The Nashville Predators announced ahead of their game tonight against Winnipeg that they’ve reassigned forward Ozzy Wiesblatt and defenseman Kevin Gravel to the Milwaukee Admirals of the American Hockey League. The news could mean that forward Tommy Novak and defenseman Adam Wilsby are ready to return to the lineup after missing several games due to injury.
Gravel heads back to the AHL after he was recalled yesterday, the Admirals captain has had two recalls this season with his other stint coming from December 12th through December 17th. In three games with Nashville this season, the 32-year-old has a single assist while averaging 18:19 of ice time per game. Down in the AHL, Gravel has a goal and four assists in 25 games with Milwaukee.
Wiesblatt is just a week removed from getting his first NHL call-up, which resulted in him dressing in two games with the Predators. The 22-year-old made his NHL debut on Friday against Vancouver and played again on Saturday night against Calgary. Neither game went particularly well for the former first-round pick as Wiesblatt was held pointless and was dramatically overmatched against NHL competition. Wiesblatt averaged 10:12 of ice time over the two contests and posted four hits with a blocked shot, however, his underlying numbers were ugly as Nashville controlled possession just 20.6% of the time he was on the ice.
As bad as Wiesblatt’s CF% was, it was a small sample size of just two games, and his deployment was complicated as he started just 7.1% of his shifts in the offensive zone.