Injuries Continue to Mount, Wings Sign Emergency Goalie

Just a couple weeks ago it seemed like the Wings were finally going to be healthy. Boy what a difference a few games make…

The last few games, the Wings have played without a full complement of forwards, with Pavel Datsyuk (lower body), Johan Franzen (groin), and Jiri Hudler (flu, upper body) all out. Add Todd Bertuzzi to that list, as he will miss tonight’s game with a back injury.

In order to fill the void up front, the Wings decided to send Joey MacDonald back to Grand Rapids and recall Jan Mursak.

A few weeks ago when Chris Osgood decided he was ready to return to action, he was activated off of IR. He has yet to dress for a game since then due to a couple of setbacks, and his salary has been eating up our cap space that we could have used on reinforcements from Grand Rapids.

He had decided that tonight he would finally be ready to go, which was the reason the Wings could afford to send back MacDonald. However, this morning it was announced that Osgood would be unable to dress, meaning the Wings were stuck for a backup for tonight’s game.

Enter Troy Passingham. Hardcore hockey fans might remember the name, but unless you are from Windsor or Sarnia I don’t expect you to know much about him.

He played for the Memorial Cup winning Spitfire in 2010, and this year was traded to the Sarnia Sting. I’m assuming since he is close by (Sarnia is only a couple hours by car), this made him the easiest goalie to get into Detroit in time for tonight’s game, because it’s not like his numbers merit an NHL look. Tonight’s game is Howard’s from start to finish no matter how well or poorly he plays, because you don’t want a guy with a 4.76 OHL GAA between the pipes against the NHL’s best team. The only possible scenario where he would see game action is if the Howard were forced out due to injury.

Let’s all hope and pray that never happens.

Posted by Rob Benneian on 12:49 pm. Filed under Detroit Sports, Signings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.