Tye McGinn suffered a shoulder injury Sunday in a win against the Rochester Americans. He will undergo surgery to repair the injury. His return to hockey will be measured in months and likely means he won’t be back in the line up for the Syracuse Crunch until the latter part of the season.
With the recall of Matt Taormina to Tampa and McGinn’s injury, the Crunch have cleared up one small problem they had; too many veterans. To maintain his place as a developmental league, the AHL limits how many players that have “veteran status” can be dressed in a game at 5. There is an allowance for one player at the low end of veteran status to dress as a 6th veteran, but the Crunch do not have such a player on the roster.
This complication came from the assignment of Cory Conacher and Erik Condra to the Syracuse Crunch. The excess of veterans on the roster meant that Jeremy Morin and Pierre-Luc Letourneau-Leblond were scratched in the Crunch’s first two games. With McGinn out and Taormina in Tampa, it could mean both will make their Crunch debut’s tonight against the Utica Comets.
McGinn had 20 goals and 24 assists in 72 games for the Crunch last season. Morin split last season between the Rockford IceHogs, Toronto Marlies, and San Jose Barracuda in the AHL. He had 16 goals and 26 assists in 59 games and should be able to pick up the slack left by McGinn’s injury. Morin is a career 0.75 point per game player in the AHL and also has 22 points in 82 NHL games.
Letourneau-Leblond, or PL3 as he’s often referred as, is an enforcer that would play on the fourth line if he gets into the line up. He is a veteran of 448 AHL games with almost 1700 PIMs in his career. He also has 41 games of NHL experience.
