{"id":536141,"date":"2026-04-02T07:00:19","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T07:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/536141\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T07:00:19","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T07:00:19","slug":"starting-defenseman-out-2-4-weeks-with-upper-body-injury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/536141\/","title":{"rendered":"Starting defenseman out 2-4 weeks with upper-body injury"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/clutchpoints.com\/nhl\/montreal-canadiens\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Montreal Canadiens<\/a> on Tuesday announced that defenseman Alexandre Carrier will <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nhl.com\/news\/nhl-status-report-news-and-notes-april-1-2026\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">miss two to four weeks<\/a> with an upper-body injury. Carrier, who joined Montreal in a midseason trade from the Nashville Predators last season, has played in all 77 games during the 2025-26 season, putting up a 7-15\u201322 scoring line with a +2 rating.<\/p>\n<p>The 29-year-old spent 19:05 on the ice in his last game on Sunday, a 3-1 win over the Carolina Hurricanes, skating 19 shifts and finishing with a +1 rating. There was no visible indication of injury during the game, and the team has not disclosed the cause. Given that the third-seeded Canadiens (43-21-10) in the Atlantic Division will play the Philadelphia Flyers for their final regular-season game on April 14, Carrier&#8217;s regular season is likely over. He may also miss the opening games of Montreal&#8217;s first-round Stanley Cup Playoffs series.<\/p>\n<p>This season, Carrier has been primarily a second- or third-pairing right-shot defenseman, often playing alongside Kaiden Guhle. He has scored a career-high seven goals and supplied 15 assists, slightly below his career-best 30-point output with Nashville in 2021-22. Carrier has also averaged 3+ minutes per game on the penalty kill, forming half of the Canadiens&#8217; top shorthanded unit with Mike Matheson. However, the unit has allowed 10.6 goals per 60 minutes while he is on the ice.<\/p>\n<p>Carrier&#8217;s absence leaves Noah Dobson as Montreal&#8217;s only healthy right-shot defenseman. The Canadiens recalled left-shot defenseman Adam Engstrom from the AHL&#8217;s Laval Rocket on Monday. With forwards Josh Anderson, Kirby Dach, and Alexandre Texier also unavailable, Arber Xhekaj has filled in as a winger.<\/p>\n<p>The Montreal Canadiens on Tuesday announced that defenseman Alexandre Carrier will miss two to four weeks with an upper-body injury.  Carrier, who joined Montreal in a midseason trade from the Nashville Predators last season, has played in all 77 games during the 2025-26 season, putting up a 7-15\u201322 scoring line with a +2 rating.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Montreal Canadiens on Tuesday announced that defenseman Alexandre Carrier will miss two to four weeks with an&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":536142,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5103],"tags":[265,5,264,21,5147,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-536141","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-montreal-canadiens","8":"tag-canadiens","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-montreal","11":"tag-montreal-canadiens","12":"tag-montrealcanadiens","13":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116333826828199889","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=536141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536141\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/536142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=536141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=536141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=536141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}