Blues’ Kasperi Kapanen leaves game with upper-body injury

St. Louis Blues winger Kasperi Kapanen left Tuesday’s game against the Ottawa Senators due to an upper-body injury.

Kapanen left the game late in the second period after taking a hit from Sens winger Zack MacEwen. There is currently no word as to the specifics of the injury, how severe it is, or what the expected timeline is for Kapanen’s return to the lineup.

Kapanen left the game with a shot and two hits in 6:37 of ice time, with the Blues went on to lose the game by a score of 8-1.

The Blues didn’t necessarily find a replacement for Kapanen on the third line with Dylan Holloway and Zack Bolduc, instead deploying both players throughout the lineup, including Holloway getting minutes in the top six.

Whether or not St. Louis will need to find a long-term replacement on that line will depend on how severe Kapanen’s injury is. As far as immediate replacements go, Aleksey Toropchenko, Radek Faksa and Oskar Sundqvist could all be promoted from the fourth line, or healthy scratches Nathan Walker or Mathieu Joseph could draw in to the lineup in that spot.

The injury is another tough blow to Kapanen’s season, as he had already been off to a slow start with just 1 goal in 7 games. This comes after what was already his least-productive season with at least 40 games played, as he had just 6 goals and 16 assists for 22 points in 73 games in 2023-24.

Kapanen was the 22nd-overall pick for the Pittsburgh Penguins in the 2014 NHL Draft, but he never played a game for them before he was dealt to the Toronto Maple Leafs in the 2015 offseason as part of the return for Phil Kessel. After making his debut the following season, he played parts of five seasons for the Leafs before he was dealt back to the Penguins in the 2020 offseason. He spent parts of three seasons in Pittsburgh before he was placed on waivers and claimed by the Blues, where he now enters his third season in St. Louis.

Kapanen is currently on a one-year, $1 million contract, and will be an unrestricted free agent at the end of the season.