The Carolina Hurricanes were hit hard with injuries the past week as it was announced last night that both Joni Pitkanen and Jeff Skinner will be out indefinitely after sustaining concussions. I don't even need to tell you how critical of a loss Jeff Skinner is, so I'll save the statistical mumbo jumbo for him. However, I do want to touch on how the injury to Joni Pitkanen will effect the defense. He's missed about 10 games already and has been such a key piece to the defense that things tend to get shaken up a lot during that time. That's certainly been the case this season as the Canes have gone through about 30 different defense combinations this year and the only two consistent pairings were Pitkanen/McBain and Allen/Gleason. Tomas Kaberle and Jay Harrison was the only other defense pairing that had a long tenure and that's obviously defunct now. The constant mix-and-matching on the blue-line has been going on all season but it always seems to increase a ton ...
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