Dzingel Practices, Tarasenko to Return, Duclair Thriving in Florida, Biggest Surprises and more
It’s the Monday edition of Links, News, and Notes
With the Ottawa Senators set to take on a busy schedule of four games in seven days this week, let’s take a quick spin around the league at large with our Monday edition of Links, News, and Notes:
- It may feel like a lifetime has passed since the trade was announced, but Ryan Dzingel has finally completed his quarantine and re-joined the Sens for practice on Sunday. The winger won’t play tonight against Calgary, and his timeline for participating in a game will be updated once he’s had the chance to skate a few times.
- It looks like Vladimir Tarasenko may be approaching a return as early as this week. The Blues’ star has missed the entire season recovering from shoulder surgery, and St. Louis could stand to benefit from his return to help solidify a play-off spot in what has turned out to be a very strong division.
- In other injury news, Ilya Samsonov returned to the Washington Capitals’ net on Sunday against the New Jersey Devils. As you may recall, the young goalie entered the NHL’s COVID protocol after testing positive for the disease on January 20th. As a result of his return, Craig Anderson has been re-assigned to the team’s taxi squad.
- Former Senator Anthony Duclair seems to have found a good home on a surprisingly strong Florida Panthers team. Ian Mendes has a nice feature on him, and his relationship with the franchise over at the Athletic ($).
- Greg Wyshynski has a good piece over at ESPN looking at the biggest surprises (among other things) of the 2021 season to-date. I’d definitely agree that a soon-to-be 37 year-old Marc-André turning in a Vezina-calibre performance is near the top of my list of the most surprising developments to date.
- The Sens’ path of destruction, Saturday’s game against the Flames notwithstanding, has garnered some national media attention. Who’s next?!
- Lastly, the folks over at the Athletic had a fun piece where they ran a mock draft looking for players from other eras who would have excelled in today’s game; think someone like Theo Fleury. /