With Monday being the deadline for opening rosters to be submitted, the Habs have registered theirs with the league, consisting of 15 forwards, six defencemen, and two goalies. The roster is as follows:
Goalies:
Jake Allen, Samuel Montembeault
Defence:
Ben Chiarot, Brett Kulak, Jeff Petry, Alexander Romanov, David Savard, Chris Wideman
Forwards:
Josh Anderson, Joel Armia, Alex Belzile, Adam Brooks, Cole Caufield, Jonathan Drouin, Christian Dvorak, Jake Evans, Brendan Gallagher, Artturi Lehkonen, Cedric Paquette, Mathieu Perreault, Ryan Poehling, Nick Suzuki, Tyler Toffoli
As expected, Carey Price, Shea Weber, Paul Byron, Joel Edmundson, and Mike Hoffman are all on injured reserve. Price was placed on offseason LTIR while this roster sits $10.45M above the Upper Limit which keeps it cap-compliant while getting close to maximizing the full LTIR pool. Weber and Byron will soon head there as well.
One small surprise is that Sami Niku is not on the list which means he’s on IR to start as well. That could merely be procedural with a back-dated placement. If that is indeed the case, someone will need to be sent down before he can be activated. That will be the case when Hoffman is set to come back as well which is sometime next week if all goes well.
There are three waiver-exempt players on Montreal’s opening roster – Caufield, Poehling, and Romanov. With Caufield and Romanov projected to play big roles this season, they’re unlikely to be sent down aside from making a paper move which means Poehling could be the odd one out early on. Alex Belzile is waiver-eligible but his spot on the roster could be a short one as well.
Montreal’s regular season gets underway on Wednesday in Toronto. We’ll find out over the next couple of days if this is the roster they’ll have for that game or if other roster tweaks will be made.