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While the Canadiens’ camp actually started yesterday, there was no on ice session and nothing to see for the fans who had missed their favorites so much. After Kent Hughes announced yesterday that Christian Dvorak wouldn’t be ready to play until some time in November, today, the team let it be known that Chris Wideman was suffering from a back injury and that he would be out indefinitely. As unfortunate as it is for Wideman, he was probably destined to be the seventh or eight defenseman at best.

Day 1. Newhook and Anderson looked real good together. Apart from his speed, Newhook can shoot the puck as he showed on his goal. Anderson was also flying.

— Stu Cowan (@StuCowan1) September 21, 2023

As usual when there are so many players at camp, they are split into 4 different groups who will play each other every day until Saturday. Team A was pitted against Team B to kick things off this morning. Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, Jake Allen, Arber Xhekaj and Justin Barron were the five players who had played in the NHL last season in Team A’s line-up and thus, the composition of the team didn’t give any clue as to who might play alongside the duo this year. As for Team B, the NHLers were Sean Monahan, Kirby Dach, Jordan Harris and Micheal Pezzetta, newly acquired Lias Anderson was also in this group.

When the game started between the two sides, it was revealed that for today at least, Emil Heineman would be playing alongside the Habs’ dynamic duo for Team A and that on Team B, Kirby Dach was centering a line with Sean Monahan and Joshua Roy on his wing. Those are great choices, and they show that the kids will be given a real opportunity to shine at the start of camp. Both Heineman and Roy are offensive players, and they need to be well surrounded to be at their best. The standouts of the first scrimmage were Cole Caufield, who scored two goals within a minute and showed that he was now fully healthy and firing on all cylinders,and Lias Anderson who took advantage of every shift he was given, even if he was playing with Mitchell Stevens and Mike Pezzetta and scored the first goal of the camp.

In the afternoon, Team C and Team D played each other. The roster of the former featured newcomer Tanner Pearson, Brendan Gallagher, Kaiden Guhle, Rafael Harvey-Pinard, Jonathan Kovacevic and first round pick David Reinbacher. Meanwhile, Team D included newcomer Alex Newhook, Josh Anderson, Juraj Slafkovsky, Joel Armia and new blueliner Gustav Lindstrom. The noteworthy lines were Slafkovsky, Newhook and Anderson, Harvey-Pinard, Beck and Gallagher, Mesar, Evans and Armia and Farrell, Kidney and Pearson. It’s too early to draw any kind of conclusion for the day, but Samuel Montembeault looked good out there, he was only beaten on a penalty shot. Montembeault might not have the number one spot in the bag though, Jake Allen was quoted as telling the media that he wants to play more than last year, this should be an interesting battle.

Tanner Pearson also spoke to the media for the first time and confirmed that his role would be pretty much the same in Montreal as it was in Vancouver, provide veteran leadership on a very young team. He laughed someone quoted Kent Hughes who said yesterday that he would be bringing some grey hair to the team. Pearson made a pretty good first impression both fielding the press’ questions and on the ice, but the one thing he wouldn’t discuss was last season’s struggles with his broken hand. Clearly, it was a nightmarish year for him, but he did mention that his hand was at about 90% now, a bit higher than what Kent Hughes had said yesterday. Pearson also confirmed that he already knew some players on the team, like Brendan Gallagher with whom he shared a room at the World Championships and Sean Monahan. He also added that Tyler Toffoli had reached out to him about Montreal, praising the city and the team and was very excited for him, spreading word of the trade like wildfire.

Mailloux gets called for hooking Kidney, it's a penalty shot in these scrimmages.

Nice goal by Kidney. pic.twitter.com/j5j5qU2i99

— Marc Dumont (@MarcPDumont) September 21, 2023

Tomorrow, Team A will face Team C at 9:30 am and Team B will take on Team D at 1:00 pm. As always, practices in Brossard are open to the public and if you really need a hockey fix, you can head to the CN Complex and go see for yourself how the players will do.

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