Montreal Canadiens rookie Juraj Slafkovsky will miss three months because of a lower-body injury that does not require surgery, the team announced amongst injury updates to five different players.
Slafkovsky, the No. 1 pick in the 2022 NHL Draft, has 10 points (four goals, six assists) in 39 games this season.
Medical updates from the Bell Sports Complex ā¬ļøhttps://t.co/20Gjx2vWzi
— Canadiens MontrĆ©al (@CanadiensMTL) January 18, 2023
He hadn’t registered a point in 15 straight games and was a minus player in 10 of those contests.
Slafkovsky will have plenty of company on the injured list.
Forward Jonathan Drouin will be out until the All-Star break after sustaining an upper-body injury on January 12, as will Joel Armia. Goaltender Jake Allen will also miss a minimum of one week because of an upper-body injury, and forward Jake Evans is expected to be out eight-to-10 weeks because of a lower-body injury that does not require surgery.
The team also placed Sean Monahan on LTIR. He has not played since December 5 because of a lower-body injury.
“That’s the league,” Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis said, according to NHL.com. “You control the things that you can, and we’re going to manage this.
“So, I feel like those guys have an opportunity here to come in and have an impact and maybe they can steal a chair, so to speak. But you never get to steal a chair if you don’t have the opportunity, and sometimes the opportunity gets created just by misfortune from somebody else.”
The Canadiens are last in the Atlantic Division with a 19-23-3 record for 41 points. Montreal sits 26th out of 32 teams in the league, and currently have a 6.5% chance at the No. 1 pick in the 2023 NHL Draft and projected top pick Connor Bedard.