Devils’ carnage now known

October 27, 2009   ·   Hasan   ·   Jump to comments

Apparently the initial fears of serious injuries to defenseman Paul Martin and winger Jay Pandolfo proved to be justified.  Martin has a fractured right arm and Pandolfo a seperated shoulder, with both expected to miss 4-6 weeks.  Considering the Devils’ schedule that would be anywhere from 12-18 games.  Of course that’s if the initial diagnosis is correct, after all Patrik Elias was supposed to be out 3-6 weeks and seven weeks later he still isn’t practicing though the Devils swear everything’s fine and there hasn’t been a setback.  For now I’ll believe that’s true, since I know the Devils aren’t employing the Mets’ team doctors.

And maybe the Devils really do believe Elias will be back soon since they didn’t make a move to call anyone up and will probably plug Matt Halischuk into the lineup tomorrow against the Sabres.  On defense?  Well hello again Cory Murphy, he’s baaaack!  Assuming Murphy doesn’t continue to stink up the joint, looks like both he and Andy Greene will get major opportunities to show what they can do now.  And Johnny Oduya can show that he wasn’t just a creature of being paired with a very good defenseman in Martin.

Replacing the roster spot for Martin and Pando was the easy part, filling in for what they did on-ice will be much harder as Lou Lamoriello put it:

“There’s no question what they bring to the lineup,” Devils general manager Lou Lamoriello said. “Paul, certainly, what he brings to defense, and Jay, what he brings to penalty killing and leadership and 5-on-5 defensive situations. But you just cannot put it as anything other than it’s a part of the game.”

Of course the Devils aren’t the only team to be affected by injuries.  It seems as if the compressed Olympic schedule is already seeing mass casualties, including Atlanta’s Ilya Kovalchuk who is expected to be out 3-5 weeks, seriously damaging the playoff hopes of the upstart Thrashers.  And Ranger Nation as Derek posted is waiting on the test results for Marian Gaborik, who looked like an MVP candidate for the first ten plus games.