Jeremy Roenick says his gut feeling is he’ll play in Wednesday’s playoff opener against Calgary, but says he still has some pain in his right ankle.
“It’s the same as it’s been the last couple of days,” he said. “There’s a little pain. . . . There’s no miracle cure. But I’ve got two days until the playoffs start.”
Coming back: Defenseman Steve Smith is walking without a limp and it is beginning to appear that he will be back before the playoffs are over, at least if the Hawks advance beyond the first round.
“He just chipped it,” said team physician Louis Kolb, describing the fracture at the top of Smith’s left fibula, the small, non-weight-bearing bone in the lower leg. “But it hurts. You can pad it to protect it against a second injury, but if it hurts when he moves it you can’t pad it against that.”
The Detroit media apparently do not believe that Smith’s leg was broken at all. Every account of the incident–a slash to the back of the leg by Red Wings forward Igor Larionov last Sunday–refers to it as an alleged fracture.
Slashing: Blackhawks coach Craig Hartsburg had no comment on the NHL’s decision to suspend Detroit forward Bob Errey two games for his slash of Denis Savard in Friday night’s game in Detroit. Errey missed the Red Wings’ final regular-season game Sunday in Dallas and will also sit out the playoff opener Wednesday.
Dino Ciccarelli also sat out Sunday’s game pending a league review of the punch he threw Friday night at Enrico Ciccone.
Not so silent was owner Bill Wirtz, who sent Commissioner Gary Bettman a letter, complaining bitterly of the Red Wings’ tactics and claiming that a warning letter the club had received before Friday’s game “in effect tied all the Blackhawks players’ hands behind their backs so that they could be shot. Indeed they were.”