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Jakob Chychrun, Ryan Dzingel Day-To-Day For Coyotes

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According to the team, Arizona Coyotes defenseman Jakob Chychrun and forward Ryan Dzingel are both day-to-day with upper-body injuries, suffered in Friday’s game against the Florida Panthers.

Both are unavailable tonight as the team plays the second half of a back-to-back at home, this time against Philadelphia.

Chychrun has just seven points through 26 games after back-to-back 10-plus goal seasons. However, he had a long pointless streak to start the year and has been heating up as of late. He’s playing nearly 25 minutes per game, not an easy task for such a flawed Coyotes team.

Dzingel has had injury issues all year, and because of that, he hasn’t found stability in the lineup. Flip-flopping between wing and center, he has just four points through 16 games this season.

Alex Galchenyuk and Cam Dineen likely draw into the lineup in place of Chychrun and Dzingel.

Anaheim Ducks Activate Ryan Getzlaf

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The Anaheim Ducks have activated forward Ryan Getzlaf from injured reserve, according to The Orange County Register’s Elliot Teaford. He could be in for Saturday night’s game against Pittsburgh.

The Ducks captain originally went on injured reserve about a week ago, where he was classified as week-to-week. It’s a much swifter return to the lineup than expected.

Now 36, Getzlaf was enjoying a renaissance year with 20 points in just 23 games prior to his injury. He’s been an integral part of an unexpected resurgence for the 15-8-5 Ducks, who sit second in the Pacific Division.

Buddy Robinson, who’s played in just three games this season and is the only active Ducks forward to average under 10 minutes per game, is a likely candidate to sit out.

Getzlaf’s return is even more important considering the added absence of Adam Henrique, who’d been flanking Getzlaf along with Troy Terry this year. Vinni Lettieri and Sam Steel have filled in for the two of them alongside Terry, so the Ducks will have some lineup shuffling to do with their captain’s return.

Pacific Notes: Stephenson, Canucks, Russell

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After missing Friday’s game against Philadelphia for personal reasons, Vegas Golden Knights center Chandler Stephenson should be available for Sunday’s home tilt against the Minnesota Wild, according to head coach Peter DeBoer. Stephenson’s brought lights-out play for a Vegas team that’s needed him this season with a slew of injuries, producing at a career-best pace with 22 points in 25 games. All that’s been done while playing steep minutes (19:48 a game) and spending time without his usual pair of elite wingers in Max Pacioretty and Mark Stone. That line’s been reunited as Pacioretty and Stone are back healthy, and after Keegan Kolesar filled in down the middle for one game, Stephenson will return to his place atop the center depth chart for Vegas.

More from the Pacific Division:

  • There are some injury updates for the new and improved Vancouver Canucks under Bruce Boudreau, as the new head coach said today that Oliver Ekman-Larsson should be back next week, while Travis Hamonic is expected to miss two to three more weeks. While the team is undefeated under Boudreau, they’re facing a significant list of injuries. However, neither Ekman-Larsson nor Hamonic have been particularly impactful to start the year. Ekman-Larsson has just five points in 26 games to start his Vancouver career, a far cry from his peak of consistent 40-point campaigns. Hamonic has just an assist in nine contests as he’s found his way up and down between the NHL and AHL.
  • Injury news isn’t improving for the Edmonton Oilers defense, as head coach Dave Tippett notes that Kris Russell will be out for a couple of weeks. He joins Duncan Keith and Slater Koekkoek as Edmonton’s inactive blueliners. He’d been playing in an increased role with those injuries, but that responsibility now falls back on the shoulders of young defensemen Philip Broberg and William Lagesson.

Blake Wheeler To Be Out For A While

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Friday’s game against Vancouver got off to a positive start for Jets captain Blake Wheeler as he picked up his first goal of the season.  However, it ended on a much worse note as he left the game early with a lower-body injury and following the game, head coach Paul Maurice told reporters including Sportsnet’s Ken Wiebe that it’s not going to be a short-term issue:

It’s going to be a while. We’ll get him looked at tomorrow. I’m not a doctor, but it’s going to be a while.

We’ll get him healed up, we’ll find other players and we’ll find a way to do it without him.

Winnipeg isn’t scheduled to practice this weekend so a full update with an estimated timeline for Wheeler’s return won’t come until Monday at the earliest.

While the 35-year-old hadn’t scored until last night, he had still been one of their better point producers with his 16 assists leading the team.  Wheeler has still logged heavy minutes – 19:24 per game which is more than a minute higher than last season – which will make replacing him a little more difficult.

The Jets have basically used all of their allowable LTIR for Bryan Little and have still only been able to carry a dozen forwards on the roster, three of which have an AAV at or below the league minimum.  Assuming Wheeler will miss at least 10 games or 24 days, they’ll be able to add him to LTIR which will give them plenty of short-term cap space to recall a replacement forward.  However, trading for one will be out of the question unless he was to be ruled out for the rest of the season as they’d have to get back into cap compliance before being able to activate Wheeler.

Winnipeg only has eight forwards on NHL contracts that aren’t up with the team already.  The most promising of those is winger Cole Perfetti although he won’t be an option for a better part of a month following his loan to Team Canada for the World Juniors yesterday.  Most of their other options are basically only fits for the fourth line so Wheeler’s absence will be a tough one to overcome for a Jets team that is in a very tight battle in the Central Division.

Stars Recall Ben Bishop From Conditioning Loan, Playing Career To End

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Ben Bishop’s attempt to return to the crease for the Stars has come to an end.  The team announced this morning that they’ve recalled the netminder from his conditioning assignment with AHL Texas but that he will remain on Long-Term Injured Reserve (LTIR) due to his current knee injury.  Later in the day, Stars GM Jim Nill told Matthew DeFranks of the Dallas Morning News that Bishop’s playing days are over:

“It’s no secret, he has a degenerative knee injury, and he went down there, he wanted to be a big part of this. He wanted to do everything he could to get back. In the end, by going through the process, going down there and playing, he found out that it’s the end of his career.”

The 35-year-old missed all of last season due to the injury plus the first couple of months of 2021-22.  He made one appearance with Texas and it didn’t go well as he allowed eight goals on 26 shots and clearly, something didn’t go right with his knee with Bishop asking Dallas to end the conditioning loan early and shut him down.  The netminder is scheduled to speak to the media on Tuesday.

His playing days come to an end with 413 games played for five different teams. He was a three-time Vezina Trophy finalist and posted a 2.32 GAA along with a save percentage of .921 along with 33 shutouts.  He is signed through next season with a $4.916MM AAV and will remain on LTIR during that stretch.

From a cap perspective, this lessens their need to try to move veteran goaltender Anton Khudobin.  While he’s clearly the odd man out in their goaltending trio at the moment, they would have needed to clear his contract off the books outright plus free up a bit more room in order to activate Bishop.  With that not happening anymore, they can now afford to be more patient in looking for the right return and will be able to take a player back instead of needing to clear his entire $3.33MM AAV off the books.  Dallas made Khudobin available earlier this month after Jake Oettinger came up from the minors and has been quite dominant in his first seven appearances, posting a 1.52 GAA with a .951 SV%.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

Tyler Toffoli Undergoes Hand Surgery

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Montreal’s injury woes have been an issue all season for them and they’ll now be without one of their top wingers for a while.  The team announced following their morning skate today that Tyler Toffoli has undergone successful hand surgery and will be out of the lineup for eight weeks.

Toffoli is in his second season with the Canadiens and this one hasn’t gone anywhere near as well as his first one did.  Last season, he was one of the higher-scoring wingers in the league, collecting 28 goals in 52 games while chipping in with 14 points in 22 playoff contests.  But as has been the case with many Montreal players, this season has seen him struggle as he has scored just five times in 26 games with his shooting percentage down nearly 10% from a year ago.

The 29-year-old is likely to be out longer than the timeline that the team listed as that basically takes them to the All-Star Break which is immediately followed by the Olympics.  Accordingly, the earliest that he’s likely to return is February 26 versus Ottawa, a little more than three weeks before the trade deadline.  Sportsnet’s Jeff Marek recently listed Toffoli as a trade candidate to watch for with a $4.25MM AAV for two more years after this one, a bit below market value for a top-six winger but he won’t have a lot of time to show he’s back to full strength before teams need to decide whether or not he’s worth acquiring this season.

Montreal will get a bit of help on the injury front tonight as Joel Armia returns from an undisclosed injury that has caused him to miss the last two games.  However, they’re also losing another regular as Arpon Basu of The Athletic notes (Twitter link) that forward Jake Evans is now listed as day-to-day and won’t suit up versus St. Louis.

Blue Jackets Place Adam Boqvist On Injured Reserve

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Young defenseman Adam Boqvist has been sensational for the Columbus Blue Jackets this season, at least when he has been on the ice. For the second time already in 2021-22, that won’t be the case for at least the next week as the club has announced that Boqvist has landed on the injured reserve with an undisclosed upper body injury. Defenseman Jake Christiansen has been recalled to fill Boqvist’s roster spot for the time being.

Acquired from the Chicago Blackhawks in the Seth Jones blockbuster this summer, Boqvist has already shown that he will be a key piece of new-look blue line in Columbus. The eighth overall pick in 2018, Boqvist started to show why he was considered such an elite prospect with his play in Chicago last season, but has taken his game to a new level in Columbus. Boqvist is scoring at a half point-per-game pace, recording nine points in 18 games. He’s also doing so in less than 16 minutes of ice time per night. Boqvist’s six goals is among the top five defenseman in the NHL so far this season and give of those tallies have come in the past two weeks, leading all blue liners in that span. Boqvist has totaled eight points overall in his past nine games.

Unfortunately, that hot streak came to a halt on Thursday night as Boqvist was injured against the Anaheim Ducks and will now miss “at least a week” according to the team. This is Boquist second substantial injury of the season already, as he previously missed six games with an undisclosed lower-body injury in late October and early November. While Boqvist was able to ramp up his production once he returned to full strength, there is no guarantee that he will do the same this time around. Boqvist suffered a broken wrist and a concussion last season in Chicago, missing a total of ten games – which would have been more if not for the end of the regular season. Boqvist has proven his ability on the ice, just not that he can consistently be on the ice. The dilemma for Columbus will be managing his ice time and situational use if he is deemed an injury prone player with maximizing his production given his obvious offensive ability. At just 21 years old, not to mention 5’11” and under 180 pounds, the hope for the Jackets is that Boqvist can continue fill out his frame and shake the injury bug.

With Boqvist on the shelf, Christiansen will get his first shot at the NHL. An undrafted free agent who was a late-blooming puck-mover in the WHL, Christiansen has impressed in two AHL seasons since signing with Columbus. The 22-year-old has 18 points in 21 games with the Cleveland Monsters this season and has more than earned a chance to see what he can do at the top level. With Boqvist’s offense missing from the blue line, Christiansen makes sense as his replacement for the time being, but the young defenseman has a chip on his shoulder and will be looking to make a more long-term impression with the Blue Jackets.

Casey Mittelstadt Undergoes Surgery

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Just as it looked like Casey Mittelstadt was ready to take the next step in his NHL career, disaster has struck. The 23-year-old forward has been out for most of the regular season so far, playing in just one game at the beginning of the year and three more in recent days. Now, after suffering another injury, the Sabres have announced Mittelstadt underwent successful surgery today and is out indefinitely. The club hopes he will play again this season.

It’s been a difficult road for the eighth-overall pick from 2017. Mittelstadt recorded just 39 points in his first 114 NHL games, which were spread out over three seasons. The dynamic playmaker from the University of Minnesota and the U.S. World Junior team was nowhere to be found, as the speed of the professional game swallowed his creativity. Last season, it seemed to be finding a way out, as Mittelstadt recorded 10 goals and 22 points in 41 games. Not the game-changing presence some expected him to become, but a good start for a young player finding his NHL legs.

Now, things have been set back in a big way. Mittelstadt has competed just four times in the first two months of the season and faces another long recovery period. The three-year contract he signed in September that had a chance to be a huge bargain for the Sabres is now a complete unknown once again, with it unclear when he’ll be back in the lineup.

To this point, Mittelstadt has just one goal and no assists on the season. Hopefully, he’ll get a chance to increase those totals by the end of the year.

Goalie Notes: Bernier, Korpisalo, Fucale

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The New Jersey Devils have placed Jonathan Bernier on injured reserve with a lower-body injury, meaning Akira Schmid is on his way up to the big leagues. Bernier last played on December 3 against the Winnipeg Jets, allowing six goals on 32 shots. Overall this season he hasn’t been very busy, appearing in just ten games and posting a .902 save percentage.

Schmid meanwhile has been outstanding for the Utica Comets, posting a .944 and 8-0-2 record in ten games. The 21-year-old netminder is in his first year of professional hockey after spending the last few seasons in the USHL, but looks like the transition will be no problem for his 6’5″ frame. Should Schmid get a chance to play, it would be his NHL debut.

  • Speaking of goaltenders making debuts, Daniil Tarasov has been sent back to the AHL after playing in his first three NHL games. The young netminder was up while Joonas Korpisalo dealt with a non-COVID illness, which he has now recovered from. Korpisalo was activated from injured reserve and will resume his duties alongside Elvis Merzlikins in the Columbus Blue Jackets net. That is of course unless the team makes a trade at some point, one that looks even more likely now that Tarasov has shown he can handle things at the NHL level. The 22-year-old posted a .936 save percentage in his three appearances.
  • Zach Fucale made his own NHL debut earlier this season with the Washington Capitals, posting a 21-save shutout after a long minor league career. He’s back up with the Capitals again, recalled as a precaution with a back-to-back coming up. The team has been dealing with COVID protocols and injuries all season, so having a third goaltender with the group gives them a little insurance in case the worst happens.

Joel Farabee Out Week-To-Week With Upper-Body Injury

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Dec 4: Farabee has been moved to injured reserve, giving the team room to recall Jackson Cates from the AHL. Cates, 24, made his NHL debut last season after signing out of the University of Minnesota-Duluth and has been playing for the Lehigh Valley Phantoms this year.

Dec 3: The Philadelphia Flyers’ nightmare season rolls on, this time with another injury to a key player. Joel Farabee suffered an upper-body injury against the New York Rangers on Wednesday night and will be out on a week-to-week basis. Farabee was not at practice today and the team has recalled Max Willman and Connor Bunnaman under emergency conditions.

Farabee left in the first period of the game after falling awkwardly into the boards, holding his left arm gingerly at his side. To that point, he was tied for the team lead in goals with seven, though his overall impact has been stifled like many of the Flyers forwards this season. With 10 points in 21 games, he was on pace to just barely crack his previous career-high, set at 38 points last season in just 55 games. That doesn’t mean the team won’t miss him though, as he’s still one of the few bright spots in the lineup as they navigate a brutal seven-game losing streak.

The Flyers will likely be going through drastic changes to the core if this season continues the way it has gone so far, but Farabee isn’t going anywhere. The 21-year-old signed a six-year extension in September that will carry a cap hit of $5MM through the 2027-28 season. His continued development is key for the organization and long-term injury would only hinder that. Hopefully, he can get back on the ice in the coming weeks without needing surgery or missing a huge chunk of the season.

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