Gagner Undergoes Season-Ending Surgery

A tweet this evening reports that Sam Gagner of the Oilers has now been shut down for the rest of the season after being cut around the hand/wrist and has now undergone surgery to repair tendons in that region, now shutting him down for the remaining month of the season.

The Oilers are now without Ryan Whitney, Ales Hemsky, Taylor Hall and now Gagner for the bulk of the remaining portion of the schedule, now likely doing nothing but looking forward to this Summer's draft and free agent activity, trying to tackle the 2012 season with much more energy and vigor.  A tough way to finish the first promising season of the rebuild, but that's the way it goes sometimes.

Gagner was on pace to have his best season in his career, but he'll now finish the 2011 season with only 15 goals and 27 assists in 68 games, only 7 points shy of his career-high, which he set in his rookie season, back in 2008.  In terms of pool rankings, his rookie season, he finished in 137th among all players and in 2011, he will start his descent from 119th.  There's a pretty good chance he'll fall below his career-best in the next month, but at least he's on the right track.

In the draft, Gagner was an active member of Wes M.'s team, which (at the time of the post being written) sits in 12th position, 60 points out of the money, but 3rd in the third segment of the season, 28 points out of 1st now.  I suppose with the loss of Gagner, it'll likely cause the biggest hit to his segment run, but Allan S. is running away with that as well, so it was going to take much more than Gagner to help that out.

Link to the Injury/News Page