One of the Minnesota Wild’s most underrated players, Justin Fontaine, will be missing “a few weeks” of play with a “sore side”, according to the Star Tribune’s Michael Russo.
No exact timeline has been given, with Wild Twitter saying it’s a “couple weeks.”
Fontaine took a knee-on-knee hit from David Clarkson early in a preseason game against the Columbus Blue Jackets on Thursday. Clarkson was ejected from the game, but Fontaine returned and played for about another period and a half before leaving for good.
The Clarkson hit was reviewed by the league, but he was not suspended. (The game was not televised, so the Blue Jackets sent in tape of the hit for the league to review. Suspending a player in this situation can be difficult because there aren’t all the angles on the hit that you get when the game is being televised and the evidence must still be conclusive in order to issue a suspension.)
Russo reported on Twitter that the injury wasn’t related to the knee-on-knee hit, but another hit that came later during that game.
The report on Fontaine’s injury came days later, with Yeo saying in a press scrum that Fontaine’s injury is “a little worse than we were expecting.”
This injury marks the second season in a row that the former UMD Bulldog will miss the season opener with an injury sustained during training camp.
