David Reinbacher Out for Four Weeks

It’s time to put an end to the talk of David Reinbacher breaking camp as a member of Montreal’s top six.  The team announced Friday that the blueliner suffered a broken bone in his hand on Thursday and will miss the next four weeks as a result.

It’s the second straight preseason that Reinbacher suffered an injury against the Maple Leafs.  Last preseason, it was a knee injury that caused him to miss the majority of the season as he didn’t return until February.  If nothing else, this timeline is a lot shorter and with Laval’s regular season not starting until October 10th, he’s at least on track to only miss a couple of weeks of game action.

Reinbacher played in just 10 regular season games with the Rocket down the stretch after coming back with the Canadiens opting to be careful with his usage.  However, he was a regular for them in the playoffs, getting into all 13 games where he logged big minutes and even chipped in with six points.

The fifth overall pick in 2023, Reinbacher hasn’t had a great couple of post-draft seasons because of injuries but it’s clear he remains a big part of Montreal’s future plans, especially after they moved Logan Mailloux, another right-shot defender, back in July.  Long term, they likely project him to be behind Noah Dobson on the right side of Montreal’s back end.

However, this injury only cements that Reinbacher won’t be debuting behind Dobson in October, an outcome that didn’t seem overly likely in the first place.  At this point, he needs to get as much game action as possible to make up for some lost development time and fortunately, this injury shouldn’t cause him to miss too many outings.

While Reinbacher will technically begin the season on injured reserve with the Canadiens, he won’t count against the cap while on season-opening IR because he wasn’t on the active NHL roster at any point in 2024-25.  (He was on season-opening IR until February but that doesn’t count.)  Once cleared to return, he’ll be sent down to Laval.