Ryan Suter left Saturday night’s game at the end of the 2nd period with an upper-body injury. As he was going into the corner to retrieve the puck, he was leveled by Coyotes’ captain Shane Doan and did not return to the game. In fact, Suter received a two-minute unsportsmanlike penalty on the play. I’m assuming that’s because “two minutes for receiving a check” doesn’t sound as good.
The play itself is one of those tricky situations where there really isn’t a penalty. About three seconds before the injury, it was Ryan Suter delivering the hit and Shane Doan was on the receiving end. As Doan picked himself up off the ice, he made a beeline straight towards Suter and served up a bodycheck that was loaded with the worst of intentions.
After the game, Barry Trotz took issue with the play:
Check it out for yourself:
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At the risk of stating the obvious, losing Suter for the rest of the game was huge. There are those out there who will tell you that Ryan Suter has been more valuable to the team than captain and fellow defenseman Shea Weber. He’s tied for the team lead on the Predators with 24 assists this season and is by far the team leader with a +19 rating. All of that despite missing 11 games due to injury.
The problem is the Predators are a far better team with the 2010 Olympian than they are without him in the lineup. The Preds were 4-6-1 during his 11 game hiatus which isn’t nearly good enough in the tight Western Conference. If he misses a few games, it could be the difference between home-ice advantage and a tough first round match-up. Or worse yet, it could mean missing the playoffs altogether.
The official word out of Nashville is that Suter is day-to-day. Obviously, we’ll keep an eye on this story to see how quickly he recovers.