According to reports coming out of the RDS, the Montreal Canadiens will need to make do without the services of Brian Gionta. He broke a bone in his left foot earlier this month and hasn’t been a part of the lineup for the team’s two recent games.

Now the speedster is out indefinitely and the Habs will certainly miss his speed. They were just starting to stack up some offensive production from Gionta over the past few games, too, so the injury has to hurt the club’s momentum.

“The players will have to raise their game to try to make up for it,” Canadiens head coach Jacques Martin said. “It opens a door for someone. We’ve been waiting for that since the start of the season.”

Gionta had scored four goals and added an assist in his last five games, but prior to that he tallied up a mere five assists through 19 games and only scored one time on the shootout. The Canadiens are hoping that his recent upswing will start a trend on the club, but the injury certainly sets them back a bit.

According to the CBC, the Canadiens activated defenceman Ryan O’Byrne, who hasn’t played since early October due to a knee injury. Mathieu Carle was assigned to the AHL.

Posted by Jordan Richardson.

Tags: brian gionta, injury, Montreal Canadiens

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 at 11:28 pm and is filed under Injuries, Montreal Canadiens, NHL, NHL Notes, Players. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.