Nuge’s shoulder is fine, Connor turned 21, Darnell Nurse is hanging with his sister, and we’re currently sitting on a two game winning streak during the bye-week. What a time to be alive!

It’s a pretty odd season right now. The Oilers are at the bottom of the standings with no injuries. Last year the Oilers were at the top of the standings with a TON of injuries. I just don’t get it. But even though we’re not suffering from any injury woes right now, we should probably count our blessings as we’ve had a ton of close calls the past couple months. Let’s go over a couple of things that happen from this past week.

This is absolutely insane. Milan Lucic left the game in Vegas in the second period (very quietly, I must add) and no one knew where he went. The game continued, Connor got two points, Nurse became an OT legend, and then after the game, I scroll through Twitter to see the image of a man with his jugular nearly sliced.

Below you can see the incident. It was fairly innocent and no one really saw it. Milan continued to skate off the ice very casually as if nothing ever happened. Let me tell you that nearly getting your throat sliced open and then skating casually off the ice is one of the most boss moves I’ve ever seen in a hockey game.

Also, why the hell don’t players wear neck guards? Sure it’s annoying, sure it’s probably hot, sure it makes them look like a 10/10 goofball, but is it worth it for a sliced throat? If I had it my way, all hockey players would be playing with a full face shield, neck guards, and extremely dull skate blades. For now, we’ll thank the hockey gods that nothing worse happened during this play and that no skate blade accidents will ever happen to a player again for the rest of time.

The Vegas matchup was a pretty violent game for us. At the beginning of the above clip, Ryan Nugent Hopkins takes a hard hit from McNabb. The rest of the clip shows Zack Kassian beating the heck of out him if you feel like watching that, but I’m more worried about Nugey here. Nuge left the game and never returned. THANKFULLY McLellan reported after the game that Nuge will take the bye week to recover, and he should be good to go on Saturday. Bless you, bye-week.

It would have been absolutely gut-wrenching if Nuge did some serious damage to his shoulder again and would be put on the IR. It would be the most Oiler thing ever for this to happen when he’s currently having a career high year in production. Rishaug later tweeted that there were concussion worries after the hit, but he ended up being cleared of that also.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Nuge needed an additional day to recover from the bruising, and frankly, it wouldn’t be terrible if he got an extra day of rest. Fortunately, it sounds like the bruising will clear up by Saturday anyway. #PrayForNuge

You gotta feel a little bit of sympathy for Anton Slepyshev who earlier in the month got thrown onto the trade block by Peter Chiarelli. This is a guy who thought he found himself a solid spot in the lineup after scoring three big goals for us in the playoffs last year. Sure he’s not having the best season this year, but no one is.

Things were looking up for Slepyshev who’s been looking to crack a lineup spot for a couple seasons now. Maybe he’ll find his way with another team? I hope so anyways.

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Literally minutes after writing this article it was announced that Ryan Nugent Hopkins was put on the injury reserve.

Life is unfair.