Season-ending surgery for Monahan makes future with Canadiens far less certain

BROSSARD, Que. — Sean Monahan was supposed to be the gift that kept on giving to the Montreal Canadiens.

He was acquired in the off-season, along with a first-round pick, in a space-clearing move the Calgary Flames made so they could sign Nazem Kadri. On an expiring, $6.375-million cap hit, with much to prove following a second hip surgery and three injury-riddled, down seasons, there was potential for him to bring great value to the Canadiens on the ice, in the room and, eventually, once again on the trade market.

When Monahan finally agreed to take a couple of weeks off in early-December to heal a broken foot, there was still hope that value could be fully redeemed.

What’s happened since certainly opens the door to the possibility the Canadiens won’t ever get more than what the player provided over his 25 games.

On Monday, the team announced he had season-ending groin surgery.

We know Monahan suffered the injury as he was rehabilitating the foot ailment, but everything that happened between then and Monday’s announcement — from when he was officially diagnosed to what went into ultimately deciding to have surgery just a few days ago, instead of months ago — is a mystery.

“He was great at the start of the year, and it’s just unfortunate,” said teammate Joel Edmundson. “Didn’t really know what was going on as he started to ramp it back up and had a setback.

“And then they found something, which is very frustrating year for him. I know that, personally, he hasn’t been happy. He wants to be out there playing. When he was in, he was playing really good hockey, he was a huge part of our team. It’s definitely a big loss, and it just sucks seeing him go through it.”

Where it leaves Monahan is also anything but clear.

The Canadiens said it’ll take him six-to-eight weeks to recover from surgery, but they obviously aren’t in a position to say what he’ll be able to do once he’s healed.

That same type of uncertainty was in the air last summer, and it appeared Monahan had resolved it with a revamped skating stride, with 17 points in a little over a quarter of the season, and with a level of versatility that had general manager Kent Hughes, among many others, thinking he would be able to get a first-round pick for the player at the March 3 trade deadline.

“He came in with a great baggage of experience,” said Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis. “It was a great pickup for us. He can do so many things. He’s a presence, too, in the dressing room, so we lost more than just what he did on the ice. But also, he can play wing, he can play centre, he can play the PK, he can play the PP and he’s very responsible on the ice.”

But whether Monahan will still be able to do all of those things is, at the very least, in grave doubt.

While it was once thought that if injuries got in the way of the Canadiens obtaining fair value for Monahan on the trade market, they’d just re-sign him to a low-risk, high-reward contract carrying a $1.5-million to $2-million cap hit, you have to wonder now if that scenario can even be placed on the table.

No matter what the money amounts to, there’d be no way of considering any deal with Monahan to be low risk.

Two hip surgeries and a groin surgery later, that’s a sad reality. Especially considering Monahan is just 28 years old.

“We all feel bad for him,” said captain Nick Suzuki. “He’s gone through a lot of surgeries the last few years. His spirits are as high as they can be. It’s been a tough year for him. He was playing so well, but things kind of spiraled downhill. I’ve been talking to him, and he just wants to come back and have a good summer. He knows he can be a really good player, and hopefully the team can see that too.”

The Canadiens can’t bank on it, though, and that’s a little more problematic than it was last summer.

They’re hoping to progress in their rebuild, which is all but guaranteed to happen (provided they don’t go through the absurd injury situation they’ve experienced this season) and they have to be able to plan for that while removing as many variables as possible.

That doesn’t mean re-signing Monahan isn’t an option.

But we’re not sure how strongly the Canadiens can consider bringing him back without having any assurances he can continue to fill an important role on their team.

Canadiens' injury situation is theatre of the absurd

What else would you call it knowing Monahan is the ninth Canadiens player to have his season cut short due to injury.

The team also announced on Monday that forward Alex Belzile suffered a season-ending fracture in one of his legs in Saturday’s 3-0 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes.

Rookie Juraj Slafkovsky (knee) and winger Cole Caufield (shoulder) had their seasons come to an end in January. In late February, defenceman Arber Xhekaj also had shoulder surgery, which halted his impressive rookie season at 51 games. And March marked the end of the road for Christian Dvorak (right knee surgery), Kaiden Guhle and Josh Anderson (high-ankle sprains).

Considering that Jordan Harris, Rafael Harvey-Pinard, Jake Allen and Jake Evans were all too dinged up to practise on Monday, that Kirby Dach is still at least a few days away from potentially returning from an upper-body injury, and that the team has had several other players miss months of action, absurd is the only word for it.

“Most of it is bad luck,” said veteran forward Brendan Gallagher, who missed 45 games to injury — some of them seemingly because he tried to return too soon and made whatever he was dealing with worse, though he said he’d only get into specifics on what happened to him this season after the final five games are complete.

But, as St. Louis intimated on Monday, whatever is in the Canadiens’ control needs to be evaluated.

“I think every year, you reflect, you look back and want to get better,” he said. “We’re going to do that. How can we be better on the ice? Off the ice? Whether you’ve been good, you should always find a way to improve, and I’m sure we’re going to go through that process.”