Sunday, January 09, 2011

Thrashers Place Kane on IR

A generalized mid-body/torso injury has been hampering the success of Evander Kane for quite some time now and on Sunday morning, the Thrashers finally decided to put the young scoring forward on the Injured Reserve, retroactive to January 7th (the game against the Maple Leafs), in order to call up a player to replace him in the line-up.

Kane will be eligible to return to the line-up on the 14th, when the Thrashers play Philadelphia, but there is no guarantee from anyone that he'll be ready to go by then. Kane's services will be required for their stretch drive to the playoffs, so getting him to 100% now will be key to their success.

Kane's early season production has slowed down considerably, but I think that's fair to say of a number of Thrashers' forwards, who were scoring at a pretty good click at the beginning of the season. Kane now has 13 goals and 13 assists in 40 games for Atlanta this season, which is a pretty solid total so far, just situated outside the top 100 in pool scoring, but a week or two away from the line-up may hurt those numbers a bit.

ImplicationsThe last time we saw Kane on the blog, it was just before the New Year, so a week and a bit has already passed and Stacey, who has Kane this season, has moved up since the last post. On December 31st, Stacey was in 9th place in the standings and going into Sunday's action, he was unofficially situated in 7th spot, only 6 points behind 6th place. He's really making a charge this season, hopefully the loss of Kane won't be too devastating for him.

Link to the Injury/News Page

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