Philipp Grubauer Placed On Injured Reserve
The Seattle Kraken have lost their starting goaltender, as Philipp Grubauer was placed on injured reserve today. Grubauer was injured in last Friday’s game against the Colorado Avalanche, leaving Martin Jones to start (and lose) on Sunday. The team recalled Joey Daccord to give them another goaltender, and that’s the tandem the team will have to go with for the time being.
Grubauer, 30, was arguably the worst goaltender in the league last season, posting an .889 save percentage in 55 appearances. That was a stark difference from his career totals, which to that point had him sitting near the best save percentages of all-time with a .920 and a Vezina Trophy finalist the year prior.
Unfortunately, it didn’t seem like an aberration when this season began. Grubauer was shelled for five goals on 27 shots in his first game, and another five on 34 shots in his second start. Even the two goals on 19 shots before leaving the Colorado game had him as a sub .900 netminder, something the team certainly wasn’t expecting when they signed him to a six-year, $35.4MM contract in the summer of 2021.
Even worse, he still may have been their best option. Jones, 33, hasn’t posted a save percentage over .900 since 2017-18, and is now sitting at .860 for this season. There’s no way that the Kraken can stay competitive with that kind of goaltending, meaning either Daccord is going to need to take over, Grubauer is going to need to get healthy and back to form, or the team is going to have to make a change.
Chris Driedger, the team’s other goaltender who was meant to form an impressive tandem with Grubauer, tore his ACL while playing at the World Championship earlier this year. He is expected to be out through January at least, with the recovery period likely being even longer than that. After spending even more money in the offseason, with veteran additions like Oliver Bjorkstrand and Andre Burakovsky, the Kraken are clearly trying to contend in the Pacific Division.
At this point, it’s hard to imagine that given the goaltending they have received so far – especially now that Grubauer is on the shelf.
Justin Danforth To Undergo Surgery
The Columbus Blue Jackets have officially activated Patrik Laine, but buried in the press release is some less positive news. Justin Danforth is headed for surgery next Monday to repair a torn labrum. He is expected to make a full recovery in six months, meaning he’ll be out for most of the season, if not all of it.
Danforth, 29, was a great story of perseverance, working his way up through the ECHL, European leagues, and the AHL before making his NHL debut last season at the age of 28. He even scored ten goals and 14 points in 45 games and earned himself a full-time spot with the team this year. He was off to a good start too, with two goals and three points in his first five games, before being injured early in his sixth.
Now, facing a recovery period of six months, his career is in jeopardy once again. The undersized forward did sign a two-year, one-way contract this summer, but there’s no telling what his game will be like when he comes back from this long absence. Hopefully, he can go right back to the mix of in-your-face energy and skill that he had brought to this point, offering positional and playstyle versatility.
Layoffs this long can quickly turn into opportunities for other players though and with so many talented young forwards in the Blue Jackets system, there’s no guarantee that Danforth returns to an open spot. All he can do now is work on his rehab and try to come back with the same level of play that he left with.
St. Louis Blues Sign Tyler Pitlick; Move Pavel Buchnevich To IR
After skating on a professional tryout to this point, Tyler Pitlick has finally earned an NHL contract with the St. Louis Blues. The team now has roster space to sign the veteran forward as Pavel Buchnevich has been moved to injured reserve. Pitlick will earn $750K this season on the one-year, one-way deal.
It was always a bit of a surprise that Pitlick couldn’t find a contract this summer, given it’s been six years since he stepped foot in the minor leagues. The 30-year-old forward is coming off a roller-coaster season that began with him getting claimed in the expansion draft by the Seattle Kraken, then traded to the Calgary Flames, and eventually swapped to the Montreal Canadiens as part of the Tyler Toffoli deal.
That tumultuous season led to just five points for the physical forward, not exactly what the Flames were hoping for when they used a fourth-round pick to nab him from the Kraken.
Now, with the Blues dealing with some injuries up front, Pitlick’s patience and hard work have paid off. He’s joining a group that is one of the most physical in the league, with a head coach who rewards the players that work hard and are willing to put their bodies on the line. It’s been that kind of career for Pitlick, who has racked up 659 hits in 325 regular season games, while chipping in 48 goals along the way.
A career-high 14 of those came with the Dallas Stars in 2017-18 but there’s no point really expecting that kind of offensive output at this point. Instead, he’ll give the group another hard-nosed, defensively-minded winger that can move around the lineup.
For Buchnevich, his IR placement is retroactive to his last game, meaning he can come off as soon as he’s ready to play. He and Brandon Saad both missed practice today, opening this opportunity for Pitlick to get back in the mix.
James Van Riemsdyk To Undergo Surgery
The Philadelphia Flyers will be without James van Riemsdyk for the next while, as head coach John Tortorella announced today the veteran winger will have finger surgery on Friday. While Tortorella doesn’t think it is “season-ending”, as Giana Han of the Philadelphia Inquirer reports, there won’t be a real timeline until after the procedure.
On Cam Atkinson, another injured Flyers forward, Tortorella explained that while he doesn’t expect it to be a month-to-month thing, Atkinson isn’t ready to practice yet.
After a nice start to the season, things weren’t nearly as rosy in Philadelphia on Sunday. The team was shutout 3-0 by the San Jose Sharks, while Travis Konecny and Kevin Hayes were both benched in the third period. Tortorella is clearly making an impact on the team (one way or another) but the loss of van Riemsdyk will test their forward group even more.
The 33-year-old forward was off to a good start with five points in his first five games, before exiting just five shifts into his sixth. A free agent at the end of the year, van Riemsdyk still has the ability to put the puck in the net and is coming off his seventh 20+ goal season in 2021-22. An injury like this will certainly not help any thought of another multi-year contract on the open market, especially because of how important his hands are to his overall game. Not the fleetest of foot, van Riemsdyk has always scored from close to (or in) the blue paint of the crease.
For his and the Flyers’ sake, hopefully, this surgery doesn’t take away any of that in-tight touch. Given how long he’ll be out, the Flyers could move van Riemsdyk to long-term injured reserve to gain more flexibility, though they already have $7MM of that space with Ryan Ellis and Patrick Brown on the shelf.
Patrik Laine Set To Return For Columbus Blue Jackets
The Columbus Blue Jackets are now 3-4 on the year, after an impressive victory over the New York Rangers on Sunday. They will now start a two-game homestand starting with the Arizona Coyotes this evening and received some great news this morning. Patrik Laine is ready to get back into the starting lineup, skating with Boone Jenner and Johnny Gaudreau at this morning’s skate.
Laine, 24, was injured in the first game, less than eight minutes into his season. He had already scored, something that will happen quite a few more times this year, especially if he’s hitting the ice across from Gaudreau on a regular basis. The enigmatic winger has settled into his own in Columbus, scoring 56 points in 56 games last season and signing a four-year, $34.8MM deal to stick around.
The Metropolitan Division is wide open to start the year, with just three points separating first from seventh. Getting Laine back this quickly is a huge boost for a Columbus team that expects to contend for a playoff spot after spending so much money in the offseason. Not only was Laine extended and Gaudreau brought in, but Erik Gudbranson was given a four-year deal, Adam Boqvist was signed to a bridge contract, and Andrew Peeke was handed an extension.
If they can get rolling with their Finnish sniper back in the mix, it’ll be an even more exciting fight in the east.
Ottawa Senators Assign Kevin Mandolese To AHL
Oct 25: It doesn’t matter who is in net for the Senators these days, they’ll win it anyway. After Hellberg secured the victory, the team has sent Mandolese back to the AHL.
Oct 24: After announcing this morning that Joshua Norris would miss at least two weeks, it doesn’t come as a surprise that the Ottawa Senators have moved him to injured reserve. The player the team has decided to recall in his place, however, will certainly cause some panic among the fan base. The team has called up goaltender Kevin Mandolese, and Bruce Garrioch of Postmedia tweets that Anton Forsberg was on the ice ahead of morning skate but did not participate in it.
That means Magnus Hellberg might be in line for his first start with Mandolese as the backup, something that no one would have expected a few weeks ago. As the season approached, it appeared as though the Senators would be going with a veteran tandem of Cam Talbot and Forsberg. After Talbot’s preseason injury and now Forsberg apparently dealing with something of his own, the team is onto a tandem with just five appearances at the NHL level.
Hellberg, 31, has all of them, though just one has come since 2017. The former Nashville Predators prospect left for the KHL at that point and spent five years playing overseas, before making his return as a member of the Detroit Red Wings last season. After signing a one-year deal with the Seattle Kraken, Hellberg was nabbed off waivers following Talbot’s injury and hasn’t yet appeared for the Senators.
Mandolese, meanwhile, has never played in the NHL and has just 29 appearances at the AHL level. The 22-year-old has posted an .863 in three starts this year with the Belleville Senators, allowing 11 goals on 80 shots.
If there is any silver lining, it is that after tonight against the Dallas Stars, the team won’t play again until Thursday. If Forsberg was healthy enough to get back on the ice this morning, perhaps he won’t miss much more time than this evening.
Tyler Ennis Signs In Switzerland
After lots of discussion about whether he would head to Europe, O2K Sports Management today confirmed that their client, free agent forward Tyler Ennis, has signed on with SC Bern in the NL for the remainder of the 2022-23 season.
Bern is already off to a strong 8-2-4 start, but only three of those eight wins have come in regulation. Ennis essentially replaces another former NHL forward on their roster, Dominik Kahun, who is expected back from a shoulder injury in early December. Kahun had eight points through his first seven games.
Ennis should headline what is already a red-hot offense for Bern to start the year, spearheaded by a trio of former NHLers: Christopher Didomenico (18 points in 12 games), Colton Sceviour (11 points in 14 games), and Oscar Lindberg (10 points in 14 games). In his last stint in the NL (then the NLA) during the brief 2012-13 lockout, Ennis had eight points in nine games with the SCL Tigers.
The veteran of exactly 700 NHL games had a rather productive season last year with the Ottawa Senators in a depth role, notching 24 points in 57 games, but there were no takers for Ennis on the free agent market last offseason. Now 33 years old, the speedy, diminutive forward likely closed the book on his NHL career by heading overseas. If so, he finished with 144 goals, 202 assists, and 346 points across 13 seasons with the Senators, Edmonton Oilers, Toronto Maple Leafs, Minnesota Wild, and Buffalo Sabres, who drafted him 26th overall in 2008.
Snapshots: Samuelsson, Bear, Wright
Buffalo Sabres fans held their breath last night when freshly extended defenseman Mattias Samuelsson went down with an injury in their game against Vancouver. Now, The Buffalo News’ Lance Lysowski reports that Samuelsson avoided a long-term injury but is still set to miss at least “a few weeks,” joining Henri Jokiharju on the list of injured Sabres top-four defensemen.
An exact timeline won’t be had on Samuelsson until the team returns to Buffalo, head coach Don Granato said today, and the injury will force some depth defenders to shine in order for Buffalo to keep up its strong start. Lawrence Pilut will make his season debut in the team’s next game after two seasons overseas, and free-agent acquisition Ilya Lyubushkin will be tasked with replacing Samuelsson as the defensive anchor on the top pairing alongside the red-hot Rasmus Dahlin.
- It’s no secret the Canucks are in trouble, winless so far to start the year. With injuries and general positional depth weakness hampering their defense, the team has been looking to add, and Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reported on 32 Thoughts that the team has checked in on defenseman Ethan Bear as a potential trade acquisition. Bear, the 25-year-old right-shot defenseman, has been thrust down the depth chart in Carolina and has yet to appear in a game this season. The Hurricanes were shopping him prior to the season’s start, and the Canucks have more than enough room thanks to LTIR to accommodate his $2.2MM cap hit. He still has some upside and could provide some better matchups once Quinn Hughes returns to the lineup.
- Sportsnet’s Jason Bukala ponders whether the Seattle Kraken may opt to send Shane Wright back to the OHL’s Kingston Frontenacs after an unimpactful start to the season. Wright hasn’t received many opportunities, he has shown smooth skating and pace, but Bukala points out that Wright’s had some positional issues defensively and may need a bit more development before being able to execute his playstyle properly at the NHL level.
Colorado Avalanche Reassign Jayson Megna, Recall Mikhail Maltsev
The Colorado Avalanche have made a roster swap today ahead of a week-long East Coast road trip, reassigning forward Jayson Megna to the AHL’s Colorado Eagles and recalling forward Mikhail Maltsev.
Megna has played five games this season, including three with the Avalanche and two with the Eagles. The veteran of 408 AHL games is entering his fourth season in the Avalanche organization and has one point in those two games with the Eagles. He’s coming off one of his strongest AHL campaigns on record, recording 33 points in 38 games.
The 32-year-old Megna offers less upside than the 24-year-old Maltsev, though, who’s struggled to find a full-time role in Colorado after recording nine points in 33 games with the New Jersey Devils in 2020-21. He’s been off to a strong start in the minors, though, recording four assists through four games to help fuel a 2-2-0 start. The Avalanche are looking for a depth spark, as they’ve got just two goals from their bottom six to start the year. The team hopes Maltsev’s strong puck distribution carries over to the NHL for now and can help ignite some depth scoring.
Rick Bowness Still Dealing With COVID Symptoms
As announced today by the team, Winnipeg Jets head coach Rick Bowness is still dealing with post-COVID symptoms after testing positive last week and will not be behind the bench for tonight’s game against the St. Louis Blues. Assistant coach Scott Arniel will once again resume coaching duties in Bowness’ absence.
Bowness first tested positive on October 14, missing the team’s season-opening game against the New York Rangers. He returned from COVID for just one game, a 4-1 loss Saturday against the Toronto Maple Leafs. The veteran head coach was feeling generally unwell today and cut his media availability short this morning due to dizzy spells.
The Jets are off to a 2-3-0 start to the season, limited in part due to a crucial injury to Nikolaj Ehlers. The Jets did outshoot the Leafs in Bowness’ lone appearance, but the team overall has scored 12 goals over the course of five games, one ahead of the last-place Blues who have played just three times. Arniel will need to focus on sparking depth scoring in his return to interim duties, as no forward outside of the team’s top six not named Sam Gagner has scored this year.
PHR sends its well wishes to Bowness in his recovery.