The Montreal Canadiens are not one of the better teams in the National Hockey League. They are expected to be at or near the bottom of both the NHL and Atlantic Division standings. It is a team with a nice young group and a solid farm system but they aren’t competing this year.
They are getting it even worse now after a bit of horrible injury news that they are dealing with. Young forward Kirby Dach is going to be out for a long time with a lower-body injury. It is the most unfortunate news for a Canadiens team that needs one of their young leaders.
Dach sustained his injury while playing against his old team in the Chicago Blackhawks on Saturday night. Obviously, that is tough news for them as they are already down one of their top players just a handful of games into a long season.
The injury is said to be “significant” and “long-term” for the Habs forward. There is still more to come on his diagnosis but that will come at a later time. He is going to be out for a while which is not what the Habs want to hear.
The Montreal Canadiens are going to be without Kirby Dach for a little while.
Kirby Dach has a significant injury. He's out long-term. Still being diagnosed, more coming in the next few hours or days--according to Habs.
— Eric Engels (@EricEngels) October 16, 2023
This is coming at the worst possible time for Dach in his NHL career too. Chicago made him a third overall pick in 2019 and his development has been coming along. In 2022-23, he had 14 goals and 24 assists for 38 points in 58 games. All of those were career highs by far.
If he hadn’t missed the final stretch of that season with an injury, he would have probably broken the 50-point barrier for the first time in his career. Coming into this year, a 60-point campaign seemed incredibly possible for him.
He had two assists through his first two games before going out halfway through that second one. We can only hope that he gets hot again when he returns from this injury, whenever that may be. Hopefully, soon.
Montreal has other good young players there that they need to step up. Guys like Cole Caufield, Juraj Slafkovsky, and Nick Suzuki amongst others need to come out and have a good showing this year in Dach’s absence. Then, when he comes back, they all need to grow together. Again, this is a tough blow to Montreal but he will be back.