Hurricanes at Canadiens preview

HURRICANES (11-9-3) at CANADIENS (11-8-5)
7:30 p.m. ET; TSN2, RDS, FS-CR, NHL.TV

The 33-year-old defenseman, named Montreal's captain Oct. 1, will play his first game since Dec. 16, 2017. He had arthroscopic surgery June 19 to repair a torn meniscus in his right knee. That followed surgery March 13 to repair a torn tendon in his left foot.
The Canadiens are 0-2-2 during a four-game losing streak and have scored two goals or fewer in three straight games.
Goalie Curtis McElhinney will start for Carolina, which is 3-1-0 in its past four games.
McElhinney is 3-0-0 with a 1.33 goals-against-average and .960 save percentage in his past three starts. The Hurricanes have allowed two goals or fewer in four of their past six games.

Players to watch

Hurricanes forward Sebastian Aho has eight points (three goals, five assists) in his past eight games.
Canadiens forward Jonathan Drouin has 10 points (five goals, five assists) in his past nine games.

They said it

"Really it's the first time where we've had three [goalies] that we could go to. It's a nice luxury for me to know that now we have some depth at that position; it's not an ideal situation for those guys, and we understand that. So we'll have to figure that out but it's nice to have three guys you can count on." -- Hurricanes coach Rod Brind'Amour
"Carolina is a pretty aggressive team, they're going to come at us hard. We need to be sharp with our decision-making and we need to be quick with our puck decisions." -- Canadiens coach Claude Julien

Hurricanes projected lineup

Warren Foegele -- Jordan Staal -- Justin Williams
Micheal Ferland -- Sebastian Aho -- Teuvo Teravainen
Andrei Svechnikov -- Lucas Wallmark -- Jordan Martinook
Brock McGinn -- Victor Rask -- Phillip Di Giuseppe
Jaccob Slavin -- Dougie Hamilton
Calvin de Haan -- Justin Faulk
Jake Bean -- Trevor van Riemsdyk
Curtis McElhinney
Petr Mrazek
Scratched: Scott Darling, Valentin Zykov
Injured: Haydn Fleury (concussion), Brett Pesce (lower body)

Canadiens projected lineup

Jonathan Drouin -- Max Domi -- Andrew Shaw
Tomas Tatar -- Phillip Danault -- Brendan Gallagher
Charles Hudon -- Jesperi Kotkaniemi -- Artturi Lehkonen
Nicolas Deslauriers -- Michael Chaput -- Kenny Agostino
David Schlemko -- Shea Weber
Victor Mete -- Jordie Benn
Brett Kulak -- Jeff Petry
Carey Price
Antti Niemi
Scratched: Mike Reilly, Xavier Ouellet, Matthew Peca
Injured: Noah Juulsen (facial fracture), Paul Byron (lower body), Joel Armia (lower body), Nikita Scherbak (lower body)

Status report

Bean will make his NHL debut. He had 11 points (three goals, eight assists) in 21 games with Charlotte of the American Hockey League. … The Canadiens assigned defenseman Karl Alzner to Laval of the AHL.

Stat pack

Svechnikov has three points (one goal, two assists) in three games. … Domi has no points in the past two games after having 15 (six goals, nine assists) during an 11-game point streak. Shaw has 11 points (six goals, five assists) in his past nine games. He needs one goal for 100 in the NHL, and one point for 200.