Kirby Dach and Jordan Harris are now ready to play, according to Cap Friendly

I don’t know how much it affected you enough to remember it on an ordinary July day, but the Habs weren’t exactly healthy last year.

And I say that to be polite.

Does this photo, which undoubtedly contributed to the few changes made to the infirmary in recent weeks, mean anything to you?

It caught the imagination at the end of the campaign.

18 guys on the ice (Samuel Montembeault was who-knows-where at the time and Mike Matheson was injured during the game) and 15 guys on the bench, that’s really something.

That explains, in part, the difficult season.

All this to say that the top 15 guys didn’t finish the season. One of them (Alex Belzile) is gone, and two of them (Carey Price and Paul Byron) won’t be playing in the NHL again.

But the other 12 are still in town. What’s going on with them?

The curious thing is that four of them have been the subject of medical updates on Cap Friendly since the end of the season. We’re talking about Cole Caufield, Sean Monahan, Jordan Harris and Kirby Dach.

Here’s what we find.

Before the season ended, Mike Hoffman (who missed the last game on a few hours’ notice) and Mike Matheson, who left the last game due to injury, received medical updates.

That explains where their update came from.

In the case of Caufield and Monahan, we can see that the date of the update (June 5 and 21, respectively) coincides somewhat with when they signed their respective contracts. It’s easy to see where this is coming from… even if you have to wonder how ready Caufield would have been to play a month and a half ago.

That said, the guys are still on the club’s injury list as of today. The injury list on Cap Friendly doesn’t move during the off-season, from what I’ve noticed for weeks.

But what about Dach and Harris? As of July 13, last Thursday, both guys have been declared “cleared to play”. I’m not sure where this came from, because nothing seems to have been announced by the Habs.

It hasn’t been circulated publicly since July 13.

I’m not necessarily questioning what Cap Friendly is reporting, since the site is very sharp… but I’m wondering where it’s coming from. And I wonder why July 13, when Dach was probably not in such bad shape at the end of the season, i.e. three months ago.

Was it an arbitrary date chosen to test certain guys? Could be.

Note that the guys weren’t placed on the injured list at the end of the season, so they’re still on the active roster. This was the case before July 13 and it still is.

That’s good news for them, at least. And that’s regardless of why the update went through the butter.

But let’s take it a step further. Are the other eight guys who finished the season at the top of the photo included in Maxime Truman’s tweet at the top of this article cleared to play, too?

Just yesterday, on TSN 690, Kaiden Guhle said he was 100%. Why isn’t he Cap Friendly too? Is it simply a process that didn’t happen?

We know that Christian Dvorak, even if he seems to be progressing well, could/should miss the start of the season. But what about the others?

Will Josh Anderson, Mike Matheson, David Savard, Arber Xhekaj, Mike Hoffman and Juraj Slafkovsky, whose training in Europe is intense, also be cleared to play soon? A guy’s got a right to wonder…

In short

– Good point.

– It’s up to him to make the most of his opportunity.

– Should the CH retire Andrei Markov’s number? [HF]

– Last part of Gilles Courteau’s interview with Anthony Marcotte. [BPM Sports]

– Still, eh?

With the Washington Commanders sale, Magic Johnson is now involved in ownership groups across four different leagues:

▪️ MLB
▪️ MLS
▪️ WNBA
▪️ NFL pic.twitter.com/JVltPPefUo

– Front Office Sports (@FOS) July 21, 2023