More bad news for the Columbus Blue Jackets.
Their starting goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky is expected to miss three weeks with a lower body injury that he suffered in Tuesday's 3-2 overtime loss to the LA Kings.
Bobrovsky, who missed large chunks of playing time with chronic groin injuries in each of the previous two seasons, left Tuesday's game late in the third period.
John Tortarella has no other choice other than to give Curtis McElhinney the starting job for the foreseeable future. McElhinney is 0-4-1 with a 2.77 GAA and .905 save percentage.
"Curtis has been very good, and now he gets his chance again," Blue Jackets GM Jarmo Kekalainen said. "Now we’re going to have to find other ways to win hockey games. Bobrovsky has been keeping us in games, being the Bob we all know and love."
The timing of Bobrovsky's latest lower body injury comes at a terrible time as he had been playing his best hockey of an otherwise drab season in CBUS. Bobrovsky finished November with a 9-4-1 record, a 1.67 GAA and .945 save percentage.
The Jax have recalled Joonas Korpisalo to backup McEhhinney.
Blue Jackets are the 30th place team in the NHL with just 24 points in 29 games played.
Kekalainen may be of the mind to trade center Ryan Johansen away to secure a starting goaltender who can win games and help the Jax maneuver their way out of the NHL abyss.
Given Bobrovsky's lower body injury history, there is no guarantee that he will be back after the calendar flips to January 2016.
The Ducks are shopping pending RFA Freddy Andersen's neat and tidy $1,150,000 contract.
The Jax have only $783,000 in available salary cap space to invest in an emergency starting goalie, however, Johansen earns $4 million per season for this and next season. It just so happens that the Ducks have been searching high and low for another top six forward who can score. Johansen is a 6'4… 225 lb. Scoring center who can also play the wing.
In 298 career games for the Jax, Johansen has scored 79 goals and has added 108 assists. In 27 games this season, Johansen has accumulated 6 goals and 14 assists. In the past two months, Johansen has been caught in the cross hairs of his new head coach John Tortarella's laser pointer. Johansen and Torts haven't seen eye to eye. Torts wants the 4 year NHL vet to improve his play on the defensive side of the puck and to improve his physical fitness.
The Ducks have $6.9 million on available salary cap space and can afford to import Johansen's contract.
The Anaheim Ducks appear to be more ready than ever to hand their crease over to John Gibson.
Gibson was recalled from AHL San Diego to start games when Freddy Andersen fell ill. Now like Drew Bledsoe to Tom Brady back in the day, Andersen finds himself pondering his future while Gibson continues to show management and ownership that he is more than ready to handle the starting role.
Gibson, the 22 year old Pittsburgh native had been biding his time in AHL San Diego this season while 26 year old incumbent Frederik Andersen was the starting goaltender for the Ducks.
Then, Andersen was bitten hard by an influenza bug that has caused him to miss the past seven games.
Gibson was named NHL's first star of last week. Gibson posted a 3-1-0 record with a microscopic 0.76 GAA, and .968 save percentage and two shutouts to boot.
Gibson has buoyed the Ducks and their otherwise helper skelter performances this season. For whatever reason, the Ducks cannot score goals. With Stars like Getzlaf, Perry, Kesler, Hagelin, Cogliano, Silfverberg and others, Anaheim cannot give it's goalies the offense that it needs to win games.
In 28 games played this season, the Ducks have scored just 55 goals for while allowing 68 goals against (-13). Their goal differential has been a huge concern since opening night.
Today, the Ducks are in 22nd place in the NHL standings with their 11-12-5 record. They are one point better than Edmonton, two points ahead of Buffalo, Toronto, and Colorado, and are just three points out of the NHL cellar where Carolina, Calgary and Columbus are dwelling these days.
The Ducks have a player that many NHL GMS covet in Andersen.
I feel that now is the time for Bob Murray to trade Andersen to send a profound message to his failing team that theIR first 28 games have been unacceptable to their fans and management.
The Ducks appear to rally more around Gibson than they do Andersen.
The arrow is up (again) on Gibson and down on Andersen.
Last summer, Ducks GM Bob Murray extended Gibson to a new multi-year contract that will pay him an average of $2.3 million starting in 2016-17. That’s a heck of a commitment to make before they’d gotten any real NHL value from his entry-level deal.
Gibson has played just 31 games in the NHL. He has had to deal with injuries in his brief NHL career. Frankly, Gibson is too good a player to be riding buses in the minors. He may be just what the doctor ordered in terms of wins for the struggling Ducks.
Duck's backup Anton Khudobin has been dreadful this season. He is 3-3 with a 2.07 GAA and .908 save percentage.
Andersen was on point when he played in 16 games this season posting a .927 save percentage at 5-on-5, just above the league average of .926. He's young. He's cheap and he has proven that he can shoulder the load of an NHL starting goalie. Andersen started 54 games in 2014-15 and was one win away from guiding the Ducks to the Stanley Cup Finals.
I've been saying for months that Andersen will be traded from Anaheim.
The Buffalo Sabres were, and still are, hot on Andersen's trail.
When Robin Lehner suffered a high ankle sprain in the second period of the Buffalo season opener on October 8, Sabres GM Tim Murray turned to veteran Chad Johnson and rookie Linus Ullmark to carry the team while Lehner's ankle healed. Recently, Lehner suffered a set back in his recovery and rehab in late November. His original timetable to return to the lineup was 8-10 weeks. Dan Bylsma said recently that Lehner is looking at a late December or early January return to action. When he does return, Lehner will need a considerable amount of time In order to get himself back into game action.
Time is something that Murray doesn't have a lot of right now.
His team is one measly point out of the all-to-familiar NHL basement where his team lived for the past two and a half seasons. Sabres fans are excited about the present and the future having seen Jack Eichel, Samson Reinhart, Ryan O'Reilly, Evander Kane, Jamie McGinn and Rasmus Ristolainen play exceptionally well this season. However, the Sabres are lacking a certain amount of oomph in their top six forward group where Matt Moulson and Brian Gionta have disappointed. The Sabres can also use anot her physical, mobile left-shot D to patrol their end of the rink.
The Sabres have lost two straight road games and have been showing signs of regression to the mean by making mental mistakes inside shifts and allowing bad goals to be scored against them for the past 10 games where they are 3-5-2. This may be fatigue on the part of Johnson and Ullmark, who have done great work to this point of the season. Or, it may be an indicator that Johnson and Ullmark are not capable of playing at a higher level than at present. Maybe Sabres fans have already seen the best of Johnson and Ullmark.
In my opinion neither goalie is ready to assume the 50+ game workload of an NHL starting tender. They have bailed the Sabres out of a pinch in the wake of the Lehner injury, however, Johnson and Ullmark may have hit the wall and are not as mentally sharp at the 27 game juncture of the the NHL season. Ullmark, in my view, could use a stay in the AHL to work out the noise and positioning issues in his game. I'm not a fan of him sprawling on his belly in his crease to make saves. I know that he is only 22 and is an NHL newbie. I'd like to see him refine his game and work on his technique in Rochester so that he will be able to play again with confidence when called back up to Buffalo. Johnson is a backup goalie and a good one at that. He is not a starter in the true 50+ games started sensemble
The Eastern Conference isn't as competitive as the Western Conference is this season. The Sabres are a 4-5 game winning streak away from cracking the Eastern playoff conversation. Save for Montreal and Washington, the East is wide open right now. Tampa, Boston, Brooklyn, Pittsburgh, Toronto, New Jersey, Ottawa, Carolina and Philadephia are not exactly striking fear in the hearts and minds of their Eastern foes..
In the past few days, Columbus was handed the Bobrovsky injury news. Detroit lost Teemu Pulkkinen and Drew Miller last week. Florida just lost Nick Bjugstad to a long term injury.
With more consistent and reliable goaltending the Sabres could find themselves in the top eight to nine teams in the East.
Tim Murray may still want to make a trade for a quality veteran starter like Freddy Andersen who he and Bob Murray discussed last summer before the trade that delivered Lehner to Buffalo for the 21st overall pick in the NHL Draft. Murray can always trade Andersen for assets to a contender at the NHL trade deadline when Lehner returns to form. The Ducks scouted the Sabres for two months after the Lehner injury. On more than one occasion the Ducks sent their GM, AGM and director of player personnel to Buffalo to watch the Sabres play live and in person. That tells me that there is more than just chatter going on between Tim and Bob Murray.
Combined, Ullmark, 22, and Johnson, 28, are 11-14-3. Johnson has a 2.45 GAA while Ullmark is at 2.85. Both Buffalo goalies have .909 save percentage. Making a trade for Andersen now may get Buffalo back in playoff contention. I can assure you that Murray isn't hoping to be an NHL Draft Lottery team in 2016. His team as currently assembled is a tweak or two away from being a playoff team.
The Ducks are off until Friday night when they host the Carolina Hurricanes, They won't play again until they visit the Sabres on Thursday December 17.