{"id":141231,"date":"2025-09-13T23:03:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-13T23:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/141231\/"},"modified":"2025-09-13T23:03:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T23:03:09","slug":"mackenzie-blackwood-and-samuel-girard-dealing-with-injuries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/141231\/","title":{"rendered":"Mackenzie Blackwood And Samuel Girard Dealing With Injuries"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Avalanche knew that they wouldn\u2019t have their full roster available to start the season with winger <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/o\/oconnlo01.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Logan O\u2019Connor<\/a> still working his way back from hip surgery.\u00a0 It appears he\u2019s not the only one dealing with injury concerns though.\u00a0 <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/hockeymountainhigh.com\/blackwood-and-girard-are-among-avalanche-injured-skate\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Brennan Vogt of Hockey Mountain High reports<\/a> that goaltender <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/b\/blackma01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.prohockeyrumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-09-13_hr\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Mackenzie Blackwood<\/a> and defenseman <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/g\/girarsa01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.prohockeyrumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-09-13_hr\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Samuel Girard<\/a> are also banged up heading into training camp.<\/p>\n<p>Blackwood didn\u2019t skate with the team during captain\u2019s skates all week and on Friday, worked with goalie coach Jussi Parkilla but voiced some pain when pushing off his right leg during one of the drills.\u00a0 Notably, he wasn\u2019t taking shots either; combined, those suggest he\u2019s not fully healthy heading into camp.\u00a0 Blackwood is beginning a five-year, $26.25MM contract signed soon after being acquired in an early-season trade from San Jose.\u00a0 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/w\/wedgesc01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.prohockeyrumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-09-13_hr\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Scott Wedgewood<\/a> enters camp as the backup and could be in line for a bit more work early on.\u00a0 If Blackwood were to miss time to start the season, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/m\/minertr01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.prohockeyrumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-09-13_hr\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Trent Miner<\/a> would likely break camp as the interim backup.<\/p>\n<p>As for Girard, Vogt relays that the blueliner didn\u2019t take part in any of the optional skates since August 17th until yesterday and was skating gingerly in a non-contact sweater, suggesting he could be dealing with a lower-body issue.\u00a0 The 27-year-old has had some injury trouble for several consecutive seasons now but when healthy, has been a capable top-four blueliner while also being only one of two left-hand shots in their projected top-six.<\/p>\n<p>Colorado currently has around $1.325MM in cap space as things stand, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/puckpedia.com\/team\/colorado-avalanche\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">per PuckPedia<\/a>, meaning that they don\u2019t have to place O\u2019Connor on LTIR.\u00a0 However, if Blackwood and Girard\u2019s injuries drag into the regular season, operating below the cap ceiling without needing LTIR could become a little trickier, a small subplot to keep an eye on over the next few weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Avalanche knew that they wouldn\u2019t have their full roster available to start the season with winger Logan&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":141232,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,7522,3899,96314,575,96315,85],"class_list":["post-141231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-colorado-avalanche","tag-injury","tag-mackenzie-blackwood","tag-nhl","tag-samuel-girard","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141231\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}