ANAHEIM — First, Leon Draisaitl came back from injury only to get hurt again just seven periods into his return.
Then Trent Frederic played just seven minutes in his Oilers debut at Los Angeles and will miss tonight’s game in Anaheim, leaving the Edmonton Oilers with a 19-player roster against the Ducks.
There are six regular season games before the playoffs begin — relatively meaningless affairs, luckily for injury-plagued Edmonton — and the Oilers are getting decimated by injuries almost exclusively to their best players.
Will Edmonton be ready to defend its Western Conference title?
“We’ve only got six games left, so they’re not going to get a lot of games in,” said general manager Stan Bowman. “But we do think they’re all going to be back and be ready before the playoffs begin.”
As for Frederic, who tweaked his high ankle sprain on his first shift as an Oiler, “It doesn’t appear to be very serious. I don’t have an update on timing at all … but it does not appear to be serious.”
Edmonton plans to play a man short tonight in Anaheim, with Connor McDavid, Draisaitl, Mattias Ekholm, Frederic, goalie Stuart Skinner, and of course, winger Evander Kane all injured. Rookie goalie Olivier Rodrigue is scheduled to make his first NHL start, as backup Calvin Pickard gets a rest after starting five straight games.
Kane was with the team on this road trip but returned to Edmonton for family reasons. Kane, Ekholm and Skinner skated together Monday morning in Edmonton, as Skinner closes in on a return from a concussion suffered March 26 versus Dallas.
“For the injury that Stuart has, there are progressions you make,” Bowman said. “He’s moving along nicely, and there’s usually one final step before you’re in a game. We’re about to do that.
“These are the same steps that we’d go through in November,” Bowman added. “Injured players need as much time as they need, and they will return when the doctors say it’s the right time for them to come back.”
On Monday Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch said that all his injured players are “about a week, plus-minus” from returning. The playoffs are set to begin in 13 or 14 days, depending on how the scheduling goes for Game 1 of a series between the Oilers and their likely first-round opponent, Los Angeles.
In a perfect world, that would leave any injured player two or three tune-up games before playoffs start.
In an imperfect world, the Oilers could begin their quest to return to the Stanley Cup missing key players, or at best, having them working themselves back into game shape while the Kings are healthy and firing on all cylinders.
Either way, Bowman is just an innocent bystander.
“I’m not saying (to the medical staff), ‘Look, these guys have got to play at least two or three games, so just work your magic and get them in the lineup.’ That’s not how this works,” he said. “When they are medically ready and there’s no reason to question that they’re good to go, then they’ll be in the lineup.
“Yeah, this is not the ideal situation,” he admitted. “We would love to have everybody — our full lineup — the last month. But we have no alternative.”
McDavid is skating daily with the Oilers, and to our eyes, he looks great. Draisaitl took the morning skate in Anaheim, but will not play tonight.
Frederic lasted six seconds on Saturday before his high ankle sprain acted up.
Acquired at the trade deadline for some much-needed size and grit in the top-six, Frederic played just 7:10 in his Oilers debut at Los Angeles Saturday. He did not participate in the morning skate Monday in Anaheim and will be further evaluated when the team returns to Edmonton on Tuesday.
“Obviously, he didn’t play very much. Things flared up right from the first shift the other night,” Knoblauch said. “But we feel that, like a lot of our players, he will be fine and be ready for playoffs. But an immediate return is not going to happen.”
Did they rush Frederic back?
“Players don’t return to play until they’re more than ready,” Bowman said. “There’s a return to play protocol that is followed by the doctor and the trainers, and you go through those steps. It was almost six weeks (since he was injured) … and we held him out to make sure that we were all totally comfortable. Unfortunately, that’s part of sports.”
Frederic arrived in Edmonton on March 4 in a complicated three-team deal that also saw the Oilers bring in burly fourth-line winger Max Jones. But Frederic had suffered the dreaded high ankle sprain in a game against the Toronto Maple Leafs on Feb. 25.
Frederic started the game for the Oilers, immediately threw a heavy hit along the boards in front of the Kings’ bench, and left the ice at the 0:06 mark of Period 1. He did not return to the ice until the 12:22 mark of the first period, and was witnessed during a TV timeout testing the ankle out while skating circles on the ice.
Frederic laboured through a dozen more shifts, but his last shift ended with 14:51 to play in a 2-0 game. He never saw the ice again.
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