Montreal Canadiens defenseman Noah Dobson left last night’s loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets with an apparent thumb injury, reports Eric Engels of Sportsnet. Dobson appeared to suffer the injury after blocking a shot, his league-leading 188th blocked shot of the 2025-26 season.
The team announced Sunday morning that Dobson sustained an upper-body injury and would be re-evaluated in two weeks. The team also announced that 2023 No. 5 pick David Reinbacher has been recalled from the Laval Rocket.
The news is a brutal development for a team that, at this moment, looks to be one of the league’s most promising. It’s difficult to overstate just how important Dobson is to the Canadiens.
The 26-year-old has been the Canadiens’ No. 3 defenseman in terms of ice time this season, averaging 22:29 per game. While that puts him behind Mike Matheson and Lane Hutson in Montreal, that’s a number high enough to rank No. 1 or No. 2 on other teams.
Dobson brings an immense amount of value to the Canadiens on a nightly basis, on both ends of the ice. His pairing with Matheson weathers some of the team’s most difficult defensive matchups, and he’s often relied upon when the team is defending a late lead. He’s also a key penalty killer, and he pairs that defensive ability with a strong offensive touch, putting up 12 goals and 47 points in his debut campaign as a Canadien.
Montreal surrendered a high price to the Islanders to acquire Dobson – two first-round picks and a solid NHL-ready young forward in Emil Heineman. The way Dobson has played has more than justified that asset expenditure, as well as the $9.5MM AAV contract extension he received.
But at this moment, Dobson’s value only serves to reinforce just how catastrophic this injury could be to the Canadiens’ hopes of making a deep playoff run. His injury exposes the most significant lineup weakness in Montreal: a lack of capable right-shot defensemen. Veteran Alexandre Carrier has already been sidelined with an injury of his own on a week-to-week basis, meaning that after Dobson’s injury, the Canadiens were left without a single right-shot blueliner in their lineup. Hutson and Arber Xhekaj, both lefties, played on the right side of the team’s defense last night.
Dobson’s injury left Montreal without a single healthy right-shot defenseman on their roster just a few days before the start of the playoffs. That’s not an ideal situation for any team to be in, let alone a club with designs on having an extended stay in the postseason, and it’s why they recalled Reinbacher.
The Canadiens are lucky that several of their left-shot defensemen, namely Hutson, Kaiden Guhle, and rookie Adam Engstrom, have real experience on the right side. But both Hutson and Guhle have also demonstrated that while they can certainly handle playing on the right, both players are not quite as effective when forced to play from that side.
With that said, the Canadiens appear to not have an appetite to dress a defense made up entirely of lefties. As a result, Reinbacher has been recalled. While the Austrian blueliner’s development has been slowed due to injuries, he’s still made steady progress with the Rocket and has emerged as their best all-around defenseman. On another team, it’s entirely possible he’d have been in the NHL already, and with Dobson’s injury, he’ll get the chance to make his NHL debut.
Is it ideal for Reinbacher that he might make his NHL debut in such important, high-stakes games for the Canadiens? Probably not, as it doesn’t leave him much room for error. But this injury to Dobson has forced Montreal’s hand in the matter.
At the very least, it’s not as though Reinbacher is without experience. While he hasn’t yet played in the NHL, he does have considerable experience at the pro level, starting all the way back in 2021-22 when Reinbacher helped EHC Kloten win promotion to the top division of Swiss hockey. He also skated in 13 playoff games for Laval last season, helping the club reach the AHL’s Eastern Conference Finals.
The hope for Montreal will be, undoubtedly, that Dobson’s injury does not end up being as severe as it may have initially looked, and that his absence is limited to just a few games. But if he does indeed miss time on a more extended basis, the impact on the Canadiens will be significant – and all eyes will point to one of the team’s top prospects to help fill the significant hole created in Montreal’s lineup by Dobson’s absence.
Photos courtesy of Jerome Miron-Imagn Images