HabsWorld.net --
A day after Montreal’s game against the Edmonton Oilers was postponed due to two Habs players landing on the COVID-Protocol Related Absences list, the NHL announced that Montreal games will be postponed through at least March 29th.
This was due to Jesperi Kotkaniemi and Joel Armia landing on the CPRA list yesterday prior to the game and it was recently confirmed that they are still on the list today. No other Habs were added to the list.
Pierre LeBrun of TSN and The Athletic stated on Twitter that the NHL was trying to get all games in before May 9th but now it seems likely that it won’t happen. The Habs were scheduled for a three-game set vs the Oilers before facing Ottawa on Sunday.
Those games will now be rescheduled and at this point and time, the next scheduled game will be next Tuesday when they head back to the nation’s capital to face the Senators. It wouldn’t be surprising to see other games for other Canadian teams moved around as the league tries to adjust the schedule.
There was a small chance if both Armia and Kotkanemi were false positives that they could play Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday but that ruled out earlier in the day.
The NHL has officially to this point postponed 38 games this season and the Canadiens-Oilers game was the very first in the North Division. The all-Canadian division had been doing a very good job compared to the divisions in the US but are now starting to feel the effects of the pandemic.
The Bell Centre and training facility in Brossard has been shut down and won’t reopen until Monday at the earliest and that’s when there will be more news regarding Montreal’s schedule moving forward. In the meantime, it will be worth keeping an eye on the CPRA list in the coming days to see if any more additions from the Canadiens are on there or if it winds up being limited to just Armia and Kotkaniemi.