Broken ankle derails McDonald's season

by James Mirtle on Nov 17, 2008 2:54 PM CST Comment 5 comments

There are a couple of interesting things in this little article on Andy McDonald's broken ankle, starting with the rediagnosis from a broken leg and ending with the fact the Blues just demoted a player who scored two goals in his debut with the team:

After originally reporting Andy McDonald's injury as a broken leg, the St. Louis Blues on Monday confirmed the veteran center has a broken left ankle and figures to miss at least two months.

McDonald suffered the injury late in the first period Sunday during the Blues' 3-2 shootout loss to Montreal at Scottrade Center.

After watching Steve Regier score his first two NHL goals Sunday against Montreal, the Blues reassigned him to minor-league Peoria. The move has more to do with NHL salary vs. minor-league salary than Regier's play last night.

McDonald's a big loss for the Blues, a team that had a heckuva time scoring last season (especially on the power play). He's struggled defensively this season but leads St. Louis in scoring with 18 points in 16 games and has logged 21 minutes a night on a very young roster that's battled a few key injuries.

This is going to mean a lot more ice time for the likes of David Perron, Patrick Berglund, David Backes and others. St. Louis is already last in the Western Conference, and Andy Murray's job could be in jeopardy if they stay there much longer.

The Regier tidbit is interesting. The Blues have plenty of room under the cap, so this is purely a cost cutting measure, one facilitated by the fact the team has a long break until Friday against Anaheim.

Regier makes just $500,000, so they can't be saving all that much. Still, you wonder if this is a loophole they should close by stipulating players can't be demoted simply for breaks in the NHL schedule.

UPDATE The Blues say McDonald will miss eight weeks with what they're calling a broken left leg and that he will not need surgery.

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I seem to remember the Canucks always had a guy yo-yoing between the AHL and NHL the first year after the cap to save up cap space. I can’t remember who it was anymore, but it was pretty ridiculous. It may have even been Bieksa, actually.

The MacDonald injury looked bad from the get go. He caught an edge heading into the corner and his leg bent badly. The ice conditions were not very good yesterday in St. Louis at all.

Hockey blogging can't get any flatter.

by saskhab on Nov 17, 2008 3:13 PM CST reply actions 0 recs

Josh Green.

I think the Vancouver or Winnipeg Sun had a frequent-flyer watch for the poor guy.

by Doogie2K on Nov 17, 2008 3:47 PM CST up reply actions 0 recs

ice conditions

Yeah, I was at the game — that ice was awful. It’s never been fantastic in the new building (OK, the building’s 14 years old now), but Sunday was particularly rough.

With the cap shuffling: there could be a real reason, on occasion, to get a guy ice time while the parent club is off. But it is silly. They should force you to pay the NHL rate if he’s called right back up … or pay him halfway in between if he’s called back up. Something to prevent shuffling like that.

SBN now has a NY Islanders blog at LighthouseHockey.com.

by Dominik on Nov 17, 2008 7:50 PM CST up reply actions 0 recs

At the very least, you’d think the NHLPA would intervene.

by James Mirtle on Nov 17, 2008 9:26 PM CST up reply actions 0 recs

By the way, I don’t know which bone was broken, but if it was the fibula, then I can see how they’d start by calling it a broken leg, since it is technically a leg bone (it runs all the way down the lower leg, parallelish to the tibia), even if it’s more commonly referred to as an ankle bone.

by Doogie2K on Nov 17, 2008 5:01 PM CST reply actions 0 recs