Oilers activate Tobias Rieder, place Kris Russell on the Injured Reserve

The Edmonton Oilers made another roster move today as they have activated Tobias Rieder from the Injured Reserve and replaced him with Kris Russell. 

The past couple of days haven’t been overly positive for the Edmonton Oilers as they’ve run into some injury trouble to key pieces on their back end. Yesterday, they placed Oscar Klefbom on the IR after breaking his hand/fingers in Tuesday’s win against the Colorado Avalanche, and today, we learned that Kris Russell will be joining him. While Russell was able to finish the game against Colorado, it’s clear that he was playing through substantial pain as this stint on the IR will keep him on the shelf for at least a week or so. At this point, it’s unclear what exactly is going on with Russell, but it’s obvious that the guy must be banged up for him to miss any time. Regardless of what the injury is, losing Russell in addition to Klefbom is a huge blow.

The bright side is that the Oilers will get another boost to their forward group as Tobias Rieder inches his way to being back in the lineup for the first time in about a month. Rieder suffered an upper-body injury against the Montreal Canadiens back in mid-November and his absence has certainly been felt, especially on the penalty kill. Rieder brings all kinds of speed to the lineup and having him back will add another capable penalty killer to a team that would love to have more bullets in that gun. Despite not scoring yet this season, Rieder has looked dangerous and it seemed like only a matter of time before he’d get himself on the board. Now that he’s been reactivated, it will be interesting to see how Hitchcock will implement him back into the lineup.

Needless to say, this is a bittersweet news release from the team as they’ve lost another key piece to their defensive group but was able to activate a quality top-9 forward. Even so, this run of bad luck comes at a terrible time for the Oilers as they’ve been playing very well and crawled their way back into a playoff spot. One thing is for sure, these injuries could be the biggest dose of adversity the Oilers have had so far this season and everyone will need to step their games up if they’re going to keep the good times rolling. Gord, help us.