The New Jersey Devils came out with more than just a loss against the Philadelphia Flyers. Brian Gibbons will miss time with a broken thumb.
The New Jersey Devils were outworked on Saturday afternoon against the Philadelphia Flyers. An ugly first period was too much for the team to come back from, and they ended up losing 3-1. That wasn’t the only thing the team lost.
Brian Gibbons and Keith Kinkaid were both put on injured reserve on Sunday, thanks to injuries suffered on Saturday.
Gibbons is out indefinitely thanks to a broken thumb. The injury sounds bad, but it may be a good things overall.
For one, a broken thumb doesn’t take a player out for too long. The best comparison is the Colorado Avalanche’s J.T. Compher, who broke his thumb back in October. He ended up missing about three weeks with the injury. The 22 year old came back, but did take a little time to produce again. That may be because of his role with the team, though.
After being a scoring machine for the first two months of the season, Gibbons has slowed down considerably. He scored five goals in October and six goals in November, but just one goal since. He came into the season with very little expectations, but it looks like after he became a go-to player he fell off a bit.
Gibbons was able to stay on the roster thanks to his superb penalty killing. Despite some team struggles, he still finds himself in the right place at the right time.
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However, maybe he’s lost a little bit of his early season edge. Maybe it’s the travel or just a much larger workload, but he seems to be in a funk.
Now that Gibbons will sit with injury, he can rest his entire body. The best part of a thumb injury is there’s not a lot of rehab he has to do. If it was a knee injury, even a tweak, there’s intense work to do. With a thumb, it just needs to heal.
Gibbons can come back and play like he did early in the season. He has time to rest, while the rest of the team can play well without him.
Blake Coleman, who’s played well before being forced to sit, will take his place. This gives him the chance to show that a fire has been let under him.
It stinks that Gibbons is hurt, but it could be both the player and the team in the long run.