{"id":437599,"date":"2024-02-16T15:28:24","date_gmt":"2024-02-16T20:28:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/?p=437599"},"modified":"2024-02-16T15:28:24","modified_gmt":"2024-02-16T20:28:24","slug":"new-york-rangers-forward-blake-wheeler-injured","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2024\/02\/16\/new-york-rangers-forward-blake-wheeler-injured\/","title":{"rendered":"New York Rangers Forward Blake Wheeler Injured"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2024\/02\/13\/nhl-rumours-toronto-maple-leafs-and-new-york-rangers\/\" target=\"_self\">New York Rangers<\/a> suffered another blow to their lineup. During Thursday night&#8217;s game saw Blueshirts forward <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/w\/wheelbl01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-02-16_hr\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Blake Wheeler<\/a> injured and miss the rest of the matchup with the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2024\/02\/07\/nhl-rumours-calgary-flames-and-montreal-canadiens-2\/\" target=\"_self\">Montreal Canadiens<\/a>. Wheeler has been placed on long-term injured reserve. He&#8217;s out for the rest of the regular season, but may not even be back for the Stanley Cup Playoffs. News of the injury broke on Friday afternoon.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Blake Wheeler is being placed on LTIR by the <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/NYR?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#NYR<\/a> with a lower-body injury and won&#39;t return at all during the regular season. Even getting back for the playoffs is unlikely but will depend on his recovery and how far the team progresses.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Chris Johnston (@reporterchris) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/reporterchris\/status\/1758588341727973548?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">February 16, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>Blake Wheeler Injured for Rangers<\/h2>\n<p>Wheeler <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nhl.com\/news\/rangers-blake-wheeler-injury-status-update\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">suffered a nasty-looking lower-body injur<\/a>y in the first period of the Rangers 7-4 win over the Habs. He was assisted off the ice before heading down the tunnel on a stretcher and did not return. The veteran forward was hit along the boards by Canadiens defenceman <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/s\/strubja01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-02-16_hr\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jayden Struble<\/a> with 9:13 left in the first. Wheeler&#8217;s leg buckled and was helped off the ice by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/t\/trochvi01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-02-16_hr\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Vincent Trocheck<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/k\/kreidch01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-02-16_hr\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Chris Kreider<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The Plymouth, Minn. native has nine goals and 12 assists in 53 games this season. He has a Corsi for of 49.8 and a relative Corsi of -1.5. This is Wheeler&#8217;s first season with the Blueshirts after inking a one-year, $850,000 contract.<\/p>\n<p>heeler has played for <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2024\/02\/13\/nhl-rumours-boston-bruins-and-edmonton-oilers-2\/\" target=\"_self\">Boston Bruins<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2024\/02\/12\/winnipeg-jets-special-teams-looking-for-improvement\/\" target=\"_self\">Atlanta Thrashers, Winnipeg Jets<\/a> and Rangers in his 1,172-game NHL career. He has 943 points with 321 goals and 622 assists. His best season goal-wise was with the Jets in 2013-14 with 28 goals in that campaign.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ll evaluate it and address it tomorrow, but that&#8217;s tough. He&#8217;s a veteran player that came here for a reason. To see something like that happen, it&#8217;s tough,&#8221; said head coach <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/l\/laviope01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-02-16_hr\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Peter Laviolette<\/a> to the media.<\/p>\n<h3>What it Means<\/h3>\n<p>This is a tough one to swallow for the Rangers. General manager <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/d\/drurych01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-02-16_hr\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Chris Drury<\/a> was already in the trade market for a centre or two. However, there may be another need for a right wing at the deadline. Pickings at forward are already slim, but this may force Drury to make a move sooner rather than later.<\/p>\n<p>The Rangers are likely to move some players around the lineup to fill the void. However, the team is going to have a hard time replacing the leadership of Wheeler. New York still has a talented team, but the lineup is getting thinner.<\/p>\n<p><em>Main photo by: Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The New York Rangers suffered another blow to their lineup. During Thursday night&#8217;s game saw Blueshirts forward Blake Wheeler injured and miss the rest of the matchup with the Montreal Canadiens. Wheeler has been placed on long-term injured reserve. He&#8217;s out for the rest of the regular season, but may not even be back for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2352,"featured_media":437602,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4547,14,34,4548],"tags":[361,1657,6259],"class_list":["post-437599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hockey","category-rangers","category-news","category-nhl","tag-blake-wheeler","tag-chris-drury","tag-new-york-rangers-news"],"modified_by":"Dan Mount, Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2352"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/437602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}