It’s been a rough couple of days for the metropolitan area’s professional hockey goaltenders. Henrik Lundqvist, for example, took a Brian Boyle slap shot off the neck at practice yesterday. (Incidentally, if the thought of being hit in the neck with a frozen hockey puck didn’t sound terrifying enough, here’s Lundqvist describing the incident: “The shot hit me in the throat between my [neck] padding and the extra padding I have at the bottom of my mask, and when it did, I had trouble breathing and then I got really dizzy because blood was blocked going to my brain.”) Martin Brodeur, meanwhile, left the Devils’ win over the Blackhawks with a bruise on his right elbow.
Even Rick DiPietro, who for once gets to be the healthiest of this group, likely has a bruised ego this morning after allowing all seven Hurricane goals in last night’s 7-2 loss to Carolina. (That, we suppose, isn’t quite the same, though.) So, how long will Lundqvist and Brodeur be sidelined by their injuries? Not long, it seems. Lundqvist, whose brain is presumably now receiving the proper amount of blood, expects to play tonight when the Rangers return to Philadelphia for the first time since the shootout that ended their season last April. And Lou Lamoriello says that he expects Brodeur to play tomorrow when the Devils host the Rangers in Newark.