If and when Farnham plays for the Canadiens, who have road games in Nashville tonight and Dallas on Wednesday, he would become the 10th different player to have appeared in games for both St. John’s and Montreal so far in 2016-17, joining defencemen Mark Barberio, Joel Hanley, Zach Redmond and Ryan Johnston, and forwards Sven Andrighetto, Chris Terry, Daniel Carr, Michael McCarron and Charles Hudon. All but Hanley, Andrighetto and Hudon are still with the injury-hampered Canadiens.
Farnham has nine points (four goals, five assists) in 31 games with St. John’s so far this season, mostly as a checking/energy line forward. However, of late he had found himself on the second line for St. John’s, thinned out by all those call-ups and injuries of its own.
Despite those roster challenges, the IceCaps have gone 4-1-2 in their last seven games, all on the road, with their only setback coming New Year’s Eve in a wild 7-5 loss to Syracuse Crunch. That swing continues Wednesday night in Albany, against the Devils.
Farnham spent all of last season in the NHL, mostly with the New Jersey Devils, although his big-league experience may only be one reason for his recall. It also allowed Montreal to return Andrighetto to St. John’s as the Swiss forward’s back-and-forth shuttle continues.
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It’s becoming clearer the Canadiens are determined to keep Andrighetto’s time on an NHL roster to a minimum. Once he reaches 30 days cumulative with Montreal (whether he plays or not), Andrighetto would have to clear waivers in order to be returned to St. John’s. If he simply was going to be a spare forward on the road trip, the Canadiens might prefer to use Farnham in the role and stop the 30-day clock ticking in Andrighetto.
Then again, he could be back with Montreal just like that. After all, Andrighetto has been recalled, then sent down, four times in the last four weeks, although a couple of those were simply moves on paper.
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By the way, the IceCaps actually experienced more transactions — 60 in all — between the start of the 2015-16 campaign and Dec. 31, 2015, although there have been more recalls to Montreal this season, 17 in all.
Some other notes in our latest edition of IceCaps by the numbers:
• Forward Mathieu Gagnon, signed to an AHL contract by the IceCaps, has been returned to the ECHL’s Brampton Beast. Gagnon has been promoted to St. John’s three times this season, but has yet to play a game with the IceCaps.
• Also heading back to Brampton is goalie Bryan Pitton, who was the backup to rookie Charlie Lingdren over the last three games while veteran Yann Danis had an extended holiday break. Lindgren has played seven of St. John’s last eight games, including all three since Christmas, although it would have been interesting to see what would have happened had Zach Fucale, the Beast’s No. 1 netminder, been available the last couple of weeks and not backstopping Canada to a gold medal at the Spengler tournament in Switzerland.
• The IceCaps’ loss Saturday in Syracuse marked the first time in 23 games the team scored more than four goals in a game. It also may have been the team’s craziest contest of the season, in part because there were seven goals scored in a stretch of less than 10 minutes in the opening period, the first four by Syracuse in a 2:47 span. Then, after three minutes of no scoring by either side, St. John’s tallied three times in just under four minutes.
• Saturday’s contest also was a tangly, chippy affair, with 96 penalty minutes assessed, 64 of them to St. John’s, including 24 to Stefan Matteau, who got a game misconduct after fighting twice in the first period. Those numbers pushed St. John’s to 606 penalty minutes this season and an average of 18.36 per game, in both cases the most in the AHL.
