Tag: Columbus Blue Jackets

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Two more NHL coaches fired on Saturday.

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The National Hockey League’s regular season has come to an end and teams from around the league that failed to blossom into a playoff contender this season are now doing some major spring cleaning.

On Friday, we saw a number of high profile firings that ranged from executives to coaching staff and it would appear that the trend is set to continue over the course of the weekend.

The latest comes to us courtesy of Columbus Blue Jackets insider Aaron Portzline, who reported on Saturday morning that 2 members of the Blue Jackets coaching staff had been given their walking papers. According to Portzline’s report, both head coach Brad Larsen and goaltending coach Manny Legace were informed that they would no longer be with the team moving forward. Legace, a former NHL goaltender in his own right, simply did not have his contract renewed whereas Larsen was fired from his role.

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Mitch Marner speaks after avoiding gruesome injury

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Toronto Maple Leafs forward Mitch Marner was narrowly able to avoid what could have been a gruesome and perhaps even career threatening injury during last night’s game at Scotiabank Arena against the visiting Columbus Blue Jackets. 

Blue Jackets forward Kent Johnson inadvertently stepped on Marner’s leg after the latter had stumbled along the boards; Marner immediately reacted in understandable pain, but thankfully, was eventually no worse for wear. As Marner would explain afterward, while he was wearing protective socks on his wrists, he wasn’t doing so on his lower body. 

“Right away it just felt weird. I didn’t know, really, what it was … when I got back I just asked our trainers if there was a cut or anything … pretty lucky, but definitely a freak, little incident there,” Marner explained.

“I got the cut-proof stuff on my wrists, but not on my legs. Maybe I was lucky that he just wasn’t a heavy guy. You know, it was a bit freak play there, but lucky enough nothing came out of it.”

We’ve seen some frightening injuries in recent years, including the scary incident in which Evander Kane was accidentally sliced by the skate of Pat Maroon earlier this season, causing him to miss several months.

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NHL rookie demoted to the AHL for missing team meeting.

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A rookie in the National Hockey League is having the worst kind of April Fools day, and unfortunately there won’t come a point when he realizes it was all just a joke.

According to a report from Columbus Blue Jackets insider Aaron Portzline, Blue Jackets head coach Brad Larsen has given rookie forward Trey Fix-Wolansky a harsh lesson today by sending the 23 year old back down to the American Hockey League for violating the team’s rules.

According to Portzline, Fix-Wolansky overslept on Saturday and as a result ended up missing a team meeting. While this may not sound like a big deal, it is universally frowned upon across all teams in the National Hockey League. For example, we recently saw former NHL star turned head coach of the Montreal Canadiens Martin St. Louis publicly humiliated one of his players for a similar infraction.

Unfortunately for Fix-Wolansky this means that he will return to the Cleveland Monsters of the American Hockey League and reports indicate that he will be suiting up for that team this evening. For a player that has only appeared in a total of 13 NHL games since being drafted in 2018, this has to feel like a monumental mistake.