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Arber Xhekaj

Snapshots: Senators Trade Rumors, Arber Xhekaj, Ridly Greig

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The Ottawa Sun’s Bruce Garrioch recently shared that teams have been reaching out to the Senators to see if top forward Drake Batherson is available. However, Garrioch reports that Ottawa isn’t looking for a large-scale trade, and is instead shopping around winger Dominik Kubalik. This could be in an effort to make space for Shane Pinto, who is currently serving a 41-game suspension after violating the league’s sports wagering rules.

Kubalik is set to become an unrestricted free agent on July 1st and carries a $2MM cap hit this season. The 28-year-old has managed four goals and five points through 19 games this season, also adding six penalty minutes and a -10. Kubalik previously scored 30 goals and 46 points in the 2019-20 season, his rookie year in the NHL. His scoring took a step back following the exciting rookie year, but he managed 20 goals and 45 points in 81 games with the Detroit Red Wings last season.

And while those are certainly fine numbers for a cheap, depth forward, it’s easy to see why Batherson is the one teams are interested in. The 25-year-old winger currently has 14 points, split evenly, through 19 games this season. He’s coming off of a career-year that saw him record 22 goals and 62 points in 82 games last season. The breakout year was apart of a steady climb in scoring, with Batherson recording 34 points in 2020-21 and 44 points in only 46 games during the 2021-22 season. The young forward is also cost-controlled through 2026-27, carrying a cap hit of $4.975MM in each of the next four seasons.

Other notes from around the league:

Canadiens Recall Joel Armia, Place Arber Xhekaj On IR

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In preparation for tomorrow’s game against the Los Angeles Kings, the Montreal Canadiens announced they have recalled forward Joel Armia from their AHL affiliate, the Laval Rocket. In a corresponding move, the team has placed defenseman Arber Xhekaj on injured reserve, and it is retroactive to his last game on November 16th.

Notably failing to make the team out of training camp and being placed on waivers shortly thereafter, this will be Armia’s second call-up of the season. After receiving a promotion to the Canadiens on October 21st, Armia played in six games for Montreal and scored one goal in that time before being sent back down on November 12th.

While in Laval, Armia has been an effective point producer for the Rocket, scoring six goals and three assists in eight games, placing him seventh on the team in overall scoring, even while playing in about as half as many games as the rest of the roster. Nevertheless, with a relatively high salary of $3.4MM for this season and next, Armia should still largely factor as a sunk cost for the Canadiens on the remainder of the contract.

Xhekaj, on the other hand, is indicative of another growing trend with Montreal recently, making him the third player on the team to go on the injured reserve in the last several days. Fellow defenseman Jordan Harris, as well as forward Rafael Harvey-Pinard, have also gone down with injuries in recent days.

After a relatively strong start to the season given the talent level on the NHL roster, the play of the Canadiens has slipped dramatically over the last several weeks. Starting off the season with a 5-2-1 record, Montreal has slipped to last place in the Atlantic Division after going 3-7-1 in their next 11 games.

Injury Notes: Capitals, Flyers, Canadiens, Grzelcyk

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At this morning’s practice before the team’s game against the Columbus Blue Jackets tomorrow night, Tarik El-Bashir of Monumental Sports Network reports that defenseman Martin Fehervary is doing some light skating for the Washington Capitals, but is not expected back for tomorrow’s game. Ferhervary has been out with a lower-body injury since the team’s win against the New Jersey Devils last week.

El-Bashir also notes that even though he has not missed a game due to the illness, Evgeny Kuznetsov will still be missing practice due to the ailment. Lastly, as the last report from practice, goaltender Darcy Kuemper appeared ’fine’ at practice after leaving Wednesday’s practice with an apparent injury.

After an incredibly slow start through the team’s first five games of the regular season, the Capitals have turned things around dramatically, producing a 7-1-1 record since that time, moving up to second place in the Metropolitan Division. If the team hopes to continue the hot streak, they will need to sustain relative health through the end of the calendar year.

Other notes:

  • Missing almost a month of action, Charlie O’Connor of PHLY Sports reports that defenseman Marc Staal of the Philadelphia Flyers is out of the non-contact jersey at practice, indicating he could be close to returning. Dealing with a rib injury from the team’s October 19th game against the Edmonton Oilers, Staal has only managed four games this year, failing to produce a point.
  • Leaving last night’s game against the Vegas Golden Knights during the second period, the Montreal Canadiens announced that defenseman Arber Xhekaj is considered day-to-day with an upper-body injury. Xhekaj notably missed the last month and a half of the 2022-23 regular season due to a shoulder injury, and has scored one goal and two assists in 17 games upon his return.
  • Eligible to return next Saturday against the New York Rangers, Boston Bruins’ defenseman, Matt Grzelcyk is still on the LTIR, rehabbing his way back from an upper-body injury sustained in late October. However, Steve Conroy of the Boston Herald indicates the rehab process is going well, as Grzelcyk is back practicing with the team today.

Evening Notes: Lehkonen, Xhekaj, Meier

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Peter Baugh of The Athletic is reporting that Colorado Avalanche forward Artturi Lehkonen’s upper-body injury is a neck injury. Previous reports had the 28-year-old dealing with an upper-body injury, but Avalanche head coach Jared Bednar told Baugh the news today. The early reports come with no timetable for a potential return, or any specifics about how severe the ailment is. The Avalanche have put Lehkonen on LTIR which means the earliest he can return is December 5th against the Anaheim Ducks.

Evan Rawal of Colorado Hockey Now is reporting that Lehkonen is currently in a neck brace after suffering a scary fall in a game last week against the Seattle Kraken, which is certainly not a great sign. Lehkonen’s mother has also flown to Colorado which indicates that he could need assistance over the upcoming weeks. Lehkonen is a player who plays a lot of important minutes for the Avalanche in all types of situations. He has three goals and five assists so far this season in 12 games.

In other evening notes:

  • The Montreal Canadiens have announced that defenseman Arber Xhekaj left tonight’s game after suffering an upper-body injury. The 22-year-old suffered the apparent injury after taking a huge hit from Vegas Golden Knights forward Ivan Barbashev in the second period. Xhekaj appeared to be favoring his left shoulder as he left the ice, but the team has yet to comment on the nature of the injury. Xhekaj scored his first goal of the season earlier this week and has three points in 16 games for the Canadiens.
  • Star-Ledger reporter Ryan Novozinsky tweeted that New Jersey Devils head coach Lindy Ruff told reporters tonight that Devils forward Timo Meier will be out of the lineup on a short-term basis. What exactly that means remains to be seen but it is probably a safe bet that Meier won’t be in the lineup on Saturday night when the Devils are home to the New York Rangers. The 27-year-old is in his first full year with the Devils and has five goals and six assists in 14 games. He did not dress in tonight’s 5-2 Devils victory over the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Montreal Canadiens To Assign Joel Armia To AHL, Recall Arber Xhekaj

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Although an official team announcement is pending at this time, CapFriendly reports that the Montreal Canadiens will send down forward Joel Armia to their AHL affiliate, the Laval Rocket, as well as recall defenseman Arber Xhekaj in a corresponding move.

In this move, it will be the first time since the 2015-16 season, then under contract with the Winnipeg Jets organization, that Armia will spend some time in the American Hockey League. Acquired from the Canadiens in 2018, Armia was actually included as a sweetener in a deal that would see Montreal absorb the contract of goaltender Steve Mason. After a couple of solid seasons in Montreal, mostly due to injuries, Armia’s production has continued to slip, losing him a spot on the roster for the foreseeable future.

On the positive side of the coin to this deal, the Canadiens will see the return of one of their more imposing defenseman from last season. Due to a shoulder injury in February that would derail the remainder of his season, Xhekaj would play in 51 total games, scoring five goals and eight assists. More importantly, given his style of play on the blue line, Xhekaj would throw a total of 159 hits during his rookie campaign, as well as nine fights.

With cap space being a bit of an afterthought this season in their rebuilding efforts, the Canadiens will accrue a $2.25MM buried penalty for sending Armia to the AHL. The new-look cast in Montreal will start their season off this evening against their long-time rivals, the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Injury Notes: Canadiens, Ehlers, Barlow, Smith

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After losing 167 games to injury last season, CapFriendly reports that the Montreal Canadiens have officially activated Cole Caufield, Sean Monahan, Juraj Slafkovsky, and Arber Xhekaj from the injured reserve today. All four returning players are favorable for the Canadiens, each providing value in their own way, but Montreal has some serious work to do in cutting down its roster at the end of training camp. With Caufield, Monahan, and Slafkovsky officially back in the mix, the Canadiens have approximately 17 forwards ready for NHL minutes, give or take a few. There is still plenty of time for General Manager Kent Hughes to make a move or two to thin out the roster, but Montreal realistically will have to use the waiver wire at the beginning of the season to make the necessary room. Caufield, being the most significant return for the Canadiens, is poised for another stellar season, especially in the goal-scoring department. Finishing 26th in total scoring during the 2022-23 NHL season, none of the blame should be put on Caufield. Last year, only playing in 46 total games before shoulder surgery ended his season early, scored 26 goals, a 46-goal pace over a full season. Other injury notes:

  • The Winnipeg Jets will have to wait a bit longer to get one of its best players and one of its best prospects back on the ice for training camp. In a report from Ken Wiebe of the Winnipeg Free Press, head coach of the Jets, Rick Bowness states that forward Nikolaj Ehlers will miss this weekend’s on-ice sessions due to neck spasms, and recently signed 2023 first-round pick, Colby Barlow, would skate in limited action due to an undisclosed illness. Bowness relays that neither player is expected to miss significant time.
  • Amongst the longer-term injury news from the day, the Anaheim Ducks have announced via a press release that prospect Konnor Smith will miss between two-four weeks due to a fractured hand, an injury he sustained during the Rookie Faceoff tournament. Smith was the Ducks’ fourth-round pick of the 2023 NHL Draft, recently playing for the Peterborough Petes of the OHL, scoring three goals and 12 assists in 65 games last year.

Montreal Canadiens Issue Injury Updates

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Once again this season, the Montreal Canadiens’ significant injury woes have forced them to make a set of announcements to update the hockey world on some of their players still working their way back to full health. Last time, the team issued four medical updates at once, and last night they officially announced new developments in the injury statuses of three players.

Firstly, the team announced that breakout forward Kirby Dach is out indefinitely with a lower-body injury. As we wrote in our coverage of the last major Canadiens injury update, Dach has been out since February 14th, with his absence first attributed to a non-COVID illness. The team then discovered that Dach’s illness symptoms were actually consistent with the effects of a lower-body injury, hence this new development.

Dach’s progress this season has been an encouraging early success for the Canadiens’ stated goal of revamping their player development process, and he has at times this season looked like one of the more dangerous offensive options at coach Martin St. Lous’ disposal. While it’s unclear if Dach will return this season, if his season does end at the 54-game, 35-point mark, the team can consider his first campaign in Montreal to be a strong one.

The second update the team issued concerns one of the team’s core veteran leaders: Brendan Gallagher. He is out with his own lower-body injury on a three-to-four-week recovery timeline. This means that it’s possible that Gallagher misses the rest of the season, as their final game is on April 13th, meaning Gallagher’s current timeline will be cutting it close.

If this injury does indeed cost Gallagher the remainder of his season, it will end what has been a disappointing campaign. While Gallagher has maintained his tenacious style of play, that trademark style seems to have taken its toll on his availability. He’s been in and out of the lineup for the last three seasons, and while the underlying numbers paint a prettier picture than his box score stats, Gallagher’s productivity has suffered as well.

If he has played his final game of this season, he’ll finish with just nine points in 25 games. Armed with a $6.5MM AAV deal that runs through 2026-27, getting their heart-and-soul player back to his old, productive self will be an important priority for the Canadiens organization.

The final injury update relates to rookie defenseman Arber Xhekaj, who underwent shoulder surgery and will miss the rest of the team’s season. Xhekaj, an undrafted product who surprisingly made the Canadiens out of training camp, has quickly become a fan favorite in Montreal.

His bruising, exceedingly physical style of play quickly endeared him to both Canadiens coaches and the Montreal market, and the understated skill he brought to the table indicated that there could be more in his future than a career as a simple physicality specialist.

He’ll finish his rookie campaign with 13 points and 101 penalty minutes in 51 games, and Canadiens fans will turn their attention to the other promising first-year-pro defensemen in their lineup: Kaiden Guhle, Jordan Harris, and Justin Barron.

While Xhekaj’s injury certainly takes a bite out of the entertainment value of the rest of the Canadiens’ games this season, seeing as the team won’t make the playoffs and is playing for pride alone over the next few weeks, having Xhekaj undergo surgery with an eye towards returning to full health for next season (rather than seeing him play through the injury/pain in order to help his team’s odds of winning, as some players have done in the past) seems like a wise course of action.

Montreal Canadiens Issue Injury Updates

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While the Montreal Canadiens have been better than many might have expected this season — they started off pretty well and are ahead of six teams in the standings, double-digit points out of the fight for the best chance at Connor Bedard — injuries have absolutely decimated whatever chance they may have had at staying on the periphery of the playoff chase.

Beyond the long-term, likely career-ending injury to Carey Price that has landed him on long-term injured reserve, the Canadiens have a whopping seven players on injured reserve and two in addition to Price on the long-term injured list. The players on those injured lists are star winger Cole Caufield, first-overall pick Juraj Slafkovsky, veteran Brendan Gallagher, talented rookie Kaiden Guhle, Sean Monahan, Jake Evans, Chris Wideman, Paul Byron, and Arber Xhekaj.

In addition to the players on the injured lists, there’s also Joel Edmundson, who remains on the active roster but hasn’t played in a month due to injury, leaving the Canadiens further depleted on their back end.

While these injuries have led to some interesting revelations, such as the impressive play of rookie Rafael Harvey-Pinard, they are also quite the frustration for a team looking to use the 2022-23 season as a valuable year of player development.

Today, the Canadiens announced some injury updates on a few important players. Firstly, the Canadiens announced that Xhekaj will undergo season-ending shoulder surgery next week.

Xhekaj seemed to injure his shoulder during a fight with Edmonton Oilers rookie Vincent Desharnais, and that injury will now end what has been an exciting rookie season for the defenseman.

The undrafted blueliner has worked his way up to be quite the rookie surprise in the NHL, playing with the kind of physicality and snarl that made him an instant fan favorite for those who frequent the Bell Center.

He flashed some more skill and talent beyond just his physicality than one might expect, and his injury means the Canadiens’ blueline and player development mission has been dealt a serious blow.

The one potential positive to note is that the Canadiens’ organizational apathy to whether they win or lose games for the rest of the season (coach Martin St. Louis has continually stressed the importance of player development over bottom-line results) has afforded them the freedom to make decisions that are in the best interest of their players’ long-term health.

Whereas a team in a Stanley Cup chase might hope that Xhekaj play through an injury in order to give their team the best chance at winning it all, the Canadiens can afford to let players such as Caufield and Xhekaj get a head start on their recoveries, which is definitely useful.

The second injury update the team issued is related to another breakout young talent: Kirby Dach. The team announced that Dach will not travel with the team to California, and will be out with a lower-body injury. Dach has been out since February 14th, with his absence first attributed to a non-COVID illness. The team then discovered that Dach’s illness symptoms were actually consistent with the effects of a lower-body injury, meaning now the team has yet another injury to manage.

Dach has flown past the career-highs in scoring he set as a member of the Chicago Blackhawks, and was making some major steps forward in his game under St. Louis’ tutelage. The Canadiens announced that Dach was out indefinitely with the injury, meaning the team will have to hope that he’s not another player whose season will be cut short.

Another injury update the team issued was that veteran forward Joel Armia is out day-to-day with an upper respiratory infection. Armia, who hasn’t played since February 21st, hasn’t yet been placed on injured reserve, leaving hope that he can overcome this infection and return to the ice relatively quickly.

A final injury update the team issued regards Edmundson, who as mentioned has not played in a month. The team announced that Edmundson will travel to California, and is expected to be at practice Monday as he nears a return. At this point, Edmundson’s return to the ice may be too late for him to figure in teams’ trade deadline plans, but he should bolster a Canadiens’ back-end that has looked quite a bit thinner due to injuries.

The Canadiens sent defenseman Corey Schueneman back to the AHL’s Laval Rocket last night, lending to the belief that Edmundson is nearing a return to the ice. Shueneman played four games for the Canadiens during this call-up, registering one assist and averaging 15:48 TOI.

Photos courtesy of USA Today Sports Images

Canadiens Recall Corey Schueneman

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With the Canadiens carrying just six healthy defensemen on their roster and Justin Barron leaving Thursday’s game early due to injury, they’ve brought up an extra rearguard as Sportsnet’s Eric Engels reports (Twitter link) that Corey Schueneman has been recalled.

It’s the third recall of the season for the 27-year-old who was brought up for a pair of short stints in October although he didn’t get into any NHL appearances during that time.  Schueneman has suited up in 43 games with AHL Laval this season, picking up five goals and 13 assists.  Schueneman does have some NHL experience under his belt, however, as he got into 24 games with the Canadiens last season where he picked up six points and 40 blocked shots while averaging 16:36 per night.

Early indications are that Barron should be able to play tonight against Toronto so Schueneman, a pending unrestricted free agent, is likely just being added to the roster as an insurance policy at this point.  To make room for him on the roster, defenseman Arber Xhekaj was placed on injured reserve.  He’s out indefinitely after sustaining an upper-body injury last weekend.  The team announced (Twitter link) that he’ll see a specialist next week with an update to come at that time.

Arber Xhekaj Out Indefinitely

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One of the bright spots for the Montreal Canadiens and their fans this season has been the emergence of Arber Xhekaj. The young defenseman basically came out of nowhere to make an impact at the NHL level, bringing an intimidating level of physicality to the rink every night.

Unfortunately, that rookie season may be cut short. The Canadiens have announced that Xhekaj will be out indefinitely with an upper-body injury suffered on Sunday against the Edmonton Oilers.

No clear timeline has been determined yet, but the injury appeared to be related to his right arm or shoulder after a fight with Vincent Desharnais.

Through 51 games this season, Xhekaj leads the NHL with 101 penalty minutes and has landed 159 hits to lead the Canadiens easily. Those numbers are despite averaging just 15 minutes a game on the back end, alongside several other of the Montreal youngsters.

Even though his toughness will stand out more than anything, Xhekaj has also impressed with real NHL ability. He has five goals and 13 points, even occasionally seeing some time on the powerplay. That is an incredible feat for an undrafted defenseman coming right out of junior hockey.

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