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It’s not the best way to start a training camp for sure, the Canadiens announced today that 5 players failed their respective medicals due to injury: Paul Byron (hip), Mike Hoffman (lower-body), Joel Teasdale (knee), Josh Brook (knee) and Carey Price (knee). Some of those are not surprising, but I’ll admit I was really looking forward to seeing who Hoffman would play with. The update further states that they will all likely miss the remainder of camp. As for Joel Edmundson, he’s considered day-to-day, and Brendan Gallagher is currently absent for family reasons.
The Habs also unveiled the practice groups for camp: red, white and C. In Hoffman and Gallagher’s absences, we won’t be able to see which lines Ducharme would like to start the season with, but we should be able to make educated guesses.
At the red team’s practice, Drouin-Dvorak-Anderson formed a line and another one was Harvey-Pinard-Evans-Armia, on D, Guhle was playing with Savard and Norlinder with Chiarot. Judging by the rookie camp though, it would be surprising to see either of the rookies make the team, they still need some polish and experience. At the white team practice, Ryan Poehling was centering a line completed by Lehkonen and Laurent Dauphin, chances are one of the absents will take over Dauphin’s spot. As for Cedric Paquette, he was centering Perreault and Belzile, as expected the 2 new French-Canadian players appear to have been depth additions. On the blue line, Petry was paired with Romanov and Kulak was with Fairbrother. The D deployment appears to tell us that Edmundson, Petry, Chiarot, Savard and Romanov have got their spot and that the 6th spot could see a battle between Kulak and Wideman, and anyone else who progresses tremendously.
Sunday afternoon at 3:00 PM the Habs will hold their annual Red vs White scrimmage in front of 7 500 fans, which will also be televised on RDS info. I’ll be in attendance and I’m really looking forward to seeing what kind of reception the team and particularly Jonathan Drouin will get. At $10 per ticket, this won’t be the same crowd that went to playoffs games last spring/summer, and I expect they’ll show their appreciation to the Habs for that run.
As Bergevin had already said, Dominique Ducharme confirmed that no new captain would be named while Shea Weber deals with the injuries that will keep him out of the line-up this season. We were able to spot quite a few players sporting a brand-spanking new “A” during yesterday’s promotional photo shoot: Tyler Toffoli, Nick Suzuki and Joel Edmundson. It goes without saying that Gallagher will keep his “A” as well, so I expect the team will rotate alternate captains at home and on the road, just like when Gionta left, and they had a season without a captain until Pacioretty was selected.
Montreal Canadiens Blogger • 
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