Sad news out of PennLive. Everyone’s favorite Finnish defenseman looks to be down for the season with a lacerated spleen. To Sami’s credit, he took the hit from WBS’ Tim Wallace in the second period and kept going through the rest of the game, but prognosis now is grim for him in the rest of the season, although it looks like he will get to keep his spleen after all.

This is a little devastating for a few reasons: first and most obviously, the Bears are down one of their solid players, but it’s also gotta be a little devastating for Sami, because I have to believe he was in line to be a Caps callup as well, should anything have happened to one of the D-men on the big team.

Sorry, Sami. Hope you get better soon!

On a more positive note for Bearsville, out of the Washington Post also comes the word that Karl Alzner is likely to spend his playoff run in Hershey after all.

Boudreau says:

“With seven [defensemen] here, I don’t think it would be prudent to take [the Bears] and decimate them like that,” Boudreau said. “I would rather have Karl playing right now that him coming up and sitting.”

Amen, Bruce. Especially with Sami out, glad to see us keep Karl a little while longer.

(Interestingly enough, this is the third lacerated spleen I’m aware of in a little under a year-Sean Avery, remember, lacerated his in the first round of playoffs last year, obviously Quintin Laing did his in Florida a few weeks ago, and now Sami. I’m wondering when the N/AHL is going to start mandating ’spleen armor’ of some sort…. or an extension on the side of the chest padding or something…)