Evening Injuries: Vilardi, Samuelsson, Guhle

For the first time since being acquired from the Winnipeg Jets this offseason, forward Gabriel Vilardi would take on his former team, the Los Angeles Kings. Unfortunately, Vilardi would only play around six minutes of the game before leaving with an apparent knee injury. Shortly thereafter, the Jets would announce that Vilardi would miss the rest of the game, and more would be known about the severity after the game.

Playing in their defensive zone early on the first, as they were both going into the corner, forward for the Kings, Blake Lizotte, appeared to get his stick behind the left leg of Vilardi, causing him to fall awkwardly on his right knee. Without the ability to put much pressure on his right leg after the fall, Vilardi immediately bolted for the locker room, where he is being attended to by team doctors (Link to video).

Although it is too early to tell, if Vilardi is set to miss significant time for the Jets, it would obviously be a big blow to both him and the team. There have been injury concerns for Vilardi in the past, but with him now playing on the top line in Winnipeg, it creates a much larger hole to fill. As it is well known throughout the league, Conor Garland of the Vancouver Canucks is on the trade block and could be a potential landing spot if Vilardi is set to hit the LTIR.

Other injuries:

• The Buffalo Sabres announced that defenseman Mattias Samuelsson would sit out the remainder of the game against the Tampa Bay Lightning with an upper-body injury. Although the Sabres did add defensemen Connor Clifton and Erik Johnson to significantly improve the team’s defense, as far as the ability to shut down the opposing team’s forwards, Samuelsson is one of the best on the team. In the first season of a seven-year, $30MM contract extension signed at the start of last year, it would be a significant hurdle for Buffalo if Samuelsson is set to miss any time beyond tonight.
• In one of the more chaotic games of the young season, the Montreal Canadiens announced that defenseman Kaiden Guhle would miss the rest of the team’s game against the Minnesota Wild after leaving late in the second period. In total tonight, before leaving the losing effort, Guhle played just over 10 minutes of action, taking one slashing penalty against Marcus Johansson.