season ending

To say that the Montreal Canadiens have been decimated by injuries this season would be something of an understatement, but in spite of that the Canadiens had even more bad news to share on Monday regarding a pair of players.

The first medical update from the Habs was regarding forward Alex Belzile, who according to the Canadiens suffered a leg fracture during the team’s matchup against the Carolina Hurricanes over the weekend. The injury will keep Belzile out of the lineup for what remains of the regular season but there was no mention of any surgery in Belzile’s future.

The other update was on the health of veteran forward Sean Monahan. The Habs confirmed that Monahan has undergone surgery on his groin, and added that the procedure will end Monahan’s season as well.

While these are both significant losses for the Canadiens, the reality is that the team is well out of the playoff picture. With this in mind, it makes sense that the Canadiens are shutting down their players in the hopes of getting them healthy in time for next season.

As Eric Engels points out, the list of season-ending injuries for the Canadiens has become a little absurd. On top of today;’s announcement, the Canadiens have already lost David Savard, Kaiden Guhle, Arber Xhekaj, Cole Caufield, Juraj Slafkovsky, Josh Anderson and Christian Dvorak to season-ending injuries.

On Thursday night, longtime National Hockey League veteran Derick Brassard suffered an ugly looking injury when he went down during a game between the Ottawa Senators and the Philadelphia Flyers.

Brassard appeared to suffer a nasty ankle injury as his foot and ankle bent back the wrong way during a scoring chance for the veteran forward, and unfortunately the updates on his status may be even worse than the initial images of the incident would have led you to believe.

On Saturday, Ottawa Senators insider Bruce Garrioch was able to confirm that Brassard would not play again this season due to the serious ankle injury he suffered, but even worse than that the insider raised the possibility of this being a career-ending type of injury for Brassard.

From Garrioch:

In the case of the 35-year-old Brassard, not only may his season be over, but there’s also a chance that could have been the final shift of his National Hockey League career.

Brassard has played all across the National Hockey League during his career including stints with the Columbus Blue Jackets, New York Rangers, Pittsburgh Penguins, Florida Panthers, Colorado Avalanche, New York Islanders, Arizona Coyotes, Philadelphia Flyers, Edmonton Oilers, and of course the aforementioned Ottawa Senators. As a result he has amassed a huge following of fans from around the league, all of whom will no doubt be devastated by this latest update on the health of the 35 year old veteran centerman.

Update: Brassard has now undergone surgery and is confirmed to have broken his fibula.

At this point we can only hope for the best, and hopefully that means we will get to see Brassard healthy once again and back playing the sport that he loves.