{"id":565183,"date":"2026-05-02T17:27:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T17:27:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/565183\/"},"modified":"2026-05-02T17:27:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T17:27:15","slug":"canadiens-patrik-laine-could-still-help-montreal-in-playoffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/565183\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadiens’ Patrik Laine could still help Montreal in playoffs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Canadiens’ Patrik Laine could still help Montreal in playoffs<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There’s been no indication that Patrik Laine will return during the playoffs.<\/p>\n

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But if the Montreal Canadiens<\/a> wanted to shake things up, maybe Laine would be the perfect solution.<\/p>\n

The Canadiens have a Game 7 on Sunday against the Tampa Bay Lightning<\/a> to determine who makes it out of the first round. And maybe if Montreal had Laine available to them earlier, they would’ve advanced already.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, an abdominal injury has held Laine out of all but five games this season.<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0Sabres’ storybook season is real, and Stanley Cup dreams are valid<\/a><\/p>\n

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The good news for Montreal is that if it wanted to bring Laine off of long-term injured reserve, it could.<\/p>\n

“FYI, if he was activated, despite his huge AAV,\u00a0the Habs would still be playoff-cap compliant,” wrote Daily Faceoff’s Matt Larkin<\/a> in a new article on Friday.<\/p>\n

Laine’s injury has been a bit mysterious, and there never has been a super firm timeline on when he might return.<\/p>\n

Montreal fans can dream, even if at this point it’d be a surprise for Laine to play again this season.<\/p>\n

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He’s got to play hockey again at some point though, right? Maybe he could pull a heroic comeback like the New York Knicks’ Willis Reed did more than half a century ago.<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0Sidney Crosby is a bad omen for Connor McDavid<\/a><\/p>\n

The Canadiens are certainly missing one particular skill of Laine’s — his power play work.<\/p>\n

“Even this lesser version of Laine\u00a0leads all NHL players\u00a0in goals and shots per 60 on the power play since the start of 2023-24,” Larkin writes.<\/p>\n

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Don’t hold your breath for a comeback. But if Laine wanted to make it back on the ice, the Canadiens could probably accommodate that.<\/p>\n

More NHL news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Canadiens’ Patrik Laine could still help Montreal in playoffs originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":482681,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5103],"tags":[265,155,5,264,21,5147,1671,4,640,1108,768,92],"class_list":["post-565183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-montreal-canadiens","tag-canadiens","tag-connor-mcdavid","tag-hockey","tag-montreal","tag-montreal-canadiens","tag-montrealcanadiens","tag-new-york-knicks","tag-nhl","tag-patrik-laine","tag-sabres","tag-sidney-crosby","tag-tampa-bay-lightning"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116506161514825308","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565183","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=565183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/482681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=565183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=565183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=565183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}