Shane Doan will be on all the blooper reels for the next while. The Arizona Coyotes captain is fine after colliding hard with Jakob Chychrun in warm up last night, and missing most of the first period. According to Dave Vest of NHL.com, he team had checked him for a concussion, but ruled that he had just had the wind knocked out of him.
I didn’t know it was him that hit me. I was looking back at [Oliver Ekman-Larsson] and got hit. I had no idea who it was that hit me … I haven’t been hit that hard in a long, long time.
The Coyotes ended up winning a 1-0 game over the Colorado Avalanche in a battle between the worst teams in the NHL. It couldn’t have started in a way more fitting to what was to come, with the next wave of the Coyotes literally checking the old guard out of the way.
- As expected, the Minnesota Wild have officially recalled Tyler Graovac from Iowa of the AHL. After Michael Russo of the Star Tribune reported yesterday that Martin Hanzal was sick with the flu and wouldn’t be with the team for the next two games, Graovac was the easy call up. As Russo points out, it will be interesting to see if Graovac figures into the lineup immediately for one of Jordan Schroeder or Ryan White or if he’s just there for insurance.
- The New York Rangers have sent Magnus Hellberg back to the AHL despite not having two healthy goaltenders at the NHL level. With Henrik Lundqvist out two to three weeks, Hellberg is expected to be the backup behind Antti Raanta for the next little while. The Rangers are off until Friday, but so are the Hartford Wolfpack which makes this move very interesting. It may be just a paper transaction to save Hellberg’s NHL salary for a few days, but either way it will be answered later this week when they make a move to bring someone up.