Jared Spurgeon and Andrei Vasilevskiy highlight season-opening injury list
The NHL injury list seems to keep on growing. Today on Daily Faceoff Live, Frank Seravalli highlighted the list by giving a few updates regarding Jared Spurgeon and what the Minnesota Wilds’ blueline could look like in his absence. He also highlighted injuries to Zach Whitecloud, Alex Killorn and Logan Couture.
Tyler Yaremchuk: If you want to play six to eight preseason games, guys are going to get banged up. We are seeing quite a few interesting names on our injury report right now. We talked the other day about Josh Norris; he’s practicing for the Ottawa Senators, and John Klingberg is practicing for the Toronto Maple Leafs, so they don’t quite make our list. But when you look at this list, Frank, we have known about Vasilevskiy for a little bit, but Jared Spurgeon is the one I look at and say, ‘Boy, if he’s week to week for the Wild, that’s a big loss.’
Frank Seravalli: It certainly is. Spurgeon leaving the ice last night after that hit it doesn’t leave you feeling comfortable if you’re a Minnesota Wild fan. This has been a summer of change. There has been a lot of shuffling on the backend for the Wild in terms of expectations; Matt Dumba is now gone. Jonas Brodin and Jacob Middleton are still there, same with Alex Goligoski, Jon Merrill, Brock Faber and Calen Addison. Look, missing Spurgeon for any period of time, and as I reported this morning, it sounds like it’s going to be a few weeks. That leaves you in an uncomfortable spot without a lot of margin for error.
Frank Seravalli: Zach Whitecloud is another big name out of Vegas. There were some reports from Sin Bin Vegas on Thursday that Whitecloud could be out as long as January. That’s not really week to week; that’s more month to month, and that hurts the defending champions. Whitecloud is a big part of what they do. We know Ducks forward Alex Killorn is out for six to eight weeks with a fractured finger. There hasn’t been much talk about Sharks’ Logan Couture. He’s getting close to starting skating again, but I think the Sharks would rather err on the side of caution there and have him miss a week or two to begin the season before having him come back early and miss more time later. He’s probably pretty doubtful for the season opener this week.
You can watch the full show here…