Casualty List

Today’s number… 74

Perusing the TSN.ca listing of injuries, that is how many players are identified as being on injured reserve. Only one of the NHL’s 30 teams has no player on injured reserve – the New York Rangers, but watching the way Chris Drury staggered off the ice the other night after taking Curtis Glencross’ shoulder to his head on his first shift in a 3-1 loss to Calgary, the “injured reserve” notation is probably a formality. Drury will miss some time.

120 players are on the injury list. The number of players on injured reserve range from the zero that the Rangers have to the six from Vancouver on the list. Montreal and Edmonton have five apiece.

Is this abnormal? Well, we don’t know, but with all the marquee players or critical cogs going down – Ilya Kovalchuk, Marc Savard, Johan Franzen, Sheldon Souray, David Booth, Andrei Markov, Shea Weber, Sergei Gonchar, Daniel Sedin, and Alex Ovechkin, among others, it sure has the look of the NHL’s version of a pandemic.

Is it merely the odd concurrence of events that might happen once in many seasons, or does it signal a fundamental change in the game that might lead to the sort of “injury report” that the NFL publishes on a weekly basis?

It hardly seems to matter. In a perverse way, the competitive balance of the league seems to be preserved in all of this – 13 teams have at least three players on IR, but there are disturbing elements, nonetheless. No fewer than a dozen players are reported injured from concussions or “concussion-like symptoms.” 15 more are listed with various breaks and fractures. 16 are listed as a result of various surgeries.

This is something that shows no indication of going away; more than 50 of the players on the list were added this month. As much as anything else going on down on the ice, this might be the biggest story unfolding in the NHL this season.

Quintin Laing Injured

Last night, Quintin Laing skated the last shift of the Caps' 5-2 win over Tampa Bay.

This morning, news came out that he tore his spleen and will be out for the season.

Laing, with his disregard-for-self penchant for throwing himself in front of shots, has impressed us as one of those guys who might always struggle to make an NHL roster, but who is really good to have in your system as an example of hard work and grit to other guys.

He is in the last year of his contract, so this might have been his last game as a Capital. We sure hope not. He's an inspiration.

Prelude

According to Capital Insider, Chris Clark could be done for the year...

"GM George McPhee just said that captain Chris Clark could miss the remainder of the regular season with the wrist injury that has been dogging him since training camp. Clark is at the doctor's office right now. I should know more later, but McPhee said it's looking like Clark will, in fact, need surgery on the wrist."

We've suspected there had to be something wrong with Clark. A player that scored 50 goals in two seasons, even if it was as the opposite winger from a guy scoring almost 100 of his own, doesn't just forget how to play hockey, even if he spent most of last year on the shelf with an injury.

But the timing of this has a fortuitous aspect to it as well (not for Clark, but for the roster). Clark hasn't been playing, and now we have the reason why and why his production has been down as much as it has been. Meanwhile, the Caps have the kinds of roster needs a contender has -- not major reworkings of the roster, but the kinds of tweaking a team might need to prepare for what amounts to a whole different season that starts in April. We are now 30 days from the trading deadline (March 4th, 3:00 EST).

The Caps have a wish list that might include a stay-at-home defenseman or some more grit among the forwards. The timing of Clark's surgery might give the Capitals the cap wherewithal to pursue such a move. Until now, it seemed unlikely the Caps would do much at the deadline other than see what return a Michael Nylander might fetch. This changes the game.

You Can't Make This Up

OK, so we know Brent Johnson is nursing a hip injury that was aggravated in the Boston game. But now, as Tarik El-Bashir reports, Jose Theodore has a hip flexor issue, too.

So...

Meet your new (if temporary) backup goalie...

I hope they make a movie of this...

And now...Fleischmann?

According to Tarik El-Bashir on the Capital Insider, Tomas Fleischmann was absent from this morning's skate, but Oskar Osala (late of the Hershey Bears, where he was tearing up the league) was present. This is getting way, way out of hand...

Anybody got a rabbit's foot?

As reported on Capital Insider...

Tyler Sloan is nursing a bruised foot, which means that Sean Collins was called up from Hershey in the event Sloan can't go. Alexander Semin was put on LTIR (eligible to come off on Tuesday...we're not holding our breath). John Erskine was put on IR (no "LT," apparently, although his return doesn't seem imminent).

If you want a graphical representation of how bad this is, here is the list of Caps who have played at least some time this year on the blue line...

Collins would make 13. If one only counts defensemen, Collins seeing ice time would break a tie the Caps are in with Florida, the Islanders, and Tampa Bay for most defensemen dressed this year (10). At the other end of the spectrum, the Rangers have played all 29 games with the same six defensemen.