COLUMBUS — When you’re talking gashes with a hockey player, it’s all a matter of perspective. What constitutes as a “bad cut” to you and I is, to borrow a line from Monty Python, “but a scratch” to these guys.
So when you see genuine fear in the face of Edmonton Oilers captain Shawn Horcoff — as I did while standing on the Edmonton bench, waiting to do a pregame TV hit with Sportsnet’s Gene Principe — during Tuesday night’s warmup, you know something bad has happened. Horcoff came rushing to the bench for a towel — “It’s a bad cut!” — while Ben Eager came right behind to help a trainer across the ice to Taylor Hall.
“I saw the whole thing happen. It was pretty scary,” Horcoff said after the game. “When I first saw it, it was from eyebrow to hair line, and about a half-inch open. Right down to the bone. He was kind of in shock… Just a really scary moment.”
Hall stepped on a puck and fell during the warmup, taking out teammate Ladislav Smid from behind. The two slid into the boards, and an oncoming Corey Potter tried to jump over them, catching Hall in the forehead with his skate. It was, as one scribe called it, a three-car pileup in Turn 2.
“Definitely terrible,” Potter said. “I had two guys sliding at me, and just tried to get out of the way.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a cut that bad. It was pretty deep, and long. Pretty gross.”
Hall missed the game, and the Oilers blew an early 2-0 lead to lose 4-2 to hockey’s worst team, the Columbus Blue Jackets. It’s bad enough that Edmonton played the game without their entire top line of Hall, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (shoulder) and Jordan Eberle (knee), but the way they’ve all been hurt makes you think Voodoo dolls.
Nugent-Hopkins tripped on the blueline in Chicago, untouched by friend or foe, and injured his shoulder when he slid into the boards. He’s been out since Jan. 2. Eberle tangled up with Dallas’ Jamie Benn on a minor collision that did not even involve a body check. He’s been out since Jan. 7 with a bad knee, though the team’s leading scorer is set to return shortly.
And now Hall, one of the better skaters in the National Hockey League, steps on a puck and misses time.
“I don’t know,” Horcoff said when asked about the freak injuries. “If anyone does, tell me. It’s getting frustrating. Taylor is fine; he’ll play again soon. But he gets really lucky – it’s really close to his eye. But, they had a good surgeon here, and he took care of it.”
Hall, who almost certainly enjoyed his last helmet-less pre-game skate, did not speak to the media after the game. Head coach Tom Renney did, of course, and was asked if his team is simply not deep enough to win games minus its injured first line, plus three of its top four defencemen in Ryan Whitey (foot injury), Tom Gilbert (ankle) and Cam Barker (ankle).
“Pretty much,” Renney admitted, before putting on a brave face. “But they’re working their guts out. You’ve got to stay with it. It’s amazing what you can do when everybody shoulders in against the odds. We believe in what we’re trying to do here.”
The rest of the league knows what’s in store for the Oilers this season, and they likely do too. But they can’t hit the fast forward button and get right to that lottery pick. Not with 37 games left in the season.
They can’t feel sorry for themselves, because as the old cliché goes, no one else will.
“Not thinking that way at all,” Renney said. “You know, there’s an opportunity here, for players to step in and play for those (injured) guys. An opportunity for our team to galvanize, suck it up and go after wins nonetheless. You learn an awful lot about your team under those types of circumstances.
“These are the cards we’re dealt, and we’ve got to sit at the table and play.”
