Tobias Rieder to miss “about a month”

After suffering an upper-body injury and exiting Tuesday’s win against the Montreal Canadiens, the Oilers have learned that forward Tobias Rieder will miss roughly a month of action.

Though the Oilers haven’t specified what the injury is beyond the classic, vague upper-body injury, it looked like he took an awkward hit and hurt his shoulder before exiting the game against the Habs.

As previously announced, winger Patrick Russell was recalled from the Bakersfield Condors of the AHL, giving the Oilers both him and Cooper Marody to potentially slide into the lineup.

Regardless, the Oilers will be down one of their few top-six wingers for about a month which doesn’t bode well for a team already struggling with depth on the wings. Another unfortunate thing about losing Rieder is the fact that he’s one of the team’s best penalty killers, so somebody else will have to step up and take on those short-handed minutes.

I imagine we could see a pretty big lineup shake before the team’s next game against Calgary. Ryan Strome and Milan Lucic aren’t clicking on the third line right now, so maybe Strome slides up as a winger in the top-six to spark his offensive game given that Marody could fill in as the third centre.

We shall see! Godspeed, Toby.