Vancouver hasn’t had much luck with the injury bug as of late with Bo Horvat and Sven Baertschi, two-thirds of their top line, going down recently. The bad news continued Friday as the Canucks announced (Twitter link) that defenseman Chris Tanev will be out two-to-three weeks as a result of a groin strain. That is undoubtedly a big blow to their back end as he logs nearly 21 minutes per game of ice time while playing a shutdown role. Alex Biega will likely draw into the lineup as his replacement but he hasn’t seen any action in more than three weeks.
Canucks head coach Travis Green also provided further updates on a couple of players. Center Brandon Sutter is still seven-to-ten days away from returning from his upper-body injury while blueliner Erik Gudbranson is the closest to returning; he has been out with an upper-body issue of his own since November 22nd.
Other injury notes from around the NHL:
- Mika Zibanejad’s return to the lineup will have to wait a little while longer. The Rangers have ruled him out of their next two games, reports NHL.com’s Adam Kimelman via Twitter. The plan is for the center to practice on Monday and then the team will re-evaluate his status from there. Zibanejad last played on November 26th and has been dealing with concussion-like symptoms since then but he still sits third in team scoring with 22 points in 24 games.
- Capitals winger T.J. Oshie took part in a partial practice today but will not suit up tomorrow night against Anaheim, reports Callie Caplan of the Washington Post. As a result, he’ll miss his sixth straight game. From the same report, defenseman Brooks Orpik is dealing with an upper-body issue. He’s set to be re-evaluated tomorrow but it seems likely that he will also miss Saturday’s contest. Washington doesn’t have enough salary cap space to call anyone up but they have one extra defender on their roster so they still should be able to ice a full lineup.