Canadiens announce a pause of all team activities effective immediately

Following their 5-2 loss to the Florida Panthers on Saturday afternoon, the Montreal Canadiens announced that they will be pausing all activities through January 6th due to the rise of COVID-19 cases within the team.

The Canadiens added two more players to the NHL's COVID protocol list on Saturday morning bringing the total to sixteen and despite that, they played today's game shorthanded with only eleven forwards and five defenceman. That number of forwards in today's game dropped to ten after Cedric Paquette suffered a neck injury.

Those players on the NHL protocol list are, Jeff Petry, Tyler Toffoli, Artturi Lehkonen, Joel Edmundson, Mike Hoffman, Ben Chiarot, Jake Allen, Cayden Primeau, Chris Wideman, Laurent Dauphin, Gianni Fairbrother, Paul Byron, Jake Evans, Alexander Romanov.

"Given all the new positive cases arising daily, and for the health of our players and staff, we feel that pausing our activities is necessary at this time. This pause will give our players the time they need to recover so that we can continue the season safely," said Canadiens Executive Vice President of Hockey Operations, Jeff Gorton.

Montreal already had an eleven day break between their game this afternoon and their next game due to having other games being postponed. Their next game is scheduled for Wednesday, January 12th against the Boston Bruins.

The Canadiens and the Laval Rocket will pause activities as a preventive measure until January 6 inclusively.https://t.co/LhDekxz0Ij— Canadiens Montréal (@CanadiensMTL) January 1, 2022

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