Jack Todd: Are the Canadiens cursed?

With injuries to key players already piling up, it seems as though Montreal has run out of its once-legendary supply of good luck.

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It’s the wild card for every team, every season, every rebuild, every career.

It’s why pitchers leap over the first-base line when heading back to the dugout. It’s why Patrick Roy talked to his goalposts, Wayne Gretzky always missed his first shot in warm-ups wide right — and Sidney Crosby won’t call his mother on game days.

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It’s luck.

If athletes are superstitious, it’s because they know they need luck on their side. If Canadiens fans are superstitious, it’s because they aren’t convinced that the Forum ghosts made the short trip to the Bell Centre back in 1996.

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You can hardly blame them. After what has been a gut punch of a week for the Canadiens and their fans, everyone from the seventh-floor offices at the Bell Centre to the denizens of the seediest dive is wondering what happened to the once legendary Habs luck.

When the news broke that emerging star Kirby Dach had suffered torn anterior cruciate and medial collateral ligaments in his right knee when he was run into the Blackhawks bench by one-time Habs bust Jarred Tinordi, it seemed the entire city felt his pain.

Dach’s injury came in the fourth period of the season. It didn’t seem to be all that serious, although you could tell Dach had been rocked as he returned to the bench. He sat for a bit, stood and leaned against the boards for a time, testing it, then left for the dressing room and did not return.

Confirmation of the Dach disaster didn’t break until Tuesday. His team, riding a wave of early-season optimism after a strong performance in an overtime loss in Toronto and a win over Connor Bedard and the Chicago Blackhawks, appeared gut-punched by the news in a brutal loss at home to the Minnesota Wild.

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Around the Canadiens, when it rains you had best grab a seat on the ark because it’s going to pour. This year’s first-round draft pick, David Reinbacher, also suffered a knee injury when he fell awkwardly into the boards after a hit during a Swiss league game against Fribourg-Gottéron.

Left-winger Emil Heineman, meanwhile, won a bad luck trophy while playing on the top line in Laval when he ran into a referee and suffered an upper-body injury.

Finally, defenceman Kaiden Guhle, like Dach another emerging star, left the game against the Wild and did not return. When initial reports had Guhle out six to eight weeks with a broken wrist, fans reacted with the sometimes hilarious cynicism of total despair:

“Are the Habs cursed?”

“What voodoo curse is going on?”

“Well, that was a fun 2 games, see y’all next year.”

“I’ve never seen such a curse in sports, this is absurd.”

When a fan asked who made a deal with the devil without making sure the Canadiens actually won the Cup final, someone replied: “Judging by his eyes, (Jeff) Petry.”

It’s a measure of how bad things have been when the news that Guhle is day-to-day feels like a major uptick in the club’s fortunes. With or without Guhle, however, any chance the Canadiens might be in the playoff mix probably went down with Dach.

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Have the Forum ghosts abandoned the Canadiens? Is karma collecting its debt for all the things that broke the Canadiens way during that extraordinary run to the Stanley Cup in 2021? Or was it the Logan Mailloux draft that angered the hockey gods?

Personally, I’m not superstitious. OK, I refuse to walk under ladders, fly on Friday the 13th, walk or drive where a black cat has crossed the path or fail to knock wood if I mention that I’ve been unusually healthy of late. (Knock, knock.)

But in our more rational moments, we all know this is unlikely to continue. Somewhere along the way, the immutable law of averages will even things out. But after leading the league with 751 man games lost to injury, the wholesale changes to the medical staff have yet to make an impact.

Every time I mention my admiration for the way Jeff Gorton and Kent Hughes have gone about their rebuild, I want to add, “but they’re going to need some luck.” Luck with draft picks, luck with trades (so far, so good) and above all, luck in avoiding injuries.

An injury like Dach’s affects a club in so many ways. You worry about the impact on Juraj Slafkovsky, the 2022 first overall pick who had looked so good playing with Dach. The reports from Slafkovsky’s first game with Alex Newhook as his centreman were not good. But it would be silly to make any judgments based on a game when the entire team was discombobulated and Slafkovsky was handed two minor penalties for being too strong for his own good.

Mostly, however, this is about Kirby Dach. He’s been through so much already and he is such a force on the ice. Now he faces a year of rehab hell when he’s going to need all the physical and mental toughness he can muster.

For what it’s worth, the young man has massive support from the beleaguered hockey fans of this city.

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