EHM The Blue Line

Last night's big debut of Malkin with the Pens ends with Malkin in the hospital being checked for an "upper body injury" possibly a shoulder injury after a "violent collision" with teammate John LeClair in the second period of his first preseason game. Tough break kid...

This sounds like it could be the same thing as Federov's injury and he's supposed to be out until mid November.

Consider this from Pens GM Shero:

"Frankly I was happy he got up considering the way he went down."

From the sound of what other players were saying as well it doesn't sound at all good...

''It's disappointing to see a rising star get hurt like that." and "'I felt so bad when he went down, he worked so hard to get to this point. He's trying to stay positive.''

From the TSN article:

http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/news_story/?ID=178189&hubname=nhl

That's a really tough break and is a shame for the hockey world as I'm sure most people are looking forward to see how he shapes up during the beginning of the NHL season

I guess this means the Calder Trophy is an open race now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UE_dluoFbJQ

Ouch, that looked quite nasty.

YIKES! Hadn't actually seen the hit but yeah getting dropped on your shoulder piledriver style like that could do some real damage...

One dislocated left shoulder for the guy. One player that won't be starting the season in oct 4th.

Ya, looks doubtful to be ready for the season opener. Good thing is, with a kid this young he should heal quickly. Hope he's back on the ice soon, from what I saw of him the other night he had no problems at all fitting in and made several nice plays.

He's going to be a fun one to watch over the years.

They are saying just like with Federov it will be up to six weeks with the dislocation

http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/news_story/?ID=178794&hubname=nhl

The thing I would worry about though isn't phsycial but mental. The kid is under gigantic amounts of stress over what has transpired in his life in the past few months and to be pretty much all alone with very few people that even speak your native language and now to be set off even further with having an injury it's really going to be rough I think. With all the other stressors in his life right now dealing with being hurt and rehab and being in a new town where you don't know anyone and you don't know the culture or the language all those thinks can really pile up.

The other thing is with young players you always wonder if/for how long they might be more tentative when they get back on the ice after a big injury and being a rookie in a new league with so much attention being focused on you and your team and fellow phenom Crosby it's going to be quite the uphill climb.

Granted I don't feel sorry for him considering he's already made more money for signing a piece of paper with the Pittsburgh logo on it than I'll make in my lifetime... but this is a complicating factor in a tough transition time for him and I wonder how he'll do.

Looked bad the way he fell. Fair few people getting injuries by the looks of things.

I also see Jaromir Jagr has been cleard to practive 5 months after his surgery. Back from dislocating his left shoulder.

There are always a lot of groin injuries and knee strains early on when guys are getting back into game shape again but some teams have been having a helluva time keeping their defense on the ice especially. Toronto has darn near every one of their defense injured right now it seems. Hawks have three big injuries right now, Lalime, Ruutu and Barker. I just hope that isn't just continuing last year's trend when half the team was out of the lineup for portions of the year.

Back to Malkin vs Jagr though yeah this is why Malkin was lucky in a way had he needed surgery he would have missed all but a few weeks of the season most likely, it's a really long recovery period.

Minstrel wrote:There are always a lot of groin injuries and knee strains early on when guys are getting back into game shape again but some teams have been having a helluva time keeping their defense on the ice especially. Toronto has darn near every one of their defense injured right now it seems. Hawks have three big injuries right now, Lalime, Ruutu and Barker. I just hope that isn't just continuing last year's trend when half the team was out of the lineup for portions of the year.

Our Top 4 are injured right now but they will all be back and ready (minus Kaberle) by October 4th.

They plan on having Malkin play in tonight's game which will be his second NHL game but first regular season game of course. I guess that's the difference between a 19 year old and an old vet (Federov) with the same basic injury and Fed was hurt before Malkin by like a week and he's still not close to returning. I just hope they aren't rushing him back...