Taylor Hall To Miss 3-4 Weeks With Knee Injury
3:17pm: The Devils have placed Hall on injured reserve and recalled Blake Pietila from Albany. He’ll meet the team in Anaheim, though there has been no word on if he’ll make his season debut on Thursday. Pietila has 11 points in 12 AHL contests this season.
2:31pm: Another superstar forward is out for a while, as the New Jersey Devils have announced that Taylor Hall will be out for three to four weeks following surgery to his left knee today. The forward went under the knife to repair a torn meniscus.
As reported earlier today, the coaching and training staff for New Jersey are unsure of when the injury took place, just that Hall came to the rink Tuesday morning in pain. After being traded to the Devils in the offseason, Hall has established himself as the powerful offensive presence he can be with 12 points in his first 14 games.
Though obviously losing a player of Hall’s stature isn’t good news, the Devils have collected a larger group of offensive players than usual over the past few seasons. With a 9-3-3 record, the team will now look to skaters like Kyle Palmieri, Adam Henrique and Pavel Zacha to step up their offensive production and keep the team on track.
For Tampa Bay Lightning fans, this may be a good indication of the timeline of injured forward Steven Stamkos, who also underwent an MRI today and likely has a meniscus injury. If surgery is required, he too could be out for almost a month.
Snapshots: All-Star Ballot, Zacha, Hunwick, Korpisalo
The NHL is expected to revise its eligibility criteria for the All-Star ballot, writes Ken Campbell of The Hockey News. There was plenty of debate over the controversial push made to get enforcer John Scott into the game and was further fueled by the fact that he played while suiting up with the AHL’s St. John’s IceCaps (minor league affiliate of Montreal) and was not on an NHL roster.
In particular, the league plans to add the criterion that to be eligible to participate, the player must be a ‘bona fide NHL player’. While there is some ambiguity as to what that exactly is intended to mean, at the very least it would suggest that someone suiting up in the minor leagues like Scott was last year would not be eligible to play. There could also be minimums for games played, ice time, etc to further reduce the likelihood of another write-in campaign like Scott’s was last year or in the past with defenseman Rory Fitzpatrick.
As it turned out, there was a happy ending to Scott’s controversial appearance at All-Star Weekend as he scored twice and was voted as the MVP. The whole adventure resulted in a screenplay being written to chronicle the event but it would appear that something like that won’t be permitted to happen again with this planned change.
The official ballot should be released sometime in mid-November.
Elsewhere around the league:
- The New Jersey Devils are expected to keep center Pavel Zacha through the first of two key deadlines for junior aged players, Andrew Gross of Fire and Ice reports. The 19 year old has played in eight games so far this season while recording three assists. He has seen his ice time jump in recent games, playing over 15 minutes in each of his last four outings. Once he plays in his tenth game, he will burn the first year of his entry-level contract. The next key deadline for Zacha will be the 40 game mark – if he is on New Jersey’s roster for 40 games, he will accrue one season towards unrestricted free agency.
- Toronto has placed defenseman Matt Hunwick on injured reserve with a lower body injury according to James Mirtle of the Globe and Mail (Twitter link). Hunwick has missed the last three games and it’s likely that his IR stint will be backdated retroactive to his last game played on October 25th. The 31 year old has seen his role drop considerably in the early going this season; his average ice time (16:59) is down by over five and a half minutes per game compared to last season (22:34).
- Columbus activated goaltender Joonas Korpisalo off of season-opening injured reserve and have assigned him to their AHL affiliate in Cleveland, the team announced. Korpisalo has been out since the start of the season with a groin injury. He led the team in wins, GAA, and SV% last season after getting into 31 games with the Blue Jackets. Once he’s back in game shape, he’ll try to make a push to supplant Curtis McElhinney as the backup to Sergei Bobrovsky.