Wednesday Morning Three-peat
Here are the top 3 stories around the NHL Tuesday night:
1. Helmetless Hall Held Out – In what is becoming a bit of a trend (Sergei Gonchar anyone?), Edmonton Oilers sophomore Taylor Hall was severely cut on his forehead when he fell during warmup and was sliced by a team-mate’s skate. Hall is the third member of the “Kid Line” to be currently sidelined with injury, following in the footsteps of Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (shoulder) and Jordan Eberle (knee). It is not known how long Hall will be sidelined, but he needed about 30 stitches to close the wound. Edmonton had to play with only 17 skaters because the injury happened after the Oilers had submitted their game lineup. Like Gonchar a couple of weeks ago, Hall was not wearing a helmet and he was lucky the injury wasn’t much more severe, both to Hall as well as the player he took out before colliding with Corey Potter‘s skate.
Here is the video of the scary incident from NHL.com
2. Rangers “close to Cup”? – New York Rangers owner James Dolan spoke to the NY media and applauded Glen Sather for the job he has done, and said the Rangers are “close” to winning a cup. Sure, Mr. Dolan, its easy to do when you can still buy your way out of mistakes and have the highest paid farm team, probably in history (Redden, Avery, Christainsen). Sure, the Rangers are good now, but they still have to go through Boston to get that accomplished. Funny, Dolan hasn’t spoken with the media in years while the Rangers were underacheiving and Sather was making mistake after mistake. Now things are going well and he is front and centre taking the spotlight.
3. Washington Wilts – Ottawa’s 3-2 win over the Toronto Maple Leafs meant that with a win, the Washington Capitals could create some breathing room between themselves (in 8th place) and the 9th place Leafs. A win also would have vaulted them into the 3 seed, which they had for a day or so until Florida earned a point against Boston on Monday. However, they managed only 17 shots on Evgeni Nabokov on their way to being shut out 3-0 to the lowly New York Islanders. The Pittsburgh Penguins did win, in a shootout against the Carolina Hurricanes, to move 3 points clear of the Leafs and two up on Washington.