Who will play with Nick Suzuki and Cole Caufield? Which youngsters will manage to sneak into the top 6 of the Montreal brigade? How to distribute the forces on the power play? For the next three weeks, these topics will fill the discussions in the queue at the salting plant, at the blacksmith and in the aisles at Wise. Here is what the next few days will look like in the Canadiens’ entourage.
Or ?
Training will take place at the CN Sports Complex in Brossard. As always, the venues are free to the public. Four of the six pre-season games will be played at the Bell Centre, with the other two in Toronto and Ottawa. Like last year, the team will head to Mont-Tremblant to spend three days between its penultimate and final pre-season games in early October.
Who ?
Sixty players appear on the list provided by the team. Carey Price is however part of it for contractual reasons, as well as Rafael Harvey-Pinard, injured at least until November, and Quentin Miller, freshly operated. That leaves 57 players who will be able to lace up the skates, significantly fewer than the 72 invited (71 without Price) in 2023. “Last year, we had four teams for the [matchs intraéquipe]”This year, we have three. That will allow us to be cleaner and attack things more quickly,” summarized Martin St-Louis.
When ?
The on-ice sessions begin Thursday morning and will be repeated every day except for the scheduled days off on September 25 and 29, as well as October 6, which will essentially be the end of the camp. The schedule starts off strong with the visit of the Philadelphia Flyers on Monday, the 23rd. Strong, because the Flyers could land a certain Matvei Michkov, their first choice in 2023, ignored by six teams, including the Canadiens. Note that the schedule looks very similar to last year’s, with four games in the first week and two games in the second week. Like last year, the two road games will be played in Toronto and Ottawa.
For what ?
But why change a winning formula? St-Louis clearly has a knack for properly preparing its team since it has had good starts in the last two years. In 2022, despite a packed preseason schedule of eight games, including two in the Maritimes, the team had a 5-4-0 record in the season in October. Slight improvement last year, with a preseason schedule reduced to six games: a 5-2-2 record in October. It’s later that things go bad.