Capilano Rehab Centre Injury Report – December 29, 2015

Our defence was awful when we had Oscar Klefbom and Brandon Davidson in our lineup. I never realized how important those two guys were to the Oilers until they got injured. The Oilers’ defensive play has been 10x worse since Davison and Klefbom have been out. Klefbom has still not been skating with the team; Jason Gregor reports that he is still at least a week away from returning, so we are going to have to suffer a little longer without him. Thankfully Davidson is nearing his return from a rib injury suffered against Colorado before Christmas. Davidson has been skating with the team, and the rumour has it he will be joining them on Thursday. 

As we get closer to Connor McDavid’s return the question seems to be how patient will the Oilers be with his busted clavicle? We all know that he has been skating for over a week, and if you read last weeks Injury Report, we saw him breaking imaginary ankles and sniping Geno’s with what appeared to be ease. I can only assume we are just waiting for the bone to strengthen as mobility doesn’t seem to be an issue. So how soon will the Oilers get hime back in the lineup? Every game, and every point, is crucial in the tight Pacific race so does allowing him to come earlier give us a better chance at a playoff push?

I think the majority of Nation citizens will say that we should be patient with him, but in reality, we haven’t got the slightest clue about when he’ll be back. For all we know McDavid could be ready to go for tonight, but the Oilers are waiting for another week or so. On the other hand, if he won’t be ready for a couple more weeks, the Oilers could wait him out until after the All Star Break. Now, I’ve been emailing Connor all week but he seems to be ignoring me about the matter. Whether it’s his real email or not, I’m sure his return will be extremely last minute. Although I don’t know a lot about collar bones, if you ask me, the collar bone on this miracle child should be close to brand new by now. 

Rob Klinkhammer remains on the IR from his leg injury since the end of October, not counting his brief 8 minutes of ice time on December 15th before re-injuring it. Once again, as per Jason Gregor, McLellan hinted that Klinkhammer might be taken off the IR at the end of the week. Nail Yakupov sounds like he’s still weeks away from returning from his high ankle sprain, and Andrew Ference’s timeline on his hip injury is still unknown. Obviously I’m really excited for all of our players to return from the IR, but I am almost more excited to see what our management will do with all the leftover players. Who will get sent down? It is bound to cause some crazy stupid arguments in Nation HQ and on Oilersnation Twitter.

Who knew Mark Letestu was so tough? The Elk Point native has been playing pretty decent as of late, and it couldn’t be easy. The fact that he’s had a hairline fracture for the past month is even more impressive. I can’t stop thinking about how annoying it would be to go through Christmas break with a broken jaw. The biggest day of the year for eating delicious food and you have to deal with a sore jaw? This is why I like to stay inside and avoid all danger.

If you haven’t listened to our holiday edition of the podcast do it now! In this episode we give a run down of our awesome Christmas party and all the stupid things we did. We also have two awesome guests talk about the coolest thing since sliced bread, Pride Tape! We had a lot of fun recording this episode so give it a listen.