HabsWorld.net -- 

The Canadiens have released their invitation list to training camp and while there aren’t any surprises in terms of late new additions or tryouts, there may be some surprise in how many players were invited as a total of 74 players will be taking part.

The full list of invitees is as follows:

Goalies (8)

Jake Allen, Antoine Coulombe*, Philippe Desrosiers^, Riley Mercer*, Samuel Montembeault, Kevin Poulin, Cayden Primeau, Joe Vrbetic

Defencemen (20)

Justin Barron, Madison Bowey, Santino Centorame^, Tory Dello^, Joel Edmundson, Gianni Fairbrother, Olivier Galipeau^, Alex Green^, Kaiden Guhle, Jordan Harris, Otto Leskinen, Mike Matheson, Mattias Norlinder, John Parker-Jones^, David Savard, Corey Schueneman, Miguel Tourigny, William Trudeau, Chris Wideman, Arber Xhekaj

Forwards (43)

Peter Abbandonato^, Josh Anderson, Joel Armia, Anthony Beauregard^, Owen Beck, Alex Belzile, Gabriel Bourque^, Cole Caufield, Lucas Condotta, Kirby Dach, Evgenii Dadonov, Jared Davidson, Jonathan Drouin, Pierrick Dube*, Christian Dvorak, Jake Evans, Ryan Francis^, Brendan Gallagher, Brandon Gignac^, Cedrick Guindon, Rafael Harvey-Pinard, Emil Heineman, Cam Hillis, Mike Hoffman, Riley Kidney, Danick Martel^, Filip Mesar, Sean Monahan, Jan Mysak, Michael Pezzetta, Rem Pitlick, Emile Poirier^, Anthony Richard, Joshua Roy, Brennan Saulnier^, Nate Schnarr, Xavier Simoneau, Juraj Slafkovsky, Brett Stapley^, Mitchell Stephens, Nick Suzuki, Joel Teasdale, Jesse Ylonen

Injured (3)

F Paul Byron, D Logan Mailloux, G Carey Price

*-invitee, ^-signed to a minor-league contract

There are a couple of things to note among the long list of invitees.  First, the list of injured skaters under contract is limited to Byron.  There have been questions about Monahan’s availability going back to his acquisition from Calgary but him not getting the designation is a good sign that he could be ready for opening night.  Roy missed the rookie tournament due to a hand injury but also has the all-clear at the start of camp.

Second, there were no cuts from rookie camp, allowing the evaluation of Montreal’s prospects and the unaffiliated invites to continue.  That said, it’s important to note that the evaluation for many of these players won’t come with the main group.  In past years, those players have been assigned to Group C which practices separately from the other two, effectively working as a beginning to AHL training camp while giving them some extra per diem money.  This is what will happen here; the presence of those players will have no bearing on main camp aside from someone sliding over here and there to cover for someone that needs a therapy day.

Among the tryouts, it’s worth noting that Parker-Jones is now listed as a defenceman after playing as a forward during the rookie tournament.  He has experience at both positions and that versatility could come in handy as he hopes to land an AHL contract.

Camp officially opens up on Wednesday with medicals before on-ice exercises.  The team will play an intrasquad game on Sunday with their preseason getting underway on Monday as they host New Jersey.