Fraser to play for injured Mottau tomorrow

October 23, 2009   ·   Hasan   ·   Jump to comments

So it turns out late in last night’s Devils win over the Rangers that defenseman Mike Mottau injured his hip (not in his earlier fight with Sean Avery), though it’s not deemed to be serious he won’t make the trip to Pittsburgh for tomorrow’s game against the defending Stanley Cup champs.  With Cory Murphy safely tucked away in Lowell, the fresh off of IR Mark Fraser will make his season debut tomorrow night, his first game action of any kind in a month.  This has ‘uh-oh’ written all over it. 

True, Fraser has played in the NHL before – a grand total of seven games in ‘07-08, but it’s not as if he actually played much in any of them.  I still vaguely remember his 30-second night of work against either the Senators or Canadiens, and he didn’t play much more than that in his other games under then-coach Claude Julien.  Granted he really wasn’t ready then, but I’m not sure he’s ready now for the NHL.  I guess whether he is or not we’re gonna be throwing him into the deep end of the pool – on the road against Pittsburgh with not having played in a month.

With the forward lines already in flux, most likely the defensive pairs will be as well tomorrow.  Of course it’s a given that Martin Brodeur will start, especially with three days off after this game but trying to hazard a guess over anything else in this lineup is an exercise in futility.  I’d hate to see Fraser take Mottau’s spot next to Colin White though…if you (like me) think White-Mottau is slower than molasses, White-Fraser would literally be standing still.

In one other somewhat humorous note which ended a mini-contreversy that originated during the preseason, it turns out that David Clarkson is a RFA next year, as most of us initially assumed.  Who thought Clarkson was a UFA?  Well…Clarkson himself, seeing as he told Chico Resch, who mentioned during a preseason telecast that Clarkson would become a UFA this offseason because of being an undrafted player but GM Lou Lamoriello and NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly confirmed in Tom Gulutti’s blog earlier today that’s not the case.  On some level, it should probably be scary that the Devils’ player representative – or his agent for that matter – doesn’t know his own UFA status, but it’s actually kinda funny too.  For his part Clarkson was matter-of-fact admitting that he figured it out a couple weeks ago and that while it would be nice to be UFA (and get the ensuing raise) he likes it here.  At least that’s one less headache on next year’s payroll.