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Picture Day on a Memorable Season for the Wrong Reason |
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Follow me @KarineHains for all updates about the Montreal Canadiens and women's hockey
Nobody expected the Canadiens to compete to make the playoffs this season, everybody knew that in this rebuild, what we had to look forward to was the development of the youngsters. At first, that’s what we got, but as the season went on, more and more of those youngsters went down with injuries robbing us of even that pleasure. Gone were the Caufield spectacular and timely goals, gone were the debates about Slafkovsky usage up and done the line-up, gone was the brand spanking new promising young centre that is Dach, gone were the Guhle bone crushing hits and gone were the Xhekaj fights and ensuing cheers from the Canadiens’ faithful. Still, tradition is tradition and an end of season picture must be taken.
This morning, the Canadiens practiced at the Bell Centre in order to be able to take the team photo and a few familiar faces were back at practice even if they were wearing no contact jerseys, it was nice to see Brendan Gallagher, Jake Evans and Kirby Dach back on the ice. Of course, since their return to play is still some way away, they weren’t assigned to lines. Judging by the practice, these could be the lines against the Lightning tomorrow:
Harvey-Pinard-Suzuki-Belzile
Gurianov-Drouin-Anderson
Hoffman-Tierney-Ylonen
Pezzetta-Pitlick-Richard
This means that St-Louis was honest when he said that the page was turned on the “Drouin incident” and the team is moving past it. If it wasn’t so, the Quebecer would still have been on the 4th line. Practice wasn’t only about good news though since Kaiden Guhle was still missing. We’ve all seen him injure his knee against the Panthers even though he finished the game, but since then, he’s missed two practices and a game, I dare say it doesn’t bode well.
Meanwhile, the Canadiens’ announced this morning that forward Emil Heineman had been assigned to the Laval Rocket. Considering how many of the Rocket players are currently in Montreal, this will be a big boost to the farm team. Heineman will be able to both close out the season and compete in the playoffs if the Rocket manages to qualify. Furthermore, Montreal Hockey Now Marco D’Amico reports that the player is now fully under Canadiens’ control as he has fulfilled his obligations with Swedish club Leksand thanks to the provisions of the IIHF agreement with the NHL. Next season, Heineman will either be in Laval or in Montreal, Europe is now out of the window. I’m looking forward to seeing how he will do at training camp since he was doing very well last October before an injury derailed his season.
This really is what this current season will be reminded for, all the injuries and not the development unfortunately. Hopefully, next season, the focus will stay on development and the team will take the means to ensure that this is what happens.
Montreal Canadiens Blogger • 
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