An unfortunate turn today in the promising young season for Montreal Canadiens’ Nikita Scherbak, as the team announced that the forward has undergone surgery on his right knee and will be out six weeks. Scherbak was injured on October 26th when the Canadiens were blanked 4-0 by the Los Angeles Kings.
Scherbak, a first-round pick of the Canadiens from 2014, was in just his second game with the team when he suffered the injury. Even in the limited time he was there, he had looked like one of the more creative offensive pieces on the squad, a reputation he earned while playing in junior and the minor leagues. In his two seasons in the WHL, Scherbak scored a combined 160 points in 130 games, and didn’t slow down much after joining the professional ranks. In the AHL last year, he scored 41 points in 66 games and was one of the team’s most impressive pieces.
This season, before his call-up to the Canadiens, Scherbak had put up nine points in six games and looked like he was ready to take his game to the next level. The 21-year old will have a lot of pressure on him to perform in Montreal—especially in light of the recent controversy over Russian players under Claude Julien—but will have to work hard just to even get back on the ice. It will be interesting to see which team he rejoins after he has fully recovered, the Canadiens or the Laval Rocket.
Doc, what’s going on in Montreal? They seem to be struggling a lot more than they should. As talented as they are, it seems to me that something is going on behind the scenes that even the press doesn’t know about. I played up in Montreal many years ago & it looked as though that the press knew about anything that moved. What is your take on this?.