Health problems have plagued the Stars all season, and that trend continued on Thursday as forward Jason Spezza was knocked out of action in a loss to the Jets.
Now, it sounds like Spezza will be out for the foreseeable future.
“Right now we really don’t have a time frame on it, but it’s more than days,” Stars coach Lindy Ruff said, per the Stars’ Sean Shapiro. “I’ll just be honest. It’s an upper body injury that doesn’t have anything to do with anything old.
“It’s not a concussion. It’s going to take a week or two, maybe longer.”
The hit in question:
spezza gets rocked by lowry pic.twitter.com/lkbVbyoX6C
— Dylan Nadwodny (@dnadders) February 3, 2017
As mentioned above, it’s been a nightmare season for Dallas in terms of injuries. Only two players have appeared in all 52 games -- Tyler Seguin and Devin Shore -- while the likes of Cody Eakin, Patrick Sharp, Ales Hemsky and Jiri Hudler have all missed at least 20 games each.
As a result, Dallas has struggled with consistency and developing chemistry. It’s also been robbed of a projected lineup that was armed to the teeth with offensive ability.
The Stars are only three points back of St. Louis for the final wild card spot in the Western Conference, but also need to leapfrog three teams -- Vancouver, Winnipeg and Calgary -- to get there. Being without Spezza, who sits third on the team in assists, will make that task more difficult.