Jeff Gorton announces another shutdown for the Montreal Canadiens.

The Montreal Canadiens will once again be shutting down their operations.

The announcement was made by Canadiens executive vice president of hockey operations Jeff Gorton on Saturday afternoon, with the announcement coming off the back of an ugly loss to the Florida Panthers by a score of 5 - 2. 

"Given all the new positive cases arising daily, and for the health of our players and staff, we feel that pausing our activities is necessary at this time. This pause will give our players the time they need to recover so that we can continue the season safely," said Gorton in the team's public release.

He's not kidding either. Due to a combination of both Covid cases and injuries on the team the Canadiens were put in a horrible predicament on Saturday, one that forced them to play with just 16 skaters in their lineup. The Canadiens might have lost by a wide margin to the Panthers, but it becomes hard to blame them when you consider the fact that they were significantly shorthanded the entire game with only 11 forwards and 5 defensemen, many of whom are not players you would not normally expect to see on the Habs National Hockey League roster.

Making matters even worse for the Canadiens on Sunday was the fact that veteran forward Cedric Paquette was also knocked out of the lineup during the game, which dropped them down to just 15 skaters with 10 forwards and 5 defensemen.

The Habs also announced that this shutdown would extend to their affiliate team in the American Hockey League, the Laval Rocket, which makes sense given that a fair number of their players have been called up to the main roster during this debacle for the Canadiens.

As of right now the shutdown is expected to last until the 6th of January but I suspect that this could get extended once again should things continue to unravel for the Habs as a result of these huge Covid outbreaks around the NHL. At some point though the NHL will run out of room to reschedule their games, and these games will have to be either be played or perhaps cancelled outright.