You may not believe me, but for the first time in a very, very long time, we have no injuries to report!

Technically Andrej Sekera is still on the LTIR, but he has officially been assigned to the Bakersfield Condors for a conditioning stint. This is great news and means he is very close to coming back to the Oilers. I can’t imagine how mentally painful it is for him to sit on the sidelines all season and watch his team barely scrape by like the Oilers have been doing.

As per Ryan Rishaug, it looks like Sekera can play up to five games on the conditioning stint in Bakersfield. Sekera played his very first game of the season down in Bakersfield last night where Keith Gretzky was in attendance watching. The Condors are also on the ice again tonight which means Reggie’s jumping right into the fire this weekend. I hope he’s feeling up to par and isn’t rushing himself back from the Achilles surgery. In the meantime, the Oilers management has some decisions to make on how they’re going to make room in the salary cap for when Sekera returns. My guess is that Gretzky will be waiving Brandon Manning and Alex Petrovic.  We should know in the next week or so what the decision will be.

It appears like Sekera looked good in his game last night and played nearly 20 minutes. That’s good to see from Reggie and I hope he gets the conditioning he needs to return to Edmonton soon.

In other minor injury news, Ken Hitchcock took a puck to the side of the head in Thursday’s game against the Wild. It was a pretty freak accident as a Minnesota player was trying to clear the zone by turn-and-firing the puck up the ice. He lost control and the puck flew right into the Oilers bench and hit Hitchcock, who I assume had no idea the puck was coming. Gene Principe reported that Hitchcock took a couple shitches and thankfully he was ok and later returned to the game. Sometimes it hurts to be a coach on the bench, maybe they should be wearing helmets? (kidding). That was a good result for an otherwise scary situation.

Kris Russell appeared to be shaken up after getting hit into the net during the most recent game against the Wild. He went to the dressing room for some minor repairs but ended up returning to the game. It’s interesting to note that he missed practice yesterday, along with Jujhar Khaira, but he is skating today and both Khaira and Russell are expected to play. I wouldn’t be surprised if Russell will play with some minor bumps and bruises today, and I’m curious to see how he looks out there.

If you’re in some need of some good, friendly physiotherapy services you can call them at (780) 466-1104 or visit their website!