Some tough luck for Toronto Maple Leafs goaltender Frederik Andersen. He’ll miss the next three-to-four weeks because of an upper-body injury.
Andersen was injured during an Olympic qualifying game on Friday, after one of his teammates crashed into him. It looks like Andersen hurt himself after hitting the ice pretty hard.
If you still haven’t seen the footage of the injury, click here.
Here’s the official update on Andersen’s status via the Leafs Twitter account:
.@MapleLeafs general manager Lou Lamoriello provided an update today on the status of Frederik Andersen: #TMLtalk pic.twitter.com/E0uU8jsuIT
— Leafs PR (@LeafsPR) September 5, 2016
The good news is that Andersen probably won’t miss much (or any) of his first training camp with the Maple Leafs.
Unfortunately, the injury will prevent him from representing Denmark/Team Europe at this month’s World Cup of Hockey.
The Leafs will likely be very cautious with their new off-season acquisition. They paid a first round pick (2017) and a second round pick (2018) to get Andersen from Anaheim and then they paid him $5 million per year on a new long-term contract.
What does this mean for Team Europe?
Now that Andersen has been ruled out of the World Cup, it’ll be up to Thomas Greiss and Jaroslav Halak to battle it out for Team Europe’s starting gig.
Both players are familiar with this process, as they’ve been competing for starts with the Islanders since the beginning of last season.