In tough news that just came across in Twitter land, the Devils will be without starting netminder Mackenzie Blackwood for tonight’s game versus the Islanders at Nassau Coliseum. Unfortunately, the hot goalie was put on the COVID list by the team, making him ineligible to play. Thanks to Devils blogger Hasan for noting that he’s out.
That’s a bad break for the Devils. They bring a 2-0-1 mark into their fourth game of the season. Without Blackwood, they’ll either look to Scott Wedgewood or Eric Comrie in net. Hopefully, Blackwood won’t miss significant time.
The NHL is taking no chances with the pandemic. They recently fined the Washington Capitals $100,00 for not following proper safety and protocol due to four key players hanging out in a hotel without masks. The four players are Alex Ovechkin, Evgeny Kuznetsov, Dmitri Orlov and Ilya Samsonov, who is positive for COVID-19. Not good. Meanwhile, Ovechkin, Orlov and Kuznetsov will miss the next four games. Yikes.
In better news, Devils coach Lindy Ruff revealed that Jesper Bratt will make his season debut tonight. He won’t. Amanda Stein tweeted the lineup which has Wedgewood in net.
For the Islanders, Josh Bailey was cleared for the game.
The Devils take on the Islanders at 7 PM. Face-off is approximately 7:08 EST.
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Derek
Battle Of Hudson 
Bratt still needs to be in quarantine for a week after traveling. He’s eligible for return on the 27th.
Guess we all knew pretty much every team would be affected by this. I’ll probably comment more later but it just sucks that not only is it Blackwood when he’s playing well but we’re also without our presumptive backup (Dell, who we claimed a few days ago) cause he’s still waiting on a VISA. Not to mention Crawford being our presumptive backup going into camp and…yeah.
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Yeah. I corrected it. This thing is crazy. I caught it and added Amanda Stein’s tweet.
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