Mika Zibanejad may have trouble exhaling after wiping out and skidding full-body into the boards late in the third period of Tuesday’s 4-3 Garden defeat to the Devils, but the organization can breathe a bit easier knowing that the damage he incurred shouldn’t be debilitating for either the short- or long-term.
For though No. 93 did not participate in Wednesday’s practice, David Quinn said he expects Zibanejad to be in the lineup for the Blueshirts’ next game, Friday in Pittsburgh.
The same holds true for Brendan Lemieux, who missed practice in the wake of a shift within the first minute of the second period where he blocked a pair of drives 16 seconds apart from P.K. Subban, the second while in obvious pain.
Zibanejad did not return to the ice for the final 2:42, while Lemieux soldiered on and did not miss a shift the remainder of the match.
“Lower body for Lemieux and upper-and-lower for Mika, we can go with, but both were maintenance days,” the coach said. “They’ll be ready to go for Friday.”
Alexis Lafreniere got just two blink-and-you-missed-them shifts worth a sum of 26 seconds over the final 10:42 on Tuesday, but Quinn said it was not so much a benching as a matter of circumstance that kept the first-overall pick on the bench in crunch time.
“I just thought the guys were playing a little bit better than Laffy, certainly not an indication of what we think of him,” Quinn said. “He’s going to be on one of those top two lines and get plenty of ice time.
“It was really more circumstantial. I thought [Filip] Chytil was playing well, [Kaapo] Kakko was playing well, and we had two power plays in the last 10 minutes and that played a little bit of a role in it.
“So it was really more circumstantial. It wasn’t that I sat there and said, ‘I’m not going to put him out there.”
Kevin Rooney, sidelined for the last two games with an upper-body issue, practiced with the varsity for the first time since suffering his opening-night injury. Anthony Bitetto, Libor Hajek and Colin Blackwell also joined the squad.
Blueshirts play their next four on the road, with a pair in Pittsburgh on Friday and Sunday, followed by two in Buffalo on Jan. 26 and Jan. 28.
