MONTREAL — It is the context that makes it that much worse.
We don’t know how badly newly acquired Montreal Canadiens forward Patrik Laine was injured Saturday night against the Toronto Maple Leafs, but we do know knees are not supposed to bend like that.
No one ever wants to see anyone injured, particularly in a preseason game, but for Laine, this feels especially devastating.
Patrik Laine is forced to leave the game with a knee injury after colliding with Cedric Pare. pic.twitter.com/3rAOIRrfrQ
— TSN (@TSN_Sports) September 28, 2024
Laine has been through so much over the last year, physically and mentally. He looked at this move to Montreal as an opportunity to start over, giving this new version of Patrik Laine an opportunity to fulfill all the promise that made him the No. 2 pick in the 2016 NHL Draft and allowed him to score 80 goals in his first two seasons in the league.
“I just knew as a person I needed a new start somewhere else, more so as a person than as a hockey player, and that’s what I’m more worried about, me as a person,” Laine said after he was traded to Montreal on Aug. 19. “Obviously, there was stuff that happened in Columbus on and off the ice that kind of haunts a little bit.
“I just feel like I needed a restart for my life and my career, and now I’m super fortunate to have that in Montreal and I couldn’t be happier about it.”
Laine’s arrival in Montreal represents so much hope, first and foremost for himself, but for his teammates and the organization as well. It means adding a depth of talent that allows the Canadiens to put together four forward lines that can score. It means having a second power-play unit that can push the first unit and create competition. It means having a player who can legitimately aspire to being among the top goal scorers in the NHL based on talent alone.
“Adding Patrik, it shows that management’s ready to start winning, and we’re ready to start winning, and obviously the fans are ready for it,” captain Nick Suzuki said a few days after the trade. “So this year’s going to be exciting. I talked to a lot of the guys yesterday and the day before and everyone’s ready to go.
“I’m really excited to start. It’ll be fun.”
It doesn’t seem so fun anymore.
It might be premature to say all that in the past tense, but watching Laine crumble to the ice, clutching his left knee and leaving the ice without putting any weight on his left leg definitely gave the impression it will be a long time before we see Laine playing for the Canadiens again. Maybe it looked worse than it actually is, but it looked very, very bad.
For this to happen to Laine, of all people, considering how he was looking at this season as a life-changing moment — not just a career-changing one — makes it that much more difficult to digest.
“I think a ton of guys stepped up to welcome him to the team,” Suzuki said Saturday night. “We know what situation he was coming from and we wanted to make him feel at home with us, and I think he does.
“That’s super unfortunate, and I really feel for him right now.”
If there’s one player who can identify with Laine right now, it would probably be Kirby Dach, whose season ended last year after only four periods of hockey when his knee exploded on a hit from Chicago Blackhawks defenceman Jarred Tinordi. Laine is Dach’s winger, and Laine is a big reason why the Canadiens’ second line is seen as the team’s biggest source of improvement this season, a reason why the team and organization feel they can aspire to better things.
“He’s been nothing but positive, he’s been full of excitement to join our team,” said Dach, who admitted to getting some flashbacks to his own injury when he saw Laine go down. “He saw what we were trying to build here and he’s excited to be a part of it. It definitely sucks seeing that happen to a guy who’s dealt with some injury issues, like myself. Hopefully it’s nothing but good news and he’s back out there.”
Over the time Jeff Gorton and Kent Hughes have been running the Canadiens it is safe to say there has not been an acquisition that has generated as much excitement as Laine.
In his first preseason game for the Canadiens, on his second shift, the Bell Centre crowd made it very clear just how excited the fan base is about Laine.
On his second shift in his second preseason game in a Canadiens uniform, disaster struck.
If Laine is out long term, it changes so much of what the Canadiens were planning for this season. The second line becomes less dangerous. The depth of scoring becomes less deep. The second power-play unit becomes less competition for the first unit. And for Laine, he would have another mental hurdle to clear when he has already cleared so many in such a short period of time.
But that’s only looking at the present for the Canadiens. Just prior to Laine leaving the game, top defence prospect David Reinbacher also left the game with another apparent injury to his left leg on the game’s opening shift when he took a hit from Toronto defenceman Marshall Rifai. If he were to miss a significant amount of time, it would delay his development in getting him to a point where he is ready to help the Canadiens.
In a meaningless preseason game, to have a big chunk of your present and such an important part of your future leave the building on crutches — as RDS’ Patrick Friolet reported — is just about the worst possible result imaginable.
But while the future is still important for a team that is trying to work its way out of a rebuild, this season was more geared toward the present for the players, and the potential loss of Laine is a devastating blow to that present.
As Mike Tyson famously said, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.
It was difficult not to see Laine lying on the ice and being helped off the ice and throwing his helmet in disgust before entering the room as the Canadiens, and Laine, as being punched in the face before the season had even started.
But there might be a silver lining to this, and that would be for the members of a young team to show how resilient they are, how unwilling they are to accept a second year of bad injury luck as an excuse for a bad spot in the standings. How much can Suzuki and Dach and Juraj Slafkovský and Cole Caufield and Alex Newhook and Mike Matheson and even rookie Lane Hutson make it so this potential punch in the face does not derail the Canadiens’ season?
How hard can they punch back? We might be about to find out.
(Photo: Vincent Ethier / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
