thrust into that role for the first time in his career this season, Newhook and Kapanen have been a serviceable second pairing with Newhook averaging 1:50 per night shorthanded. On Thursday, Nick Suzuki subbed in following Newhook’s injury but if Martin St. Louis wants to manage his captain’s minutes (especially while he’s playing through a nagging issue), they may have to consider something different.
One option that just became available is now former Toronto centre David Kampf who cleared unconditional waivers today and is now an unrestricted free agent. Shortly after that was announced, Chris Johnston and Michael Russo of The Athletic reported that Montreal does have interest in Kampf, a defence-first centre who could plausibly fill Newhook’s role shorthanded but wouldn’t come close to replacing his offensive impact.
Newhook now joins Patrik Laine as players likely out until after the Olympic break in February. With the trade deadline coming soon after that, you can already pencil in the argument that Montreal could be ‘adding’ those two players to their lineup without needing to make any sort of trade.
As for Guhle, he has been out since mid-October with the original timeline for a return being four to six weeks. If there’s any consolation in this surgical news, it’s that it at least came at the beginning of the original window and not the end of it which would have pushed his return date back even further. That said, mid-to-late January is the new window and that’s a long time to be without a top-four defender.
The Canadiens have been selective with when they’ve called Marc Del Gaizo up from Laval, often preferring to go with the minimum of six defencemen on their active roster. In doing so, they’re not using up as much cap space which could come in handy closer to the trade deadline. That’s viable in the short term when the team has a lot of home games but that’s a short-term solution. Now knowing they’ll be without him for a while yet, they might look toward bringing on a replacement or keeping Del Gaizo up for a while. (Veteran blueliner Troy Stecher is on waivers today and could plausibly fit the bill as a veteran seventh option who could step in when necessary; he’s made a decent career with that role.)
Meanwhile, Newhook’s spot in the lineup tomorrow against Boston will be taken by Davidson who is getting his first promotion to the top level. It’s a well-earned one as he is Laval’s leading goal-getter and had a six-game scoring streak snapped Wednesday in Springfield.
Exactly where the 23-year-old will fit in the lineup remains to be seen. Given his production so far, there’s a case to be made to put him directly in Newhook’s spot but an all-rookie line of Davidson, Kapanen, and Demidov would be quite risky. Speculatively, they may play it safe and start him on the fourth line against the Bruins with one of Josh Anderson or Joe Veleno moving up the depth chart. It’s a role Davidson filled as recently as last season with the Rocket and had some success in but although he has killed penalties with Laval, it’d be surprising to see him thrown into that role right away here.
