‘”There were so many hurdles. There were so many things that just didn’t line up the way we had in mind,” said Staal, who was traded to the Canadiens on Friday for two draft picks. “The reality is we started OK. We had an up and down kind of first two weeks or so. We were kind of finding our game, filling our roles and then we got hit with Covid. It went through our room like wildfire and it wasn’t great. Two weeks of guys battling that and a couple guys battling it pretty hard. It was difficult. When we we came back after that we never found any footing.”‘