The 5:00 PM ET season-opening roster deadline has come and gone. There aren’t too many surprises on there for Montreal but Joel Armia, who cleared waivers earlier on Monday, is on the roster, for now at least.
The roster is as follows:
Goalies (3)
Jake Allen, Samuel Montembeault, Cayden Primeau
Defence (6)
Justin Barron, Kaiden Guhle, Jordan Harris, Johnathan Kovacevic, Mike Matheson, David Savard
Forwards (14)
Josh Anderson, Joel Armia, Cole Caufield, Kirby Dach, Jake Evans, Brendan Gallagher, Rafael Harvey-Pinard, Sean Monahan, Alex Newhook, Tanner Pearson, Michael Pezzetta, Juraj Slafkovsky, Nick Suzuki, Jesse Ylonen
Designated Non-Roster Status (3)
Christian Dvorak, Carey Price, Chris Wideman
You might have noticed that Arber Xhekaj is nowhere to be found on this list. It appears that for the second year in a row, he has been papered to Laval with Armia taking his spot on the roster. (Gustav Lindstrom, who also cleared waivers Monday, was sent down.)
The reason for this is cap-related. If you add up the cost of Montreal’s roster (including the non-roster status players), it’s $4,339,583 above the salary cap. Christian Dvorak’s cap hit is $4.45 million so it appears they’re placing him on offseason LTIR. By doing that, they want to get as close to being $4.45 million over as possible, hence why Armia is on the roster and Xhekaj isn’t.
On Tuesday after 5 PM ET (by using LTIR, they must hold this roster for 24 hours), the Habs can assign Armia down and bring back Xhekaj, plus make any other roster moves they need to.