Between Detroit, Vancouver, and Los Angeles, there have been some serious injuries to both players, and Cup hopes. Some injuries are more serious than others. After all, although Detroit's now missing center Pavel Datsyuk and right wing Johan Franzen, no one expects them to miss too much post season time, if any at all. In fact, Detroit's been one of the best teams in the league at dealing with injuries, whether intermittent DTD injuries like the ones affecting Datsyuk and Franzen, or more serious ones like the tendon tear of third line center Mike Modano. Unfortunately for Vancouver and LA, they're injuries are a bit more serious than mere soreness. In Los Angeles, second leading scorer Justin Williams went down with a shoulder injury just last week- only to be followed yesterday by Anze Kopitar, who suffered a broken ankle. The Kings are now left without their top two scorers at the tail end of a season in which lack of explosive offense has been one of the main story lines. Fortunatel,y trade deadline acquisition Dustin Penner should be able to pick up some of the slack. Nevertheless, he hasn't been a consistent producer for them just yet, and middle six players like Wayne Simmonds, Michal Handzus, and Alexei Ponikarovsky are going to need to step up in order to complement Penner, captain Dustin Brown, and alternate Ryan Smyth. The Kings are still backstopped by a talented net minder in Jonathan Quick, and still possess a very good defensive corps in Drew Doughty, Jack Johnson, Willie Mitchell, and Rob Scuderi. Regardless, they're going to need some serious grit, determination, and luck to get a good run going this year.
Vancouver isn't in quite the same shape as Los Angeles, luckily for them. Vancouver's depth signings this off season were wise, and are now paying off with defensemen Alex Edler, and Sami Salo both having been injured for parts of the season. Unfortunately, it would appear that those depth signings were not quite deep enough. Manny Malhotra went down with an eye injury that will keep him out for the rest of the season, and Vancouver is now faced with a massive hole at third line center. Malhotra was the team's leading penalty killer, and was, along with Ryan Kesler, arguably the best defensive forward on the team. He had been brought in to play the pivot on the third line along with enigmatic winger Raffi Torres over the off season. In fact, he and Torres had both been fairly solid on that line, contributing 59 points between the two of them. However, Malhotra's real contributions were in his penalty killing abilities, as well as his prowess at face-offs. Without Malhotra, the Canucks are now faced with a serious dearth of grit. You need those guys that can win faceoffs, hit, grind it out, kill penalties, and chip in the occasional goal in the playoffs. That's what wins playoff games. It's not the stars, it's the third line players. And now Vancouver's going to have to play on without one of theirs.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment