Mats Sundin Out For About A Month
Posted November 8, 2006 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The team has confirmed that its main sparkplug, Mats Sundin, will be out of the line-up for at least the next three or four weeks.
The captain apparently suffered a slight ligament tear in his elbow and while the injury won’t require any surgery, it will be enough to keep him off the ice for about a month.
Leaf G.M. John Ferguson suspects his star player suffered the wound after taking a hit while circling the net in Monday’s game against the Flyers.
Doctors examined Sundin after that match and didn’t seem too concerned. But as time passed and the pain became more obvious, they took a second look.
The injury means Sundin won’t be there when the Leafs meet the Bruins in Boston on Thursday. He’s been one of the main engines in the Buds’ early season comeback winning streak.
Sundin has eight goals, 11 assists and 19 points through 17 games so far this season, and collected nine points in the last five games. He won’t be easily replaced.
But in something of a cross sports metaphor, Ferguson is expecting his reserves to step up to the plate, just as they did when blue-liners Pavel Kubina, Andrew Wozniewski, Carlo Colaiacovo and Staffan Kronwall were lost to injuries.
“Brendan Bell and Ian White along with Hall Gill and Tomas Kaberle and Bryan McCabe especially — they were not only able to get us through that but really come through for us,” Ferguson recalls. “So this is going to be an opportunity up front. You don’t replace Mats, but it is going to be an opportunity for others to demonstrate their abilities to handle more.
“Handle more responsibility, handle more ice time and be difference makers for us.”
Coach Paul Maurice admits there will be an absence in the line-up, but adds if it had to happen, let it happen now.
“When you get injuries like this in the playoffs they’re harder to manage emotionally because your season might be five days longer,” he explains. “In the regular season, Mats is hurt but it’s not major and we’re going to get him back sooner rather than later.”
Darcy Tucker, who’s second on the team in scoring, agrees Sundin’s injury will hurt everyone – but they’ll manage.
“I don’t think anybody on the team is going to panic about it,” he shrugs. “Obviously Mats is our captain but we have leaders in the dressing room that have been here for a while. We’ll do our part to make sure we get the team the same way every night.”
It’s not the first time the super Swede has been unable to answer the bell.
Last season, the captain suffered a serious eye injury that kept him out of the line-up for weeks.
The team weathered that storm as best it could then, and now faces new clouds on the horizon with this latest setback.
