Scottie Upshall Injury to Keep Him Out Indefinitely

Per Coyotes.com

Phoenix Coyotes General Manager Don Maloney announced today that Coyotes forward Scottie Upshall will be out of the lineup indefinitely after sustaining an injury to his right knee during the team’s game versus the Calgary Flames on Jan. 28. A follow-up evaluation and MRI by the Club’s medical staff confirmed a torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL). An ACL surgical procedure is expected to be scheduled.

While the Coyotes have been a score by committee kind of team, it's never a fun thing to have one of your top producers go down to an injury like this. Some Coyote fans are probably hopeful that this is still a shorter term thing, but when the Coyotes say Indefinite, this time they mean that they're hoping to have him back in time for training camp. ACL tears, when they require surgery, aren't a short term fix. According to WebMD and other medical sources they can take anywhere from four months to a year to rehab and get back to playing shape depending on the severity of the injury. It's terrible that we lost him to some fluke play where his skate got jammed in the boards.

So what are we going to do in the meantime? Mikkel Boedker is up from San Antonio and scored in his first game back, so that's an encouraging sign. We've really spread the scoring around so that helps in terms of not being reliant on the 18-14-32 in point production even though it's still painful to lose. I would imagine that this has got to make any talks the Coyotes are having about getting another scorer even more important and more hurried to get done. I still wouldn't know who we would package to get someone like Scottie, but now it's more likely than ever that we see a new face or two before the deadline.