If the Canucks are going to make a miraculous push into the playoffs, they’ll have to do a lot of it without their leading goal scorer.
John Tortorella announced today that Ryan Kesler will be out a couple of weeks as a result of a knee injury suffered in the team’s game Wednesday against the Winnipeg Jets.
He left the game in the second period after a knee-on-knee collision with Jets center Jim Slater.
Slater said he didn’t intentionally try to hurt Kesler.
“I thought I had him lined up, he kind of bailed there at the last second there,” Slater said. “I didn’t stick my knee out or anything in his path, wasn’t leading with my leg. I thought I actually took the worst of it. Obviously, if he’s hurt bad, I feel bad about that. It wasn’t any intent. I thought I had him lined up and at the last second he tried to jump out of the way.”
Kesler had 22 goals and 18 assists in 67 games this year, one of the few players for the Canucks who had not been hit by the injury bug.
Global BC’s Squire Barnes that the real impact of Kesler’s trade could be felt in the off-season, when it’s expected the Canucks will try to honour his request to be traded.
“If other teams get the idea that Kesler’s become injury prone, it certainly affects his marketability. He plays so hard, that the further along he gets along in his career, the further chance he has of getting hurt,” he says.
“He’d still be marketable, but if he gets a reputation of being injury prone, teams will offer less.”
– With files from The Canadian Press
Comments