Canadiens veteran forward out for season with torn pectoral muscle

Canadiens forward Christian Dvorak will miss the remainder of the 2023-24 season with a torn pectoral muscle, the team announced Thursday. The injury will require surgery, which Dvorak will undergo on Friday.

It’s another long-term injury for a Canadiens team that’s no stranger to having players out of the lineup for long stretches of the season. After leading the league in man-games lost last year, Montreal lost young top-six forward Kirby Dach to a season-ending knee injury just two games into the campaign. They’ve also been without the services of defenseman Chris Wideman for the whole season up to this point with a back injury, and Jordan Harris, Rafaël Harvey-Pinard, Alex Newhook, and David Savard have all missed significant chunks of the campaign.

The Habs’ 16-16-5 record and sixth-place standing in the Atlantic Division is better than some expected, but Dvorak hasn’t been a major factor in their return to relevancy. The 27-year-old hasn’t been the bona fide second-line center the Canadiens expected to get when they acquired him from the Coyotes days before the 2021-22 season began. Dating back to his acquisition, he’s played in 145 games and notched 24 goals for the Canadiens, adding 44 assists for 68 points. That works out to a rather underwhelming points-per-game pace of 0.47.

Dvorak began this season on long-term injured reserve while he was still recovering from knee surgery that prematurely ended his 2022-23 campaign last March. After missing 10 games, Dvorak returned to the lineup in early November, scoring just three times in the 25 games since. While he won nearly 60% of his draws during his stint in the lineup this year, a career-high, Dvorak’s ice time also dipped below the 16-minute average mark for the first time in five years.

Unfortunately, the writing is on the wall for his potential as an everyday top-six forward in the NHL. He last played on December 30, recording a -1 rating in a 4-1 loss to the Panthers. He missed the following two games with what the team termed an upper-body injury.

In Dvorak’s absence, the Canadiens have dressed 11 forwards and seven defensemen, though don’t expect that to continue long-term. The Canadiens will need to recall a forward from AHL Laval to fill his spot in the top nine, or just wait for the returns of Harvey-Pinard and Tanner Pearson from their respective lower-body and upper-body injuries, which are both expected before the end of the month.

If they do look to Laval for help on offense in the short term, there are a handful of young candidates who could use a two- or three-week trial. 22-year-old Swedish winger Emil Heineman could get another bump to the NHL roster after being recalled for two weeks last month, playing his first two NHL games in the process. An injury cost him a solid chunk of the early portion of the season in Laval, although he does have two goals and six points in 10 games there. 2021 fifth-round pick Joshua Roy remains tied for the team lead in goals with 10 through 30 games, although the team seems content to keep the 20-year-old in the minors all season to adapt to the pro game despite his strong rookie showing on the scoresheet.

Even Dvorak’s overall two-way performance in his abbreviated 2023-24 showing was cause for concern. He spent most of his time in the lineup centering Cole Caufield and Juraj Slafkovsky on the team’s top line, and while his aforementioned faceoff skills were strong, the trio’s success at controlling play was not. Out of four Montreal forward lines with more than 100 minutes together this season, the Caufield-Dvorak-Slakovsky line’s expected goal share of 44.3% ranks dead last, per MoneyPuck. When Caufield and Slafkovsky have been centered by Canadiens captain Nick Suzuki this season, meanwhile, that trio has posted an expected goals share of 60.2% – quite a notable swing for swapping out just one player.

Dvorak has not yet been returned to long-term injured reserve, but expect him to end up on IR or LTIR in the near future if the Canadiens need roster and/or salary cap space. He remains under contract through the 2024-25 season at a cap hit of $4.45M and carries an eight-team no-trade list that kicked in at the beginning of this season, per CapFriendly.