Jannik Hansen Out For Up To Six Weeks
The Vancouver Canucks announced today via Twitter that right wing Jannik Hansen is expected to miss 4 – 6 weeks with a knee injury suffered Friday night. Hansen was apparently hurt on a knee-to-knee hit from Mathieu Perreault of Winnipeg. Replays show the hit may also have been late but the league later said that no further action will be taken against the Jets forward.
Hansen, obviously feeling the hit was illegal, immediately dropped his gloves and went after Perreault who refused the invitation.
The Danish forward has appeared in only 18 games this season and has five goals and four assists while averaging 16:11 of ice time per contest. Hansen was starting to heat up and had tallied three times in his previous three games.
The Canucks had been searching much of the season for a right wing to skate with the Sedins, Daniel and Henrik, and Hansen had been filling that role of late. Prized free agent acquisition Loui Eriksson previously failed his audition with the twins before the team turned to Hansen. The 10-year veteran has spent his entire career with the Canucks after being selected by the club in the 9th round of the 2004 draft. Hansen will be a UFA after the 2017-18 season and is currently in the third year of a four-year, $10MM deal he inked with the Canucks in September of 2013.
Penguins Ink Mike Sullivan To Three-Year Extension
Per several reports, Pittsburgh bench boss Mike Sullivan has been signed to a three-year extension. Dave Molinari of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that the deal runs through the 2019-20 season while financial terms were not disclosed.
Sullivan took over for Mike Johnston last December and the results were immediate, and dominant. He coached the Penguins to their second Stanley Cup since 2009 and their fourth in team history. Sullivan also has the team sitting second in the Metropolitan Division, and second in the Eastern Conference with 49 points.
The Penguins released a statement as well, and general manager Jim Rutherford said the following:
“Mike did the best coaching job in the NHL last season,” Penguins general manager Jim Rutherford said in a statement. “He continues to be a terrific coach and we are happy to give him a well-deserved extension.”
Tyler Pitlick Out For The Season
The Edmonton Oilers will be without right winger Tyler Pitlick for the remainder of the season as the team announced Friday that he has suffered a torn ACL. The injury occurred in the third period against St. Louis on Monday night.
Pitlick, a second round pick of the Oilers back in 2010 (31st overall), was in his first full season with the team and had been providing them with good production from the fourth line. He had eight goals (tied for fifth on the team) and three assists despite averaging just under ten minutes per game.
In his career, the 25 year old has played in 58 NHL games, scoring 11 goals while adding three assists.
At least for the time being, the injury could open up a spot for rookie Jesse Puljujarvi to play more often although he’s expected to be scratched for Taylor Beck tonight. The fourth overall pick back in June has played in just four games this month while being a healthy scratch for the other seven. The Oilers declined to loan him for the World Juniors and if this injury doesn’t result in much more action for him in the short-term, a stint in the minors might not be a bad idea. As he wasn’t drafted out of the CHL, he is eligible to be loaned despite being under 20.
One other player who should see more action as a result of Pitlick’s injury is veteran Matt Hendricks who has played in just 11 games this season due to a lower body injury while being scratched frequently. It was reported earlier this month that he was on the trade block. A more regular role for him may make it a bit easier to move his $1.85MM cap hit closer to the trade deadline.
Jimmy Howard To Miss 4-6 Weeks With MCL Sprain
The Detroit Red Wings cannot catch a break. Veteran netminder Jimmy Howard is expected to miss 4-6 weeks with a mild MCL sprain tweets MLive’s Brendan Savage. Helene St. James reports the news as well. This couldn’t be worse for a team struggling to find consistency.
Howard has been a pleasant surprise for the Red Wings this season, but recently has sputtered due to injury and poor team play. Howard was injured Tuesday night when Wings defenseman Nick Jensen collided with him during a mad scramble at the net.
After being the subject of trade rumors all summer, Howard responded with one of his better seasons in recent memory. Despite his sparkling play, Howard has been the victim of a team that cannot score, as his wins-loss record indicates.
Howard is 5-7-1 this season with a .934 save percentage and a 1.96 GAA.
David Legwand Announces His Retirement
Long-time NHL center David Legwand has announced his retirement at the age of 36 via the NHL Players’ Association.
Legwand was the inaugural draft pick for the Nashville Predators as he was the second overall pick back in the 1998 NHL Entry Draft. He spent parts of 15 seasons with the team, scoring 210 goals while adding 356 assists in 956 games. He remains Nashville’s franchise leader in goals, assists, and points as well as games played and game winning goals (41).
At the 2014 trade deadline, he was dealt to Detroit in exchange for Calle Jarnkrok, Patrick Eaves, and a second round pick. Legwand didn’t fare particularly well with the Red Wings, collecting just 11 points in 26 games (regular season and playoffs combined) before departing as a free agent that summer.
He played his final two seasons in the Atlantic Division with Ottawa in 2014-15 and Buffalo in 2015-16. With the Senators, he had 27 points in 80 games and was dealt along with goaltender Robin Lehner to Buffalo in the 2015 offseason in exchange for a first round draft pick. However, he struggled considerably with the Sabres with just 14 points in 79 games, the lowest full-season total of his career while playing under ten minutes per game for the first time.
For his career, Legwand played in 1,136 games between the four teams, scoring 228 goals and 390 assists along with 551 penalty minutes.
Although he is hanging up his skates, Legwand won’t be leaving hockey altogether as he is a part owner of the Sarnia Sting of the Ontario Hockey League.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
Ben Bishop Out 3-4 Weeks With Lower-Body Injury
Following our report that Ben Bishop had left the Tampa Bay game last night with an apparent right leg injury, the Lightning have announced that he’ll be out for three to four weeks with a lower-body injury. The team had already recalled Kristers Gudlevskis from Syracuse to replace him.
Even taking the optimistic timeline of three weeks means Bishop will be unavailable for the team’s next nine games, placing an even heavier burden on Andrei Vasilevskiy. The young netminder has already made 12 starts this year, well on his way to break his career high of 21 set last season. Though Bishop was still technically the starter, the three-year extension that Vasilevskiy signed this summer indicated that the team is ready to hand him the reins.
For Bishop, this is just another hit to his upcoming free agency that was already being affected with his play. Last year’s Vezina runner-up was having the worst season of his career, carrying a mediocre .909 save percentage into Wednesday. While he’s likely to bounce back somewhat, being on the wrong side of 30, enduring injury and seeing a downward trend in performance are three pretty big red flags.
It’ll be interesting to see what the Lightning do over this stretch, as it contains two back-to-back situations. Joe Smith of the Tampa Bay Times wouldn’t be surprised to see Adam Wilcox get a chance in one of those games, as the 24-year old is dominating at the AHL level.
Islanders Sign Stephen Gionta
The New York Islanders announced today that they have signed veteran forward Stephen Gionta to a one-year, two-way contract. Gionta had been playing on an AHL contract with the Islanders’ affiliate, the Bridgeport Sound Tigers, but will now have a shot at getting back to regular NHL minutes. New York has recalled Gionta following the finalization of his new deal.
Gionta’s relationship with the Islanders began way back in August, when the small, shifty center agreed to a professional tryout with the team. While playing a preseason game in September, Gionta broke his foot and was released from his PTO with an injury settlement. Following his recovery, Gionta inked a minor-league deal with the Tigers to get back in to playing condition. In seven games in Bridgeport, Gionta had just one goal and two assists, but did enough to show the Islanders brass watching that he was back to health and ready to contribute at the highest level.
The younger sibling of Brian Gionta, Stephen followed in his brother’s footsteps and played college hockey at Boston College. While Brian, a third-round pick of the New Jersey Devils in 1998, was busy leading the Devils throughout the mid-2000’s, Stephen signed with the club out of college and began working his way toward the NHL. After Brian left to sign with Montreal Canadiens in 2009, Stephen was able to fill one of the holes up front left, in part, by his departure in 2010-11. However, Gionta didn’t fully take over as a starter in New Jersey until 2013-14. Gionta scored 50 points in 270 games over parts of six seasons with the Devils, but will be remembered by fans for his dominance at the AHL level more, where he was the Lowell Devils all-time leader in games played and then the inaugural captain of the re-located Albany Devils. Capable of mentoring young players at the AHL level while also contributing in all aspects of the game at the NHL level, Gionta is a savvy signing by the Islanders.
Jimmy Howard “Out For A While”
It was a rough night for goaltenders in Tampa Bay last night, as both Ben Bishop and Jimmy Howard left the game with lower-body injuries.
While we don’t yet know Bishop’s status, Howard has been placed on seven-day IR. Per Ted Kulfan of the Detroit News, Red Wings GM Ken Holland said Howard will be “out for a while. Not sure how long.”
The length of Howard’s recovery will depend on how his body reacts in the next few days, according to Holland. It’s a tough loss for the Red Wings, as Howard has the fourth-best save percentage in the NHL this season, after his play had regressed over the past three years. The Red Wings’ expected starter this season, Petr Mrazek, has struggled so far with just an 0.899 SV%, but does have a winning record, which is something Howard doesn’t have, despite his excellent numbers.
In the meantime, Detroit has recalled Jared Coreau from Grand Rapids of the AHL. Coreau has appeared in one NHL game, allowing four goals in a 5-3 loss against Pittsburgh. He boasts an 11-6-0 record with the Griffins, with a 0.924 SV% and a 2.18 GAA.
The Red Wings currently sit in sixth place in the Atlantic Division and are nine points out of the final wildcard spot in the Eastern Conference.
Jaromir Jagr Ties Mark Messier For Second-Most Points
Jaromir Jagr played his first NHL game on October 5, 1990 in Washington. He scored the first goal and point of his Hall of Fame career two nights later at home versus the New Jersey Devils.
So far, 766 players have played in the NHL this season. Just 455 of those, or 58%, were born before the end of 1990. Jagr has played against players born from 1951 (Guy Lafleur) to 1998 (Patrik Laine). Yet he’s still here, and reached an incredible milestone on Tuesday night: Jagr is now tied with Mark Messier for second all-time in NHL scoring.
With three assists against the Sabres, Jagr now has 755 goals, 1,132 assists, and 1,887 points. That’s 524 points more than the next highest active player, Joe Thornton. The 45-year-old Jagr is now playing in his twenty-third NHL season, and has played for eight teams.
The new top five for all-time points looks like this, until Jagr gets his next:
1. Wayne Gretzky – 2,857 points in 1487 games
T2. Jaromir Jagr – 1,887 points in 1662 games
T2. Mark Messier – 1,887 points in 1756 games
3. Gordie Howe – 1,850 points in 1767 games
4. Ron Francis – 1,798 points in 1731 games
5. Marcel Dionne – 1,771 points in 1348 games
Jagr has said that he wants to play until he’s at least 50-years-old. Should he average 50 points from now until then, he would end up in the neighborhood of 2,150 points. While he would still be 700 points behind Gretzky, he would be the first, and likely only NHLer to ever surpass Gretzky’s assist total. The first years of fantasy hockey pools had a rule: no one could take Gretzky, it was either his goals or his assists. That rule was there for a good reason, as Gretzky still has more assists than any other player in history has points, with 1,963. TSN’s Frank Seravelli wrote that Jagr would need to start another Hall of Fame career to even come close to Gretzky, but says “finishing second only to Gretzky, though, is sort of like being first among the rest of the nearly 6,000 other mere mortals to play in the NHL.”
While it may seem like a longshot for anyone to play until the age of 50, Jagr is still having fun. He’s brought back his legendary mullet from the 1990s and is still one of the most dedicated players in the league when it comes to staying in shape. He once told Sportsnet Magazine:
“The time between when I quit hockey and I die, I want it to be the shortest. It’s not going to be as exciting, that time. So as long as I can play, that’s what I’m doing. If I can play ’til I die, that’s what I will do. What else are you gonna do?”
Matthew Lombardi Retires
It’s a name that hasn’t been heard in the NHL in a few years, and now never will again. Former two-way specialist and long-time Calgary Flames center Matthew Lombardi announced his retirement from pro hockey this weekend at the age of 34. The defensive forward has played the past three seasons with Geneve-Servette HC in the Swiss National League A.
Lombardi was once a rising star in the NHL. A third-round pick by the Flames in 2002, fresh off of a 130-point season for the QMJHL’s Victoriaville Tigres, Lombardi quickly became a highly regarded NHL prospect. He made his league debut in 2003-04, garnering Calder consideration as he scored 29 points and quickly established himself as a complete, defensively responsible player. In 2006-07, Lombardi put together his first 20-goal season as part of a 46-point effort. Altogether, Lombardi had 167 points in 347 games with the Flames and led the team in shorthanded time on ice and shorthanded goals during that span. However, by the NHL Trade Deadline in 2009, Lombardi had not progressed the way that Calgary had hoped. In need of more talent down the middle, the Flames traded Lombardi along with Brandon Prust and a first-round pick that would become Brandon Gormley to the Phoenix Coyotes for Olli Jokinen. Ironically, in the 2008-09 season split between Calgary and Phoenix, Lombardi matched his career high of 46 points and then topped it in his 2009-10 season in the desert with 53 points. Meanwhile, Jokinen performed worse on a point-per-game basis in the latter half of 2008-09 than Lombardi and had just 50 points in 2009-10 and was traded out of Calgary. Unfortunately, Lombardi was unable to keep besting his career bests. After signing a three-year, $10.5MM deal with the Nashville Predators in 2010, Lombardi suffered a concussion in just the second game of the season and missed the entire 2010-11 campaign. He would never suit up for the Predators again, as they traded he and Cody Franson to the Toronto Maple Leafs the following summer. Lombardi struggled to return to his pre-concussion performance level in Toronto, scoring just 18 points to the tune of -19 in 2011-12. Even when traded back to Arizona, where he had enjoyed the best year of his career, Lombardi struggled, scoring just eight points in 21 games as a part-time player for the Coyotes before being traded yet again, this time to the Anaheim Ducks.
Looking for a jump start to a career that had grown cold, Lombardi headed overseas to Switzerland in 2013 to play with the NLA’s Geneve-Servette. In his first year, Lombardi became a fan-favorite with a team-best 50 points in 46 games. However, injuries have slowed him down the past two years as he’s played in just 53 games. Yet, Lombardi continued to play with a scoring touch and a dominant defensive edge when active and was a leader for the team. Unsure about his future, Lombardi took the summer to decide on his commitment to hockey before calling it a career this weekend. Although he may not be as recognizable a name as some, Lombardi played a strong all-around game and had the potential to be ever better. Although that ceiling was never reached, Lombardi should be remembered for the success he did have and admired for always striving to be better.