Toronto’s Jake Muzzin couldn’t get up after the collision during Tuesday’s game and had to be taken off the ice on a stretcher after a delay of around 15 minutes. He was released from the hospital Wednesday. Gene J. Puskar/Associated Press
TORONTO — Toronto Maple Leafs defenseman Jake Muzzin has been discharged from the hospital and is back at the team’s hotel, and will not return to the lineup during Toronto’s playoff qualification series with the Columbus Blue Jackets.
The Maple Leafs said in a statement that Muzzin will remain in quarantine within the hotel and “look to rejoin his teammates upon recovery.”
Muzzin was injured late in the third period of Toronto’s 3-0 win over Columbus on Tuesday.
With the Leafs killing a penalty, Muzzin took a crosscheck from Columbus center Pierre-Luc Dubois before stumbling and jamming his head/neck into the leg of Blue Jackets winger Oliver Bjorkstrand.
Muzzin couldn’t get up after the collision and had to be taken off the ice on a stretcher after a delay of around 15 minutes. Players from both teams tapped their sticks in support as he was assisted off the playing surface.
“What he brings to our team is immeasurable,” Toronto captain John Tavares said of Muzzin after the game. “Certainly tough to see, especially just how much we love that guy.”
The best-of-five series, which is tied 1-1, resumes Thursday night at Scotiabank Arena.
KRAKEN: Hockey cards, jerseys and even libations. There’s been no slowing the Seattle Kraken down when it comes to getting fans to part with their money in the name of all types of merchandise.
As of Tuesday afternoon, the team confirmed its season-ticket waitlist had expanded by about 13,300 since the naming announcement just under two weeks ago and now sits at 51,700. Meanwhile, sales of Kraken merchandise across all platforms of online retail giant Fanatics are roughly four times greater than the opening two-week sales for the NHL’s prior 2017 expansion team, the Vegas Golden Knights.
The team also had the Nos. 2 and 3 best-selling items across all Fanatics platforms, including NHLShop.com and the official merchandise sites of most major sports leagues and several individual teams. The No. 2 best-seller is a Kraken navy logo T-shirt, while No. 3 is a branded tri-blend T-shirt, both trailing only the WNBA orange hoodie sent to celebrities and athletes to promote the league’s season starting.
WEDNESDAY’S GAMES
PANTHERS 3, ISLANDERS 2: Mike Hoffman and Brian Boyle scored 2:07 apart in the opening minutes of the third period, and Florida avoided elimination with a win over New York in Game 3 of their preliminary round playoff series on Wednesday.
Erik Haula also scored and Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 20 shots. The 10th-seeded Panthers trail the best-of-five series 2-1 with Game 4 at the NHL’s Eastern Conference hub city of Toronto on Friday.
Jean-Gabriel Pageau and Brock Nelson, with 1:27 remaining, scored for the Islanders, the East’s seventh seed. Semyon Varlamov stopped 19 shots and made a costly error leading to Hoffman’s go-ahead goal 41 seconds into the third period.
COYOTES 4, PREDATORS 1: Conor Garland and Taylor Hall each scored in the third period and Arizona beat Nashville on Wednesday afternoon.
Now the Coyotes, seeded 11th in the West in the NHL’s restart, can eliminate the sixth-seeded Predators in Game 4 on Friday in this best-of-five qualifying series. Christian Dvorak scored on Arizona’s first shot of the game, and Coyotes scored three in the third for the victory capped by Carl Soderberg’s empty-netter inside the final two minutes.
AVALANCHE 4, STARS 0: High-scoring 21-year-old rookie defenseman Cale Makar connected on an early power-play goal, 30-year-old Pavel Francouz recorded a shutout in his postseason debut and Colorado cruised to a round-robin win over Dallas.
Joonas Donskoi, Vladislav Namestnikov and Andre Burakovsky also scored as the Avalanche improved to 2-0 in the three-game round that will determine playoff seeding for the top four teams in the Western Conference. The Stars have lost both of their games and are likely to finish where they started as the fourth seed.
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