Canadiens’ Christian Dvorak Undergoes Season-Ending Knee Surgery
Another day, another significant injury for the Montreal Canadiens, who’ll now be without forward Christian Dvorak for the remainder of this season.
Dvorak’s 2022-23 campaign will end prematurely after undergoing season-ending knee surgery, general manager Kent Hughes announced on Wednesday.
The procedure was performed by Dr. Robert Marx in New York at the Hospital for Special Surgery. Dvorak is expected to fully recover ahead of the 2023-24 season.
Dvorak, acquired from the Arizona Coyotes prior to last season, has been sidelined due to a knee injury since Mar. 7th. The 27-year-old will finish his second season in Montreal with 10 goals and 28 points across 64 games.
The Canadiens’ roster has been riddled with injuries all season and was already without youngsters Cole Caufield and Arber Xhekaj for the rest of the campaign. Now with Dvorak also headed to injured reserve, he’ll join a group that features Caufield, Xhekaj, Brendan Gallagher, Jake Evans, Juraj Slafkovsky, Sean Monahan, Paul Byron and Carey Price.
Without several regulars in the lineup, head coach Martin St. Louis has had his work cut out for him in his first full season with the franchise, as his team sits 27th in the league at 27-35-6 with 60 points through 68 games. But that does bode well for their draft lottery odds, which currently sit at 7.5 percent.
All these absences have led to a few internal surprises, namely rookie Rafaël Harvey-Pinard, a seventh-round selection from 2019, who has registered eight goals and 13 points in 24 games. As a result, the 24-year-old has earned St. Louis’s attention, receiving as much as 23:54 of ice time since being recalled.
Montreal, however, must be disappointed with the outcome of Dvorak’s showing this season, as he struggled to generate consistent offense for a second straight year. Failing to avoid the injury bug certainly didn’t help, either.
The Canadiens paid a hefty price for the former Coyote’s services in 2021, sending a 2022 first-round pick (Filip Bystedt) and a 2024 second-round pick to the desert. He was supposed to help fill the void left by Jesperi Kotkaniemi – who signed a one-year, $6.1-million offer sheet with Carolina – but hasn’t played up to expectations thus far.
Following five seasons in Arizona, Dvorak battled injuries in his inaugural campaign with the Canadiens, appearing in just 56 contests while logging 17:22 of ice time per night, the second-highest of his career. The left-hander scored 11 goals and 33 points, averaging a career-high 0.59 points per game.
Dvorak, in the midst of a six-year deal worth $26.7 million, is signed through 2024-25 and carries a $4.45 million cap hit per season. Interestingly, his modified no-trade clause kicks in next season, where he’ll submit an eight-team no-trade list.
Based on the 6-foot-1 centre’s injury history, he likely won’t generate much trade interest this summer, and rightly so. Teams will want to see him healthy again before anything else happens. They’ll need to see where his on ice production lands post injury as well.
The Canadiens could always decide to keep Dvorak. Given his age, though, the veteran forward’s timeline probably doesn’t align with the organization’s competitive window and could ultimately be his ticket out of town.
-Thomas Hall
Twitter: @ThomasHall85
Photo: Ken Lund. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.