Teams hamstrung by their injury lists

Sam McCaig

• Last Updated: November 09. 2009 7:28PM UAE / November 9. 2009 3:28PM GMT

The good news is that Sidney Crosby is still playing ice hockey in the NHL.

The bad news? Virtually every other big name player is not.

The league’s list of hurting ice hockey players is a who’s who of the game’s greatest talents, starting with Crosby’s teammate, Evgeni Malkin, and his rival, Alex Ovechkin. That is the beginning.

Atlanta’s Ilya Kovalchuk, Vancouver goalie Roberto Luongo and Carolina centre Eric Staal? Out, out and out. Luongo is joined in Vancouver by, among others, Swedish twin Daniel Sedin; it is the first time either of the Canuck clones has sustained a significant injury. Take heed, Henrik, take heed.

In Boston, the struggling Bruins are without their sublime centre Marc Savard and hooligan winger Milan Lucic. Montreal lost linchpin defenceman Andrei Markov on the first night of the regular season and the Habs are still trying to recover.

The Carolina keeper Cam Ward was cut by Rick Nash’s skate at the weekend; at least Ward will not have to backstop the Hurricanes anytime soon. Scoring wingers Simon Gagne (Philadelphia) and Johan Franzen (Detroit) are done until Christmas.

The former Red Wing Marian Hossa has yet to join the Chicago Blackhawks due to off-season shoulder surgery. The Wings are also without injured second-line centre Valtteri Filppula, not to mention the free agent departures of Hossa, Mikael Samuelsson and Jiri Hudler. No wonder Detroit management are talking about a “transition year” for the first time since 1992.

Who else? Goalies Jean- Sebastien Giguere (Anaheim), Kari Lehtonen (Atlanta) and Rick DiPietro (New York Islanders), defenceman Shea Weber (Nashville), Pittsburgh power play king Sergei Gonchar and blueline blaster Sheldon Souray (Edmonton).

The Oilers defenders Ladislav Smid and Lubomir Visnovsky also missed a few games with the swine flu; Boston’s David Krejci, Colorado’s Peter Budaj and the Islanders’ veteran Doug Weight also had a bout with the ill-named infection.

Injuries are nothing new in ice hockey, of course. But to see so many of the league’s best players on the sidelines so early in the season – and for a lengthy period of time in most cases – is stunning.

Not only are the play-off races in both conferences impacted, there is also the Olympics in February to consider. Take Team Russia, for example. Ovechkin, Malkin and Kovalchuk are arguably their top forwards, while Markov and Gonchar are definitely their best defencemen.

Even if all five are back by February it does not bode well to skate into the world’s best-on-best tournament with your best players barely healthy.

Every country participating in the Winter Games faces the same challenge – making it to, and through, the Olympics with the best line-up possible – but no nation has been more mauled than the Russians.

The funny thing is, the NHL’s “compressed” schedule – necessitated by the fact the league will close down for two weeks during the Olympics – cannot be blamed for the spate of injuries. How can it, when the NHL season is barely a month old?

Most of the aforementioned players were hurt before their team played 10 games; surely, that is not the wear-and-tear of an accelerated schedule. Rather, it is the reality of increasingly big men playing an increasingly fast game.

From concussions to bad backs to blown-out knees to broken wrists to sprained ankles, the only things consistent about injuries in the NHL this season are the frequency they have occurred and the quantity of high-quality players they have afflicted.

smccaig@thenational.ae