The Edmonton Oilers organization had more bad injury news to share after announcements regarding Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl.
Tonight, the Oilers are set to face the Seattle Kraken on the ice, but Edmonton will be without many of their best players. Notably, Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl won't take part in the game, as both players deal with injuries.
Oilers' head coach Kris Knoblauch shared an update on their status yesterday, saying that the players could miss around a week:
'Connor's got a doctor's appointment today to see how long he's going to be, and we're not anticipating him playing tomorrow for sure. I would say day to day, maybe a week. We'll find out more today.'Same kind of timeline [for Draisaitl]. He won't be back immediately; he'll be up to a week.'
Here, for Knoblauch, the strategy is simple: avoiding pushing players to play through injuries at this time of the season, especially key players like Draisaitl or McDavid:
'Obviously, we have to be cognizant of what's ahead of us. The playoffs are very important, and pushing guys that are injured to make themselves worse is not ideal. But even if it was game 5 or 6, we wouldn't want to put somebody in a position where they're going to make themselves worse who had a nagging injury.'
Meanwhile, the team's depth on the ice took a massive hit. In a new development, we learned that it just got worse, as one of their injured players will be sidelined longer than initially expected.
Acquired from the Boston Bruins at the last trade deadline, Frederic still hasn't taken part in his first game as a member of the Oilers, and with some reports suggesting he'd only get in the lineup in time for the playoffs, it's no surprise that we learned he will be away for at least two more weeks.
