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Canadiens reported to be making changes to training staff
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Tony Marinaro of The Sick Podcast reported Tuesday evening on Twitter that the Canadiens have fired Donald Balmforth, the team’s chief physiotherapist, and Graham Rynbend, the chief athletic therapist.
J.F. Chaumont of the Journal de Montréal reported that the Canadiens confirmed the report
. When contacted by the Montreal Gazette, Chantal Machabée — the Canadiens’ vice-president of communications — said the team would not be making an official announcement about the status of Balmforth and Rynbend.
Balmforth just completed his second season with the Canadiens, while Rynbend has been with the team for 19 seasons.
The Canadiens led the NHL this season in man-games lost to injury with 751, breaking the league record they set the previous season with 720 man-games lost.
Jeff Gorton, the Canadiens’ executive vice-president of hockey operations, was asked about the injury problems at the end of the regular season when the team finished 28th in the overall NHL standings with a 31-45-6 record, missing the playoffs for the second straight season.
“I would say that our first dive is today to start to go through the process with the players and our coaches,” Gorton said. “The next few days we’ll sit down with everybody in the organization. It’s something that we understand we led the league in man-games last year and I think we broke the record this year. So we’re pretty mindful of it and we’ll spend a lot of time trying to figure out where we got to get better. It’s definitely something not lost on us.”
Gorton added that players not being honest with the medical staff about their injuries can also be a problem.
“You’d be surprised how often it happens where guys get hurt and you don’t get information right away,” Gorton said. “Listen, I think we’re all mindful, we’re all in discussion about what’s going on with the injuries in our process and we’re going to go through it and review it. When you have this many injuries I do think luck was not on our side here. But we also have to look at everything else, too, and we’re going to do that. Certainly when a player plays on a broken foot you don’t like to hear that and we will talk to our players about being a little more forthright with us. But I think you’d be surprised how often some of these guys are playing hurt.”
GM Kent Hughes added at the time that the Canadiens would have to do a better job of protecting the players from themselves when it comes to dealing with injuries.
Sean Monahan tried to play on a broken foot early this season and ended up missing the last 57 games as a result.
He also required surgery for a torn groin as a result of compensating for playing on the broken foot. Monahan was limited to 25 games, posting 6-11-17 totals.
Brendan Gallagher broke his ankle blocking a shot during a game on Nov. 9 and then played eight more games with the broken ankle
before sitting out 13 games. He broke his ankle again during his third game back in the lineup. Gallagher was limited to 37 games, posting 8-6-14 totals.
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