All leagues are back in action after the November break.  Not all players are, however.

Carl Grundström

Frölunda have played three games since coming back off their break, but Carl Grundström only saw 6 minutes of action.

Grundström missed one game with an injury from a hit to his jaw back in October, and then in practice just before the return from the break, he hurt his foot.  That kept him out of one game, but proved to be not very serious. The next game, he played six minutes before suffering a knee injury.

All the team said at the time was that it was an unusual injury. He did not dress for Saturday’s game.

Grundström has five goals and one assist in 11 games.

Yegor Korshkov

Yegor Korshkov was supposed to spend his break playing for the Russian National B Team in the Deutschland Cup.  He was a very late scratch from that event with an undisclosed injury given as the reason.

In their first game post-break, Lokomotiv won it in a shootout, and Korshkov played fourth line minutes, so perhaps there was some nagging issue still.

In the next game on Friday, Lokomotiv went down by two goals to Salavat Yulaev, and in the second period, Korshkov opened the scoring in what would become a 3-2 overtime win.

He had the fourth-highest ice time in the game, so it seems he’s back on form, and picking up the scoring where he left off before the break.  He now has seven goals and six assists in 31 games, good for fourth in forwards on his team still.

Jesper Lindgren

The Liiga was also on a break, so HPK has played two games, one Friday and one Saturday.  Neither one featured Jesper Lindgren in the lineup, and he missed the last game before the break as well.  I cannot find word on exactly what’s keeping him out of the lineup, but he is listed as injured on the official roster.

Nikolai Chebykin

Nikolai Chebykin now has one goal and one assist in six games for Dynamo St. Petersburg and four points in nine total VHL games this season so far.  The season is close to half over, so he has lost a lot of ground to his peers.

Vladimir Bobylyov

Vladimir Bobylyov, who signed with Salavat Yulaev and was sent down to their VHL team has not appeared in any games beyond his first two in October. He is not listed on the team’s roster or on their injured list.

Vladislav Kara

I know where Vladislav Kara is! He came to Canada to play for Russia as they threw themselves up against junior league all-star teams night after night. This Canada-Russia series is rarely very successful for the Russians, but they held their own this time, winning a few games, and finally falling in a tie-breaking shootout to finish it off.

Kara played in four games, and had no points, so not a great tournament for him, but he ended up with a -1, so also not a total failure either. This event just finished on Thursday, so he’ll be heading back to Kazan to play some more VHL hockey soon.

Pierre Engvall

Still on injury recovery.

Persons of Interest

Igor Ozhiganov

Defender Igor Ozhiganov, who has been seriously linked to the Leafs as a summer free agent signing prospect, played for the Russian team in the Deutschland Cup and had three assists in three games.

Team USA competed this year to help prepare them for the Olympics, and they joined the Russian B team (the A team was in Finland for the Karjala Cup), Slovakia and Germany.  The USA team couldn’t handle the Russians, although Mark Arcobello did get a goal in their game.

Russia won all three of their games to take the event, and two of Ozhiganov’s assists came in their 8-2 win over the host team.

Ozhiganov came back to play two games for CSKA after the break, and put in his usual no points in 14 minutes of ice time sort of game.

That’s all for this week, hopefully next week will be more players playing, and fewer players sitting out.

Maple Leafs Prospects