Montreal Canadiens

Kent Hughes and His New Policy on Players’ Medical Updates
Charles-Alexis Brisebois
Kent Hughes and His New Policy on Players’ Medical Updates
Credit: Capture d'écran/YouTube

Yesterday at noon, my colleague Maxime Truman wrote an article about the Canadiens' injuries.

His angle was this: Why are the Canadiens' player injuries being treated this season as if they were huge state secrets that need to be kept under wraps?

Because keep in mind that whenever there's a gap in the flow of information, people try to fill it.

But then Patrick Friolet and Eric Engels ran into the Canadiens' GM, Kent Hughes, last night. And he decided to set the record straight by implementing a new policy for discussing injuries.

What are we talking about?

Basically, if a player experiences a setback in his recovery, the Habs will address it. The same goes if an injury worsens or if the initial timeline is significantly pushed back.

Otherwise? No updates.

In Ivan Demidov's case, there's been no setback, according to the GM. The two- to four-week timeline was just an estimate, and Demidov—who has skated twice this week—is on the road to recovery.

Two things.

1. It's easy to say that the initial timeline wasn't met and that there's no need for an update because the timeline was approximate. This is an easy loophole to exploit in the club's new, tailor-made policy.

2. Since when do we assume that a fracture will take, at best, two weeks to heal?

The CH has stated that it will not disclose players' injuries if their season is not over. It also added that the club's primary responsibility will be to protect the players and their privacy.

It's not hard to see that this is a jab at Dan Milstein, who revealed Ivan Demidov's injury.

Extension

If you ask me, what just happened is a panic move. We're stuck with a situation (Demidov) and we're inventing a rule that sounds good, but that doesn't change a thing when you take the time to analyze it.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

We're also assuming that the Canadiens will continue to have Habs players skate in secret—either very early in the morning at the Bell Centre or by locking the doors to the CN Complex in Brossard.

We saw that happen this week.