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The Habs will be making their way to New Jersey to take on the Devils tomorrow but before then, they did practice in Brossard this morning. Kaiden Guhle, who suffered a knee injury on December 29th, was practicing with the team in a no contact jersey. A few days after Guhle was injured, the team had announced that he would be missing a minimum of 8 weeks on January 6th. If that timeline is respected, Guhle should still be two weeks away from returning.
The team has confirmed that he will be travelling with the club this week, but that can just be to keep practicing with the team. Considering how meaningless the rest of this season is and how important Guhle is to this rebuilt, he should not be rushed and if he’s eager to come back, he should be “protected from himself” as Hughes said players needed that from time-to-time citing Brendan Gallagher as an example who always wants to come back faster.
If it was a welcome sight to see Guhle skating alongside his teammates, the fact that both Sean Monahan and Kirby Dach missed practice for treatments did overshadow the news. Monahan had taken part in the last few practices and had a day-off yesterday as it was the team’s skills contest, and yet, he still needed treatment this morning. This means that the faint hope that he may be back in the 5 remaining games before the trade deadline is fading fast.
Meanwhile, Kirby Dach has missed the last two games with a non-Covid related illness but needed treatment this morning, can we assume that he’s also got a nagging injury to take care of aside from the illness? In any case, he’s not travelling to New Jersey with the team, but could join his teammate in Philadelphia for Friday’s game. As for Chris Wideman, he’s now also injured and staying in Montreal.
After practice concluded, Joel Edmundson who’s been listed as day-to-day since January 26, skated on his own. Whichever way you look at it, it’s increasingly likely that the Canadiens have a very quiet trade deadline day with all of their lingering health issues. If you want to see the bright side of things though, this depleted team is going to have a tough time gathering the wins with a tough schedule ahead, meaning that its lottery odds should be going up.
Montreal Canadiens Blogger • 
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