Henrik Lundqvist will not play tonight against Boston due to what's being called an upper-body injury. The hockey injury term parlance aside, the injury in itself relates to when he was hit by the puck in his throat Saturday night against Carolina. The extent and severity of said injury is still being determined, though the manner in which he was hit and more importantly where he was hit obviously cates major consternation and hand-wringing for the Blueshirts.
Many rightly believed that Lundqvist should have been removed from Saturday's contest after he was hit. Reading the comments after the game related to light-headedness and headaches resulted in the first thought going to a possible concussion suffered. Lundqvist then added the line that those 'problems' cleared up somewhat as he started to breathe better, but he still had s bit of a headache after the game.
This is what I wrote in my Saturday game recap:
The second frame began as the first ended, with Carolina carrying play. However, a much scarier situation occurred, when Lundqvist, who carried the team in the first and was the best Ranger by far in the game, went down to the ice on a freak play about three minutes into the stanza.
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With the Rangers up 2-0 and the Canes pressuring, Ryan McDonagh’s stick inadvertently lifted Lundqvist’s mask upward at the exact moment that Jay McClement deflected Brad Malone’s shot up into Lundqvist's exposed throat. At that time, worrying about wins and losses went out the window, as the main concern became Lundqvist's health, and more important, ability to breathe.
“I had a bad feeling because I could kind of see the puck coming, then I lost track of it,… Lundqvist said, who had a headache after the game. “When I got hit, it’s obviously extremely painful and it’s hard to breathe for a couple minutes. I got very lightheaded and got a little worried the first minute or so. But they told me to breathe and I slowly started to feel better.…
Surprisingly, Lundqvist remained in the game.
Lundqvist played Monday with seemingly no ill-effects from that injury. Now, it's possible they did another exam and something showed up. In addition, Lundqvist could have had lingering headaches that really kicked in again in the last day. In addition, there was a moment in Monday's game where he got knocked over by Tomas Kopecky in a scrum in front that could have triggered further reaction in his body to the original play.
As of now, this all speculation, in addition to how long he might be sidelined. What we do know is Lundqvist is out tonight with Cam Talbot in net. MacKenzie Skapski has been called up to be the back up. We might need to add back up goalie to the list of players to acquire before rye deadline, but right now, the main focus and concern has to be for Lundqvist the person and then the player and hope for good news.