The Habs had been carrying their full 57-player training camp roster into the weekend. However, they’ve now cut that down, assigning 12 players to Laval.
The players sent to the Rocket are as follows:
Forwards:
Vincent Arseneau, Aleksandr Legkov, Israel Mianscum, Josh Nadeau, Xavier Simoneau
Defence:
Jacob Dion, Aiden Dubinsky, Braden Hache, Kale McCallum
Goalies:
Hunter Jones, Francesco Lapenna, Kevin Mandolese
None of these cuts should come as much surprise as they’re all signed to minor-league contracts. They were skating with the AHL-bound group from the start of camp and didn’t see any preseason action.
It’s worth remembering that Laval doesn’t have any preseason games next week; they’ll jump right into regular season action on Friday. Accordingly, there was no benefit to sending this group down early since their training camp wasn’t starting until soon.
Montreal will have plenty more cuts coming. However, with the team playing split-squad games tonight against Ottawa, the rest of the healthy roster is needed to contest those matchups.
Monday at 5:00 PM ET is the deadline for season-opening rosters. Those rosters must be cap-compliant and have no more than 23 players on it, not including anyone on injured reserve. The Habs have 45 remaining in camp with only two IR-bound to start the season (Kaiden Guhle and Bryce Pickford). That means up to 20 more cuts will be coming in the next 48 hours.