It has been a rough month for defenseman Gustav Olofsson. After suffering a shoulder injury in training camp with Minnesota, he eventually was waived and passed through unclaimed. He then was flipped to Montreal but in just his second game with their AHL affiliate in Laval, he suffered a recurrence of the injury. Arpon Basu of The Athletic notes (Twitter link) that this latest injury will keep him shelved for six months after undergoing successful surgery today. Barring a faster-than-expected recovery, this will end his season.
Olofsson is no stranger to shoulder issues as he missed almost his entire rookie year with one back in 2014-15 as well as part of the 2015-16 campaign with another one. Despite that, he still showed some potential with the Wild and got into 41 games with the team last season. Clearly, Montreal liked his upside as they dealt a decent prospect in winger Will Bitten to acquire him after he cleared waivers to give them some more depth on the back end. Anticipating a lengthy recovery, the Canadiens signed blueliner Ryan Sproul to a minor league tryout deal to take Olofsson’s place on the roster last week.
The 23-year-old is in the final season of a two-year contract that pays him $775K. That means he’ll be owed a qualifying offer of just under $814K and given that this will be the second time in five seasons that he effectively is missing an entire year due to injury, it’s not exactly a given that Montreal will be tendering him that offer in June.