UPL back between the pipes<\/p>\n
Luukkonen returned to the crease in a team setting for the first time since exiting his lone preseason appearance, Oct. 1 versus Pittsburgh, following the first period due to a lower-body injury \u2013 a different one than what held him out of the start of training camp.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s kind of in a similar spot, but different thing, I would say,\u201d Luukkonen said, who initially thought he felt a cramp during that first period.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just were trying to be cautious with it, and that’s why I didn’t play at the end of the game. And we took an MRI and saw that there was something wrong with it. It was almost a little surprising that I had to take this time off. It’s unfortunate. Been working through that now, and (it\u2019s) good to be back with the team.”<\/p>\n
Due to only playing 20 minutes during the preseason, Luukkonen could need a rehab stint with the Rochester Americans (AHL), Ruff said. Luukkonen added that while he currently feels fine, his priority is to avoid reinjury.<\/p>\n
His absence has allowed Alex Lyon to fill in as the starter. With a 2.73 goals-against average and .919 save percentage in three games, the first-year Sabre has impressed Luukkonen.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has played unbelievable,\u201d Luukkonen said. \u201cIt’s been fun to watch. He’s older than I am, but he reminds me of the older guys who we had here, like even [Craig Anderson] and [James Reimer], with how well he reads the game. He has that poise and calmness in his game, and it’s been fun to watch. He has helped the team a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UPL back between the pipes Luukkonen returned to the crease in a team setting for the first time…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224989,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-224988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224988\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}