It appears that the Hurricanes will get some help on the injury front as they begin a three-game road trip on Thursday in San Jose. Team reporter Walt Ruff mentions (Twitter link) that defenseman Dmitry Orlov should be ready to return after missing the last two weeks with an upper-body injury. The 33-year-old has four goals and 20 assists in 62 games this season while logging a little under 20 minutes a night.
Meanwhile, the news isn’t as good for winger Andrei Svechnikov. Ruff added that it wasn’t initially known if the 24-year-old would be accompanying the team on the trip. Last week, the hope was that Svechnikov would be back for the Hurricanes sometime this week but that appears to be more in question now. He has 18 goals and 25 assists in 63 outings this season.
Elsewhere around the hockey world:
- Sharks goaltender Yaroslav Askarov is hoping to be cleared to skate with the AHL’s Barracuda next week as he works his way back from a lower-body injury, relays Curtis Pashelka of The Mercury News (Twitter link). The 22-year-old has a 3.10 GAA and a .896 SV% in 13 games with the Sharks this season and is likely to be recalled at some point down the stretch to get a few more games in with the big club.
- It has been a rough go as of late for Blackhawks goaltender Arvid Soderblom. He has won just one of his last ten games while posting a SV% of just .881, 20 points below his mark for the season at .901. Despite that, Ben Pope of the Chicago Sun-Times notes that at the moment, the team is still operating under the plan that he’ll serve as Spencer Knight’s backup for next season. Soderblom will be owed a $1MM qualifying offer this summer with salary arbitration rights and with 82 NHL games now under his belt, it’s possible that Chicago could feel the risk of a hearing is too great. Accordingly, it wouldn’t be surprising to see them try to work on getting him signed before the tender deadline in June.
- Kings prospect Liam Greentree was suspended for two games today by the OHL for a checking from behind incident on Sunday, the league announced (Twitter link). The 19-year-old was the 26th pick last June and sits tied for second in the league in points (with 119) while being fourth in goals (49) and second in assists (70). Windsor only has two games remaining in the regular season so he won’t be able to move up those leaderboards even further.
- Ducks prospect Will Francis will join AHL San Diego for their stretch run, reports Matt Wellens of the Duluth News-Tribune. The 24-year-old blueliner was a sixth-round pick back in 2019, going 163rd overall. Francis is a three-time cancer survivor, missing time in three of his four collegiate campaigns at the University of Minnesota-Duluth due to the illness, limiting him to just 39 games overall, five of which came this season.