Friday, September 02, 2016

World Cup Player Notes (Sep 2)

Reports on Friday morning are saying that goaltender Frederik Andersen suffered an undisclosed injury in an Olympic qualifier between Denmark and Slovenia, after a collision with a teammate, forcing him from the game with only about five minutes left in the contest.

We're awaiting the notes on the severity of the injury, as Team Europe will be expecting him in camp here shortly and then the Toronto Maple Leafs have a lot invested in their number one for the coming season, so there is plenty of concern to be had.

Camp for Team Europe is set to open up in Quebec City on Monday, so if the injury is indeed serious, we'll likely have an update at some point over the weekend.  One would have to think that Reto Berra, Kristers Gudlevskis or Anton Khudobin would be the likely candidates to replace the netminder, lining up behind Jaroslav Halak and Thomas Greiss.

Later on in the day, Los Angeles Kings insiders announced that forward Jeff Carter suffered a lower-body injury in his off-season regiment and his participation in the World Cup is likely to be out of the question.  The early suggestions being that the injury is in the week-to-week variety and that would also put his participation in Kings' training camp in question as well.

The Canadian camp will also open up on Monday in Ottawa and it is likely that a replacement will be named in the next day or two, hustling to the nation's capital for the start.  The expectation will be that Taylor Hall, Corey Perry or Ryan O'Reilly would be likely candidates for his replacement.

The hits just keep on coming, as it was also announced on Friday, that Czech forward David Krejci is not 100% after his off-season hip surgery and he will also be pulling out of the World Cup tournament.  There was a hint of this actually happening earlier in the week, but with camps opening in the next few days, the team obviously needed a concrete answer from Krejci and that answer was no.

As for the Bruins' training camp, I would think his goal would be to be ready for the start of camp, but his participation in all of the drills might be in question, especially if he isn't ready to go right now.  This is just speculation on my part, but we'll wait and see.

Jiri Hudler seems like he would be the next best player to join the squad, as a replacement, but Radim Vrbata might have a case or even Jiri Tlusty.

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