Blue Jackets’ Voronkov exits game against Sharks with upper-body injury
The Columbus Blue Jackets got dealt an injury blow during Saturday’s game against the San Jose Sharks.
During the second intermission of the game, the team announced that forward Dmitri Voronkov had suffered an upper-body injury and would not return to the game.
UPDATE: Blue Jackets F Dimitri Voronkov will not return to today’s game vs. San Jose due to an upper body injury. #CBJ
Columbus, which entered Saturday’s slate of key NHL games as the holders of the third-place playoff spot in the Metropolitan Division, would strongly benefit from a win over San Jose, which was previously in the race for a playoff spot in the West but has fallen out of the picture due to a six-game losing streak.
Voronkov, a six-foot-five winger who has carved out a strong career since being selected in the fourth round of the 2019 NHL Draft, has 17 goals and 15 assists for 32 points in 62 games played this season while skating to a minus-1 rating on an average of 14:05 of time on ice per game.
His role and production have been scaled back from a season ago, when he played over 16 minutes per game and set a career-high of 47 points.
The Blue Jackets, who were well on the outside of the playoff picture at the start of the new year, turned things around after moving on from previous head coach Dean Evason and hiring Rick Bowness.
Columbus was last in the Eastern Conference on Jan. 12, the day of the move, and since then, they’ve rattled off a 19-4-4 run to not just get in playoff contention but be on the right side of the bubble.
A win by the New York Islanders vaunted them past Columbus and the Pittsburgh Penguins, dropping the Jackets into the second wild card spot, a more tenuous situation given the amount of Atlantic Division teams in the picture who would not have access to the second and third place Metro slots.