Kenny Jonsson was being evaluated yesterday after sitting out practice in the wake of the opening-minute hit he took from Jeremy Roenick in Tuesday’s 2-1 loss to the Flyers.
Jonsson, who has suffered multiple concussions in his career, sustained what the Isles called a “post-traumatic migraine.”
“[He will be] dealing with the doctors every day,” Peter Laviolette said. “Somebody has a history of something and that injury gets tested or if that injury gets banged up, then obviously it’s a reason for some concern.”
He’ll try to practice today with the team, though if Jonsson’s non-concussion is still lingering, the Islanders will probably be back to five defensemen. There was about a 45-second window in the beginning of Tuesday’s game when the Isles had six healthy defensemen for the first time in nine games with Adrian Aucoin returning from a strained groin. But ideas of being able to spread out minutes were quickly doused by Roenick’s check along the neutral-zone boards.
“Adrian played more minutes than we probably wanted to [Tuesday], based on Kenny going out in the first shift, but he looked fine,” Laviolette said. “I thought he actually had a pretty good game. I think we handled it OK, just like we did when Oakie was out, I thought that we handled Kenny being out of the lineup [Tuesday].”
Aucoin logged 32:40 against the Flyers and Roman Hamrlik clocked in with 31:42 while Mattias Timander (17:47), Radek Martinek (20:52) and Sven Butenschon (11:00) did a solid job of limiting Philadelphia’s chances around the net for most of the game.
“We’re not there yet,” Laviolette said in regard to calling up a spare defenseman from Bridgeport. “[Jonsson will] practice [today].”
If nothing else, the growing list of injured Islanders that still includes Steve Webb (who skated for about 30 minutes yesterday while he nurses his sore back), Brad Isbister, Eric Cairns and Chris Osgood, makes it clear the team could use some reinforcements. The Isles have back-to-back games tomorrow night in Washington and Saturday night vs. the Sabres at the Coliseum.
Trade rumors will continue to swirl until the March deadline, about the time the Isles should be totally healthy. But the need to bolster the lineup has never been more apparent than now.
“Our team’s good enough,” Laviolette said. “Anybody could use depth. Our team was a pretty good team last year, but what we really could have used was depth. Especially seeing what happened in the playoffs.”