As their season has already begun slipping away, the Blue Jackets are now starting to run into injury trouble. The IR list expanded by another important piece on Wednesday, with forward Mason Marchment being moved off of the active roster.
Mush is another in a long line of injured veterans for this team. He joins forwards Isac Lundestrom (upper body, week-to-week) and Miles Wood (lower body, week-to-week); as well as defensemen Brendan Smith (lower body, week-to-week), and Erik Gudbranson (hip, indefinite).
That's five rugged Blue Jackets out of the lineup. This is not ideal for a team that needs all of the help they can get, as they look to turn their season back in the right direction.
Mason Marchment has been excellent.
Since being acquired by the Jackets from the Seattle Kraken just before the holiday roster freeze, Marchment has been an excellent addition.
He has points in 6 of 7 games since donning the Union Blue (5 goals, 2 assists). Unfortunately, he suffered some kind of ailment in the team's last home game against the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Without Mush in the lineup, we saw Kent Johnson promoted back into the top-six for last night's game against the Sharks in San Jose. This was because Dmitri Voronkov was moved back onto the top line with Kirill Marchenko and Adam Fantilli.
The Jackets missed Mason last night. They were unable to generate much offensively, ultimately getting run out of the building in a brutal 5-2 loss.
Mikael Pyyhtia gets another shot.
As a result of another injured forward, Mikael Pyyhtia will join the team as the 13th body up front. It will be interesting to see if he gets into the lineup or not, as the Jackets do still have 12 other forwards.
In 66 career NHL games (all with the Jackets), Mikael has 4 goals and 10 points, along with 8 penalty minutes and a -18 rating.
He's spent the entire season with the Cleveland Monsters to this point, where he's scored 7 goals and 22 points in 23 games. It's an earned call-up for the 24 year old.
We know what we are going to get from Mikael. He's responsible defensively and can chip in some offense with his underrated shot. But, the nice way of putting it is that he's a low event player who won't hurt this team on either side of the puck.
Dysin Mayo heading down?
After signing Egor Zamula to a pro-rated one-year contract yesterday, the Jackets have also placed defenseman Dysin Mayo on waivers for reassignment to Cleveland.
The 29 year old picked up one point (an assist) against the New Jersey Devils on New Year's Eve. But, he only got into 9:36, and was pulled out of the lineup as soon as possible.
If he clears, he will head back to the Monsters, where he has 2 goals and 7 points in 19 games.
The Jackets are back in action tomorrow night in Vegas, where they will take on the Golden Knights. We'll have to watch for any lineup changes before game time.