{"id":98208,"date":"2021-01-17T16:09:20","date_gmt":"2021-01-17T21:09:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/?p=98208"},"modified":"2021-01-17T16:09:20","modified_gmt":"2021-01-17T21:09:20","slug":"pittsburgh-penguins-lose-mike-matheson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2021\/01\/17\/pittsburgh-penguins-lose-mike-matheson\/","title":{"rendered":"Pittsburgh Penguins Lose Mike Matheson"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/category\/penguins\/\" target=\"_self\">Pittsburgh Penguins<\/a> have lost defenceman <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/m\/mathemi01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Mike Matheson<\/a><\/strong> for an indefinite period of time. The 26-year-old has suffered an upper-body injury of some sort. He played in the team&#8217;s first two games, but missed the third, a victory over the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/category\/capitals\/\" target=\"_self\">Washington Capitals<\/a>. Tom Gulitti of NHL.com relayed news of Matheson&#8217;s injury Sunday afternoon.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Pens coach Mike Sullivan said Mike Matheson has an upper body injury and will be out &quot;longer term&quot;<\/p>\n<p>He was not a healthy scratch today.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Tom Gulitti (@TomGulittiNHL) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/TomGulittiNHL\/status\/1350902547876356096?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">January 17, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>Penguins Lose Mike Matheson<\/h2>\n<p>Matheson was off to a quiet start for 2020-21. He had no points and just two blocks in the team&#8217;s first two games while averaging 15:52 per contest. His last extensive action came in 2019-20 with the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/category\/panthers\/\" target=\"_self\">Florida Panthers<\/a> where he scored eight goals and 20 points in 59 games. Matheson was also credited with 44 hits and 53 blocks with an average of 18:02 of ice time. The Panthers sheltered him heavily with 87.5 percent of his starts coming in the offensive zone, but he still posted an average Corsi For of 49.7 percent and -.6 relative score.<\/p>\n<p>The Panthers originally drafted Matheson in the first round of the 2012 Draft, but his first notable action didn&#8217;t come until 2016-17. He scored seven goals and 17 points in 81 games in that full rookie season. Overall, he&#8217;s been a fine defender with 33 goals and 91 points in 299 games. He also has 230 hits and 441 blocks. Matheson hasn&#8217;t necessarily lived up to his draft position, but there&#8217;s still some time for him to be a top-four blueliner.<\/p>\n<h3>How Pittsburgh Replaces Matheson<\/h3>\n<p>Pittsburgh used <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/r\/riikoju01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Juuso Riikola<\/a><\/strong> for the first time in the game against Washington and that could continue. The 27-year-old Finn had four hits in 14:31 of ice time. One other move would be to shift veteran <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/c\/cecico01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Cody Ceci<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>back into the starting lineup despite his inability to contribute much on either offence or defence. Finally, Pittsburgh has <strong>Pierre-Olivier Joseph<\/strong> on its taxi squad if they are feeling adventurous. A long-term injury certainly not a situation they want to have this early into the season.<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo:<\/p>\n<p><a id=\"gES8cpAFSp5ysAuvAcO-bw\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.ca\/detail\/1230582864\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'gES8cpAFSp5ysAuvAcO-bw',sig:'NL3qP8zB-S1RnC7aK_2hraRQHWou4k1OK9mevHteB4A=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1230582864',caption: true ,tld:'ca',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Pittsburgh Penguins have lost defenceman Mike Matheson for an indefinite period of time. The 26-year-old has suffered an upper-body injury of some sort. He played in the team&#8217;s first two games, but missed the third, a victory over the Washington Capitals. Tom Gulitti of NHL.com relayed news of Matheson&#8217;s injury Sunday afternoon. Pens coach [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3127,"featured_media":98212,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_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":[4547,34,4548,12],"tags":[37,5738,1576,3766,6021,38,955,44,6022,6023],"class_list":["post-98208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hockey","category-news","category-nhl","category-penguins","tag-hockey","tag-hockey-news","tag-injury","tag-mike-matheson","tag-mike-matheson-news","tag-nhl","tag-nhl-news","tag-pittsburgh-penguins","tag-pittsburgh-penguins-news","tag-pittsburgh-penguins-rumors"],"modified_by":"Alex Metzger, Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98208","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\/3127"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}