Yesterday, we learned via a Red Wings press release that defenseman Danny Dekeyser was undergoing tests in the wake of a lower leg injury suffered in Wednesday’s 7-2 win over Pittsburgh. In looking at the last shifts, it was hard to tell exactly what was wrong with DeKeyser, but we were told by Bill Roose that DK had been seen in a boot and with crutches, along with the news that the team was awaiting MRI results.
Well those results are in and here’s how bad it looks:
DeKeyser has strained ligament in left foot, out 3-4 weeks, Ken Holland said.
— Ansar Khan (@AnsarKhanMLive) October 2, 2015
So that’s the bad news. The good news is that 3-4 weeks is way better than the 6-8 week timeframe I feared yesterday.
With a four week timespan, DeKeyser would miss the Red Wings‘ first nine games of the season. This isn’t long enough to put DK on LTIR (which would mean having to miss 21 days and 10 games), and with Datsyuk starting on IR, it won’t be necessary for salary cap reasons, so expect DeKeyser to go on regular injured reserve as the season starts up.
In his absence, the three candidates for making the team out of preseason are Xavier Ouellet, Nick Jensen, and Alexey Marchenko. Jensen and Ouellet are in the lineup tonight while I expect Marchenko will probably play the preseason finale tomorrow in Toronto. If I were a gambling man, I’d probably say Marchenko is the guy, but I wouldn’t take that information to your bookie (or at least don’t blame me if you make weird bets like that and lose).
This is a good opportunity for one of the waiver-exempt defensemen to make Ken Holland’s job very difficult in the next month. It’s also a terrible loss of one of Detroit’s very best defensemen right before the start of the season.
