Devils center Cody Glass will miss a significant chunk of time with the upper-body injury that held him out of Wednesday’s win over the Wild. Head coach Sheldon Keefe told reporters today, including Amanda Stein of the team’s website, that it’s “not a day-to-day situation” and that he hopes his absence is “no more than a couple of weeks,” though it could be longer.
Glass sustained the injury at some point during his last appearance on Tuesday against the Maple Leafs, but played through it, Keefe said earlier in the week. It’s been an otherwise fine start to the season for the 26-year-old, who signed a two-year, $5MM contract with New Jersey this summer after rumors he might not receive a qualifying offer. He’s got a pair of goals in six games while logging a plus-one rating with good possession impacts, ranking eighth on the team with a 52.5 CF% at even strength. He’s averaging 12:34 per game, has factored in on the Devils’ second power play unit, and has won 40.3% of his faceoffs while factoring in as their third-line center, most often slotting in between Connor Brown and Arseny Gritsyuk.
Another long-term injury puts the Devils in a crunch. Even with Evgenii Dadonov, Johnathan Kovacevic, and Zack MacEwen on long-term injured reserve, they don’t have the cap space to make a corresponding recall if they place Glass on IR. As a result, the Devils might be forced to dress 11 forwards and seven defensemen if there’s another injury to their forward group and, in an extreme situation, could play a skater short for a game before being granted an emergency exception by the league to recall a player with a cap hit of $875,000 or less.
In addition to those three, New Jersey also has depth center Juho Lammikko on injured reserve and goaltender Jacob Markström unavailable with a lower-body issue, although he remains on the active roster. They also just got Stefan Noesen back in the lineup after he missed the first six games while recovering from groin surgery. Despite all that adversity, the Devils are 6-1-0 – rattling off six wins in a row – and sit atop the Eastern Conference. Only the Golden Knights are scoring more than New Jersey’s four goals per game, and both their special teams are top-five in the league.
With Glass out, Dawson Mercer shifted over to center the third line against Minnesota and will presumably stay there for the foreseeable future. While he’s spent most of his time in the NHL on the wing, he’s a natural center and has done better in the faceoff dot (56.0%) this season than Glass. He’s also off to the best start of his five-year career with three goals and seven points in seven games.