Posted by According to Cory Masisak over at the Washington Times, Chris Clark is set to have surgery on his wrist that could end his season.
A team spokesman just confirmed Chris Clark will have surgery on his right wrist. The surgery is slated for Thursday. Clark will talk to the media about it at practice on Wednesday.
Clark has reportedly had the injury since training camp, and General Manager George McPhee has basically said “Enough is enough.”
“It has everything to with [his lack of production],” McPhee said, referring to Clark’s one goal and five assists in 32 games. “It’s not the Chris Clark we know. He’s having a tough time handling a pass, making a pass and shooting the puck.”
“It just got to the point where he wasn’t the player we know he is,” he added. “He was hurting himself and hurting his team. So we’re probably going to go [the surgery] route instead of playing through it without getting any results.”
By putting Clark on the LTIR, that will free up $2.8 million in cap space to call-up Karl Alzner. This gives Washington a few options heading in to the latter part of the season. Trading is one option, but not the priority for the Caps at this point. The most logical thing to do is to have Eric Fehr or David Steckel play in place of Clark. Steckel is a face-off and penalty killing specialist, while Fehr (taken one pick before Ryan Getzlaf in the 2003 NHL Draft) has show flashes of brilliance of late.
Bruce Boudreau has repeatedly said that ‘consistency’ has been an issue for Fehr, but he had two of his best games in a long time over the weekend, recording a goal and an assist.
A call-up from Chocolate Town should be announced in the next few days, but the obvious choice is Alzner. McPhee did however, not rule out other options.
“We’ve talked about some options in there,” McPhee said. “It may be Karl, it may be some other defenseman we bring up. [Sean] Collins has been good [in Hershey], [Tyler] Sloan has been good.”
I would be truly surprised if Collins or Sloan was called up over Alzner, but if GMGM thinks Alzner needs more seasoning before playing in playoff-caliber games down the stretch, Sloan has been solid at the NHL level. As for another player taking over Clark’s captain status?
I Hope you enjoyed this post. As always, leaving a comment below is both appreciated and encouraged. Thanks!“Clark is our captain,” Boudreau said. “There’s no controversy there. When he gets healthy, he’ll come back and be our captain.”
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