Phoenix Coyotes forward Scottie Upshall is out indefinitely with a torn ACL in his right knee.
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Upshall was injured in Thursday’s 3-2 win over Calgary and missed Saturday night’s 3-2 victory over the New York Rangers. The club said surgery will be necessary to repair the tear.
The 26-year-old right wing has a team-leading 18 goals in 49 games this season.
Upshall is most certainly out for the rest of the season. How will this impact Phoenix’s playoff chances? The Coyotes are 4th in the Western Conference at this point and 7 points ahead of the 9th place team. I have been negative about this team’s playoff chances all year but they’ve kept plugging away. Maybe other players will pick up the slack.
They acquire a defenseman and a Goalie. From ESPN-
The Toronto Maple Leafs shook up their roster with a pair of big moves on Sunday, the biggest coming in a trade for star defenseman Dion Phaneuf from the slumping Calgary Flames.
The Leafs also acquired veteran goalie Jean-Sebastien Giguere from the Anaheim Ducks for Jason Blake and Vesa Toskala.
The Leafs acquired Phaneuf, right wing Fredrik Sjostrom and defenseman Keith Aulie in exchange for defenseman Ian White, center Matt Stajan, left wing Niklas Hagman and right wing Jamal Mayers.
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Phaneuf had 10 goals, 12 assists and 49 penalty minutes as of Sunday. In 378 career games over five seasons he has 75 goals, 153 assists and 522 penalty minutes, all with the Flames.
The Leafs gave up two of their top scorers in Stajan (16 goals, 25 assists) and Hagman (20 goals, 13 assists) to obtain Phaneuf.
On the surface Toronto looks to have made out well. Phaneuf is a very good defenseman. Giguere replaces Toskala who has been a bust for Maple Leafs since coming over from San Jose.
But…..
Toronto is 17-28-11 this season, or the worst record in the Eastern Conference. There is no chance in hell this trade will get the Maple Leafs to the playoffs this year.
Giguere hasn’t been playing well this year, 3.1 GAA and .900 save percentage, and his trade comes as no surprise*. That’s an improvement on Toskala who has 3.66 and .874 respectively. Still the numbers are worse for Giggy than they are for Washington Capital Goalie Jose Theodore and regular OTB Sports readers know what I think of that Goalie.
Toronto must be hoping for a Giguere bounce back in 2010-11.
Oh you get two defensemen but trade away players(Hagman** and Stajan) who have contributed 36 goals for your team this year. I don’t see these trades helping Toronto short term and long term doesn’t look all that great either IMHO.
*- Anaheim signed their other Goalie, Jonas Hiller, to a 4-year contract yesterday. That made the high priced Giggy expendable.
It looks almost certain Hiller will be in goal when I watch Florida and Anaheim play tomorrow night. Particularly since the Ducks haven’t played since Friday night.
**- I guess that ends the Hagman to Florida Panther trade rumors. Hagman’s first NHL team was the Cats.
Washington Capitals defenseman Mike Green has been suspended three games for elbowing Florida Panthers forward Michael Frolik in the head.
The NHL announced the discipline on Saturday.
Green delivered the hit in the first period of Friday night’s 4-1 win over the Panthers. Frolik was not seriously injured and Green was given a minor penalty for elbowing on the play.
The defenseman later had to be helped off the ice after bruising a thigh in a collision with Dmitry Kulikov while going for a loose puck.
The thigh injury may have kept Green off the ice for the same amount of time as the suspension handed down to him.
Here’s a video of his hit on Frolik.
It was without question, a deliberate elbow to the face. Then why was Green penalized only two minutes last night? BTW I was watching the game at the time.
Just one more instance of cockamamie officiating and disciplinary decisions involving the NHL. Florida Panther David Booth may finally come back next week from a concussion that happened as a result of a hit from Philadelphia Flyer Michael Richards. Richards drew a five minute penalty but no suspension and Booth is lost for 3 months. Green draws a two minute penalty, a 3 game suspension and Frolik is able to continue playing. Does anyone else think this is an appalling lack of consistency?
Anaheim Duck Teemu Selanne recently suffered a similar injury. From AP-
New York Islanders defenseman Jack Hillen will miss six to eight weeks with a broken jaw and damaged teeth caused by a slap shot from Washington Capitals star Alex Ovechkin.
The Islanders said on Wednesday that the 24-year-old Hillen remained hospitalized following surgery late Tuesday night into the morning. Hillen was injured in the first period of New York’s 7-2 home loss on Tuesday and is expected to be discharged from the hospital on Thursday.
It is the second major injury to the Islanders’ defense corps that lost veteran Radek Martinek to a season-ending knee injury in November.
Hillen was helping to protect the net when he was struck in the face by the puck. It is just one of those freak accidents that happen in hockey.
The Islanders have a record of 23-22-8 for the season and are in the midst of a wild tussle for the last 3 Eastern Conference playoff berths. The loss of Hillen probably won’t affect the team too adversely. As long as no other major injuries happen.
After last night’s win, the Blackhawks stand just two points behind Western Conference frontrunners San Jose.
The Chicago Blackhawks needed 44 seconds to take the fight out of the Edmonton Oilers.
Jonathan Toews scored on Chicago’s first shot of the game and the Blackhawks added to Edmonton’s misery Tuesday night, beating the Oilers 4-2 and sending the NHL’s last-place team to their 11th straight loss.
Troy Brouwer, Dustin Byfuglien and Marian Hossa also scored for the Blackhawks, who are 4-2 through six games of a season-high eight-game road trip. Patrick Kane and Duncan Keith added two assists apiece for Chicago.
Chicago is the Western Conference’s version of the Washington Capitals. Both teams can score oodles of goals but are deficient at goaltender. I think the Huet-Niemi combo is better for Chicago than Theodore-Varlamov/Neuwirth is for Washington. The trouble is, San Jose appears strong enough to keep the Blackhawks out of the Stanley Cup finals. I am not sure there is a Eastern Conference team that can do the same to the Capitals.
As for Edmonton, they have fallen to 16-29-6 for the season. Not much was expected from the team this year, and they haven’t even met those low expectations.
Tonight was just one more case of Tomas Vokoun carrying the team.(a Save percentage of .963 or only 12 goals allowed in the last 328 shots against him) For two plus periods he held Montreal to one goal. Unfortunately, Florida was its usual punchless self.
Then this happened at 3:01 of the third period.
Shawn ‘Keep your bags packed for Rochester’ Matthias scored on a penalty shot to tie the game at 1-1. Sorry about the video being in French.
Matthias who has been shuttling between Florida and the Panthers affiliate in Rochester New York all year, wasn’t through for the night. Almost nine minutes later, with assists by Michal Repik and Dominic Moore, Matthias put a goal in the net again. Florida was up 2-1 and that was all the team needed to win tonight.
I’ve been writing about Matthias for two years. He has put pucks in the net, not just tonight, but whenever he has gotten some support around him. Someone will point out he has just 5 goals this year and two in previous years. That’s seven goals in 46 games though.
He’s doing it in about 7 minutes of play a game. Also tonight wasn’t his first two goal game. He had one against Washington on Jan 19, 2008. It was only his second game ever. 19-year-olds who score two goals in a game isn’t impressive in Florida lala Panther land. It lands you in the AHL for the next season and a third with only 18 more NHL appearances scattered here and there.
Matthias has produced the numbers he has with the 4th line the Panthers have. Which consists of Nick Tarnasky or Victor Oreskovich and Kamil Kreps. Who have a combined 3 goals and 9 assists this year. Matthias has 5 goals and 2 assists in part-time play.
Florida has handled Matthias horribly. He has, with just one exception, been relegated to garbage duty but still scored goals. He even had a 3-game scoring streak in December. So what does Coach Peter DeBoer do? Ship him back to Rochester while players like Kreps, Gregory Campbell, Oreskovich, and Radek Dvorak continue to be punchless. Well Dvorak has two shorthanded goals on the year, and a hat trick night in early January. The rest of the time, he’s been shit on even strength or in power play situations, 9 goals and 12 assists or not for the year. In fact, Dvorak has had no more than one shot on goal in his last six games(and no points either I may add.)
Why is Matthias so misused? At least part of the problem is Coach Peter DeBoer’s preference for his ‘Kitchener boys’. Players like the mighty Gregory Campbell of 11 points for the year. I’ll bet anyone $20 that Matthias gets sent back to Rochester again before this season is over. There’s no way he can impress DeBoer enough to be kept in Florida. Just on this alone, if I could be Florida’s General Manager, I’d fire Peter DeBoer. Florida needs Matthias, with Horton out for a month at least and the team in a frenzied 6 to 8 team battle in the Eastern Conference for three playoff spots. Opening play tonight, Florida was 11th in the East, but only two points out of a tie for 6th!
Florida Panthers right wing Nathan Horton will miss four to six weeks with a fractured tibia.
Panthers general manager Randy Sexton on Saturday said Horton’s injury doesn’t require surgery. Some of his recovery will occur during the NHL’s Olympic break in February, which Sexton called a “silver lining.”
Horton was injured Thursday night in Florida’s 2-1 loss to the New York Islanders. He was hit in the leg with a puck and had to crawl to the bench.
Horton has 17 goals and 29 assists in 51 games this season.
This blow to the Panthers can’t possibly be understated. The team is already without its leading scorer, David Booth, who suffered a concussion in a October game and hasn’t played since. Florida did win last night against Toronto, but that doesn’t change my perception that this team won’t be playing in the 2010 NHL postseason.
I was watching the Panther game that saw Horton get injured. He could barely get off the ice afterwards. The first report on the injury was a bruise. It looked like no bruise back on Thursday night.
An unidentified man was taken down from a conduit above a catwalk during a Detroit Red Wings game on Saturday night.
Almost an entire section of stands in the lower bowl was cleared out when the man was noticed during the second period of the Red Wings’ 3-2 loss to the Los Angeles Kings at Joe Louis Arena.
After he was removed from the area, fans were allowed to return to their seats.
“We didn’t know what was going on until somebody pointed it out,” Red Wings captain Nicklas Lidstrom said.
Photographers have remote cameras stationed on the catwalk, but no one is usually there during games.
“He got in through one of the storage cages and came out through one of the cable traps used for show cables,” arena audio engineer Ricky Gopigian said.
Why didn’t they evacuate the stadium? It is routine for airports to be emptied if someone breeches security. One guy with a bomb in the rafters could literally bring down the roof.
I don’t know if I’m being serious or not in the above criticism. On the surface, it does sound inconsistent.
Just a year ago he helped the Pittsburgh Penguins win the Stanley Cup. From AP-
The Minnesota Wild have placed right wing Petr Sykora on waivers.
Sykora and rookie Robbie Earl were placed on waivers on Tuesday. Earl can be returned to the minors or stay with the Wild if he clears, but Sykora’s stint with Minnesota is all but over.
Sykora turned down richer offers to play in Russia and signed a one-year, $1.6 million contract with the Wild in September.
The 33-year-old ranked fourth on the Stanley Cup champion Pittsburgh Penguins last season with 46 points in 76 games. He had only two goals and one assist in 14 games with Minnesota, missing nearly two months while recovering from a concussion.
The well traveled Sykora, who played his first NHL game back in 1995, may well be finished as a player for the 2009-10 season. If the concussion isn’t too bad, I am certain he will be back playing pro hockey but perhaps not in the NHL. As of a year ago Sykora could still help a team, and concussion aside, that is the basis for my evaluation.
It was nothing short of miraculous totally thanks to Goalie Tomas Vokoun that the Panthers were able to pull off a victory tonight. From AP-
Gregory Campbell scored midway through the second period and Tomas Vokoun made 27 saves in the Florida Panthers’ 1-0 victory over the Atlanta Thrashers on Monday night.
Vokoun earned his fifth shutout of the season and won for the fifth time in his last seven home starts. Vokoun has made 101 saves in the last three games, all Panthers victories. Florida is on its fourth three-game winning streak of the season.
Whenever I start getting optimistic about the Panthers(they have more wins than losses now on the season), I remind myself that they haven’t had a winning streak longer than 3 games since the 2006-07 season. They can never get real hot, which is one reasons the team can’t get to the playoffs.
Vokoun was incredible tonight. He made a diving 2-pad safe early in the game. Later, he had to deflect away shot after Thrasher shot. Atlanta pulled their goalie and then when Florida committed a penalty, the team had a 6-4 advantage for the last 90 seconds of play.
Gregory Campbell in addition to scoring the only goal(with a helpful screen from Rusty Olesz) won a key faceoff in the last 20 seconds, and just a little while later, cleared the puck out of the Florida zone as the last few seconds ticked off the clock. Those plays got Florida the win tonight and make Campbell Co-MVP for a night but he still has played like crap this season for the most part and is a drain on the team.
Next up for Florida- A road trip to New Jersey and the NY Islanders.
Personal note- I just bought my first ever ticket to a Panther game. On Monday February 1st, I will see them play Anaheim. That’s one of 3 Florida games not on television this year. I am really addicted to Panther hockey, eh?
