After Wednesday night’s game against the Winnipeg Jets, the Montreal Canadiens announced that they had sent Florian Xhekaj and Adam Engstrom back down to the Laval Rocket.
The two players were healthy scratches for the game, and given that the Rocket has a back-to-back on Friday and Saturday against the Belleville Senators, while the Canadiens have a day off on Thursday, sending them down last night made sense. They’ll get to practice with Pascal Vincent’s team on Thursday before taking on Belleville on Friday.
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In five games, Xhekaj put up one point, took four shots, spent seven minutes in the penalty box, had a minus-one differential and landed nine hits. As for Engstrom, he played two games, was held off the scoresheet, took two shots and landed a hit.
Hilarious reaction of mom and family as 🇦🇱Florian Xhekaj beats the opponent on the ice rink 🏒 pic.twitter.com/wZabXGCMya
— Epirote Report 🌕 (@EpiroteReport) December 2, 2025
This means that Jarred Davidson, who played on Wednesday, remains with the Canadiens for now at least. The 23-year-old has now played six games with the Habs and has yet to register a point, but he has landed 13 hits, spent six minutes in the sin bin and has a minus-two differential.
While the news will no doubt come as a disappointment for Xhekaj and Engstrom, it makes sense to send them back down if they’re not going to play. At this stage of their career, they are still developing and need as much ice time as possible.
It will be interesting to see how things unfold for the Canadiens now. Over the last couple of weeks, there have been so many scouts at the Bell Centre that one can wonder who they might have been observing. Did the Canadiens want to show what Engstrom could do at the NHL level? Or were they taking stock in readiness for the decisions that will no doubt have to be made about the blueline sooner or later?
When everyone is healthy, Arber Xhekaj and Jayden Struble share the sixth defenseman role, but when youngsters from Laval are ready for the NHL, someone will have to be moved. David Reinbacher and Engstrom are both close to being NHL-ready, and when they are, something will have to give.
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