Joe Veleno helped off with leg injury vs. Mammoth
TLDR: Rangers center Joe Veleno was helped to the dressing room putting no weight on his right leg in the first period vs. the Utah Mammoth Sunday and never came back.
It started like nothing much: a fall in the corner, a slow skate to the bench, a chat with the trainer.
Joe Veleno pretty slow to #NYR bench after a fall in the corner. He's talking to a trainer now.
It got worse fast. Veleno got hurt on his 3rd shift, 9:21 into the game, when his lower body twisted awkwardly as he turned to chase down Clayton Keller, who was flying into the Rangers zone on the left wing. Within a few minutes he was off the bench and headed down the tunnel with help, keeping all his weight off the right leg.
Veleno ended up getting helped to the #NYR dressing room. No weight on his right leg.
Helped off with no weight on the leg is never what you want to read. The Rangers made it official at the start of the 2nd period: lower-body injury, done for the day. Veleno never came back out after intermission.
Didn't see Veleno come out for the second period. #NYR
Veleno is only a few weeks into his Rangers career. New York signed him to a 1-year, $1.2 million deal on July 1 after Montreal declined to qualify him, which made him an unrestricted free agent for the 2nd straight offseason. He put up 2 goals and 3 assists in 61 games for the Canadiens last year. Nobody brought him in to score. He's there to win draws and kill penalties, and through 3 games he'd been doing exactly that, winning 53.9% of his faceoffs and averaging 14:45 a night with penalty-kill time.
The bad news is the roster math. The Rangers don't carry an extra center on the 23-man roster behind Mika Zibanejad, J.T. Miller, Adam Edstrom's old running mate Laba and Veleno. Matt Rempe is the extra forward, but he isn't an NHL center. If Veleno misses real time, the fix probably comes up I-95 from Hartford, where rookie Cole Beaudoin, veterans Justin Dowling and Juuso Parssinen, and Dylan Roobroeck are the names to know.
Next up is the update. Lower-body injury is the vaguest phrase in hockey, and it covers anything from a tweak to weeks on the shelf. Watch for what the team says after the game and whether a center gets called up from Hartford before the next one. A 4th-line center going down sounds minor until you realize there's nobody on the roster to slide in behind him.
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