Mikkel Boedker and his spleen, Lucas Lessio in Portland, and the All Star Break
Welcome to the All Star Break, Coyotes fans!
Puck Prose
First: for those who didn’t know, I’ve actually been living in Houston for a bit. I got to Phoenix on Tuesday, though, just in time for… no games, then another stretch of the team’s road trip. So essentially, in time to get organized at my desk and convince my office manager that NHL Network > ESPN for the office T.V.
Anyways.
The All Star Break is kind of a funny time.
It’s just long enough that we all want to die of boredom (unless you like college basketball, in which case, I’m sure you’re doing just fine), but not as long as the off-season — and therefore, nothing too intriguing happens in this interim. Other than, of course, the All Star Games themselves.
The All Star Games get a ton of flack for being ‘a necessary evil’ or ‘a horse-and-pony show’, but really, they’re fun. After all, who doesn’t love this?
Personally, I can think of nothing better than watching guys known for pure offense doing their thang, but apparently some people don’t like this. It’s fine. It’s whatever.
This year, Oliver Ekman-Larsson is becoming the eighth Arizona Coyotes roster player to skate out in the All Star Games, joining some of the team’s long-term greats (Shane Doan, Keith Tkachuk, Teppo Numminen, Jeremy Roenick) as well as some of the team’s shorter-tenured guys (Nikolai Khabibulin) and even the current alternate captain, Keith Yandle. Oh, and the goalie coach, Sean Burke. Now you know them all.
Anyways, OTL landed in Columbus, Ohio, earlier today — and he’ll be drafted by either Jonathan Toews or Nick Foligno to skate out with a group of ridiculously talented guys just there to have fun.
In addition to the game, there will be the skills competition (which that picture above is from, courtesy of the 2009 All Star skills competition), the rookie showcase, and — my personal favorite — the mascot game. Howler the Coyote is on the Western Conference team, captained by Bailey the Lion of the Los Angeles Kings. Since she’s won a Stanley Cup recently, it’s a fair captaincy (although Stinger from Columbus is captaining the Eastern Conference mascot team, for whatever reason).
During the All Star Break, though, every Coyote other than Oliver Ekman-Larsson will be, well, on break. Here’s what they’ll be spending that break doing:
Mikkel Boedker: Repairing his body, sans-spleen
In all fairness, my last biology class was taken my freshman year of high school. So when I saw that Boedker had his spleen removed this past weekend, I had to google your spleen. Here’s what I learned:
"The spleen (from Greekσπλήν—splḗn[2]) is an organ found in virtually all vertebrates. Similar in structure to a large lymph node, it acts primarily as a blood filter. – Wikipedia."
The accompanying picture looked not unlike something you’d see in a jar in a horror movie about a mad scientist, and so I’m done Googling player injuries.
Since it acts as a blood filter, I don’t know what he’ll do now and I don’t know what kind of full recovery is made from this surgery — but with the All Star Break as the only real span of time without play for the forseeable future (excluding the actual summer break), this was kind of the ideal time to need a spleen removal, I guess.
In any case, Boedker will be recovering. Get well soon, Mikey.
The Young Guns are back in Portland
While Boedker is recovering from his surgery, quite a different story is unfolding with the team’s youngest players:
#Coyotes announce they've recalled G McKenna and assigned Gormley, Samuelsson, Lessio and Lee to the AHL.
— Sarah McLellan (@sarah__mclellan) January 21, 2015
We can safely assume that Brandon Gormley, Philip Samuelsson, Lucas Lessio, and Mike Lee will be playing for Portland during the break, then.
Fans — and hockey reporters — alike are torn about this decision. The Coyotes aren’t the only team that made it, and the Coyotes fans aren’t the only ones annoyed by it:
Hertl, Goodrow to WOR for ASB, methinks they could use a few days off more than extra ice time. But what do i know, im just a writer lol
— Andrew Bensch (@BenchWarmerView) January 22, 2015
On the plus side, the players are getting more ice time; particularly considering that they’ll be getting more interaction with the other prospects they’re likely to be skating with in future seasons, this is an extremely good thing.
In contrast, though, as Andrew put it — the players are missing out on what could be a much-needed break from the grueling 82-game NHL schedule. The likelihood that they get injured during the break seems like a big risk to take for up-and-comers, as well — but the risk/reward of making sure the younger guys don’t slack off on their workouts (and making sure that they’re going to be able to get some more exposure and development time) during the lengthy break could be a big thing as well.
In any case, the All Star Break is kind of taking a back seat in Arizona; the Pro Bowl is this weekend, and so is my birthday.
Cheers!
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