Islanders Lose Calum Ritchie and Matias Maccelli to First-Period Injuries Against Leafs
Daily Faceoff reported the injuries during the game.
The are currently up 2-0 on the Toronto Maple Leafs, which means the universe immediately had to balance the scales. According to Daily Faceoff, forwards Calum Ritchie and Matias Maccelli both left the game in the first period with lower-body injuries.
Losing one forward early is a bad break. Losing two in the exact same period to the exact same vague injury designation means head coach Patrick Roy is about to double-shift his top guys until their skates melt.
If you are holding a live ticket on to close out this shutout in Toronto, your stress levels just spiked. Running a short bench for 40 minutes against the Leafs is a recipe for blown coverages and exhausted defensemen.
For Ritchie, this is a frustrating rerun. The 21-year-old center, who landed on Long Island in the trade with , already dealt with lower-body issues that cost him chunks of time last season. He simply cannot buy a clean bill of health.
Maccelli heading down the tunnel right behind him is a brutal blow for a team trying to salvage a Canadian road trip. The Islanders just dropped a tight 2-1 game to Ottawa on Thursday, and they desperately need to bank points before heading home.
We will wait for the inevitable postgame update where the team calls them both day-to-day while secretly firing up the MRI machine. With the coming to town on Tuesday, 's medical staff has exactly 48 hours to figure out if they need to make some emergency call-ups.