Last year, the Montreal Canadiens and the Brampton Beast ended their three-year affiliation. The Beast preferred to align with the Ottawa Senators, upgrading their secondary working agreement from the previous season into a full-fledged primary affiliation. This left the Canadiens as one of five NHL teams without an ECHL club, despite two third-tier teams remaining unaffiliated for the 2018-19 season.
Instead, they began a working relationship with the Maine Mariners, the New York Rangers’ ECHL affiliate, sending several players for stints with the team (Antoine Waked, Michael Pezzetta, Hayden Verbeek, and Adam Plant) as well as placing two players on near-permanent loans to Maine (Ryan Culkin and Morgan Adams-Moisan).