NHL teams
Associated Press 12y

Jeff Skinner, Joni Pitkanen out

NHL, Carolina Hurricanes, Montreal Canadiens, New York Islanders

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Things have gone from bad to worse in a hurry for the slumping Carolina Hurricanes.

Leading scorer Jeff Skinner and key defenseman Joni Pitkanen are out indefinitely with concussions, team officials said Wednesday.

That marks the latest blow to a team that has lost 16 of 20, fired its coach, dumped one of its big offseason acquisitions and dropped to the bottom of the Eastern Conference.

New coach Kirk Muller, speaking roughly 45 minutes before the team announced Skinner's diagnosis, promised the Hurricanes would be "extremely careful" in dealing with the injury to the NHL's reigning rookie of the year.

"We're not naive on the situation as far as how important it is to get these guys healthy before they get back," Muller said. "Whatever that time frame is, we've got to monitor it each day. But he's not going to step back into the lineup until he's ready to go for sure."

Skinner, 19, leads the team with 12 goals and 24 points and last year became the first Hurricanes player to win the Calder Trophy as the league's top rookie. He was hit at Edmonton on Dec. 7, then was scratched two nights later at Winnipeg with flu-like symptoms -- the first game he missed in his brief NHL career.

Skinner then was held out of Tuesday night's loss at Toronto after the ailment was recharacterized as an undisclosed injury, and general manager Jim Rutherford updated the status of Skinner and Pitkanen in a statement issued roughly an hour after the end of practice Wednesday afternoon.

"He's pretty much been our best player all season," forward Anthony Stewart said of Skinner. "It's tough with him out, but ... we want to see him back as soon as possible."

The injuries to Skinner and Pitkanen -- who leads the team's defensemen with 12 points and nine assists -- represent the latest things that have gone wrong during a miserable season that has already seen a coaching change and the trade of one of the players Carolina added during the offseason.

The Hurricanes fired Paul Maurice two weeks ago and brought in Muller, a respected 19-year NHL veteran and six-time All-Star who was only a few games into his head coaching career with Nashville's AHL affiliate in Milwaukee. He wasn't asked to blow up the depth chart or overload the players with new schemes, but to get them to skate with confidence and accountability. Under Muller, they're 1-4-2.

"We've kind of jumped right in, and I think it's more like trial and error, as far as we kind of learn in the games rather than practices," Muller said, pointing to an overtime loss at Toronto on Tuesday night as evidence of improvement.

He called that loss "probably our best overall game, that we (had) the most overall consistently for 60 minutes. ... I think they're understanding the identity of what we're looking for, and what we're trying to preach here as a staff."

Then, Carolina unloaded defenseman Tomas Kaberle -- and his three-year, $12.75 million contract -- to Montreal last week in a trade for 37-year-old defenseman Jaroslav Spacek, who's in the final year of his contract.

The Hurricanes signed Kaberle to the long-term deal in July, hoping a reunion with Maurice, his former coach in Toronto, would rejuvenate his career, but instead the Czech defenseman was a minus-12 with no goals and nine assists.

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