Another forward misses practice and did Callahan come back to soon?

by Erik Erlendsson | @Erik_Erlendsson | Like us on Facebook
December 31, 2016

The injury sensors went on full alert Saturday morning with yet another player absent from a team practice.

Already bitten hard by the injury bug in recent weeks, it’s easy to understand the concern anytime one of the Lightning’s top players are not on the ice for a full practice, or in this case, a morning skate as Tampa Bay gets set to host Carolina (Fox Sports Sun, 970-AM, 7 p.m.) for a New Year’s Eve clash.

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But those concerns were eased somewhat as head coach Jon Cooper announced that Tyler Johnson missed the morning skate due to illness. Cooper did not rule Johnson out for tonight’s game.

“He wasn’t feeling too well so we gave him the morning off,” Cooper said. “He should be OK for tonight, but we’ll see.”

Johnson, who scored the overtime winner against Montreal on Wednesday, has been reunited with Ondrej Palat and Nikita Kucherov, both of whom returned from injury earlier in the week.

Callahan update

Speaking of injuries, Ryan Callahan took part in the morning skate on Saturday, though he wore a different colored jersey and did not take part in line rushes, as he tries to return to action after missing the past month.

Callahan, who had hip surgery in the summer, has been dealing with complications stemming from that surgery.

“It’s been extremely frustrating, you have four months of recovery in the summer, come back to play 15 games and then been out again for the next month-and-a-half or so. There have been a lot of ups and downs throughout that month-and-a-half, so it is frustrating. You want to be out there with the guys and you want to be playing.”

On two other occasions over the past six weeks, Callahan resumed skating and was considered probable to return for the Dec. 10 game against Vancouver, only to have a flare up and be shut down again. That’s happened twice in the span of the past month.

Originally expected to miss 5-6 months after undergoing surgery in July, Callahan returned to the Lightning lineup on Oct. 30 in New York against the Rangers.

Did he come back too soon?

“We’ve thought about that, but in the tests we ran and in talking to the surgeon, everybody was on the same page and thought that I was ready to come back,” Callahan said. “I think the schedule had a little bit to do with it in the amount of games that we were playing in a short amount of period of time. So it’s easy to say I came back too early, but at that point, everybody was on board and everybody thought that I was ready to go, myself included. So it’s easy to say that now, but if we were to go through it again, being at that point, I probably would have come back again because everybody felt that I was ready.”

Now, there is the possibility of a return next week, as long as there are no more complications that pop up.

“It’s still a possibility and that’s what we are hoping,” Callahan said. “But again we don’t know until I get out there and starting going again.”

That’s been the process Callahan has already gone through a couple of times during this process.

“It gets sore again and things would flare up again, so hopefully this time it’s been enough time and I start skating again and things progress the way they have to,” Callahan said. “Before we thought we were close, a couple of times, and as I’ve said, you have to see how it feels after the next skate and that’s not lip service, it’s how it is, it feels good on the ice but you have to see how it responds after that workload. The last couple of times it has not responded the way we’ve wanted it to and that soreness has come back. So stay the course and hopefully this time it feels better.

Nesterov progressing as a forward

Had the chance to talk to Nikita Nesterov briefly this morning about his transition in to playing as a winger, which he’s done for the past five games, primarily playing in a fourth line role skating with J.T. Brown and Michael Bournival.

Nesterov said he has played forward before, but not since he came over to North America in 2013-14.

“Probably about 5 or 6 years ago in the KHL,” Nesterov said of his time with Chelyabinsk.

He said he is willing to do whatever is asked of him if it means he can be in the lineup and play on a regular basis. And quite frankly, he has not looked out of place.

“He’s been kind of a utility guy for us and the one thing about Nesty, he has skill and he can skate,” Cooper said. “He gets in on the forecheck, he will be physical and kind of fits the mold of that line with those guys. And I’ll tell you, he definitely hasn’t hurt us and he’s given us a little bit of a boost back there.”

Lines this morning:

Boyle-Filppula-Drouin

Palat-Namestnikov-Kucherov

Killorn-Peca-Gourde

Bournival-Brown-Nesterov

Defensive pairing:

Hedman-Stralman
Koekkoek-Garrison

Coburn-Sustr

Vasilevskiy scheduled to start in goal

Jon Cooper following 12/31 morning skate

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