Artemi Panarin suffered a lower-body injury at the end of Friday’s practice and did not return to the ice.
It’s unclear when or how Panarin sustained this apparent injury, but he ultimately left practice early.
Mike Sullivan didn’t seem to be overly concerned, as he admitted the team is just trying to be cautious.
“He’s just day-to-day with a lower-body injury,” Sullivan said. “It’s more precautionary than anything. It’s so early in training camp, we just want to make sure we get ahead on anything that could potentially be on the radar.”
The Rangers were also precocious last year during training camp when Panarin was dealing with a lower-body injury, so this news should not worry New York Rangers fans.
Sullivan has also emphasized how much respect he has for Panarin as a player and what he means to the team.
“What I can tell you is every time we played the Rangers and had our pre-scout conversations that he was on the film for a fair amount of it,” Sullivan said, praising Panarin. “I mean that with all due respect because of how talented he is and his ability to change a game. He’s a game-breaker in so many ways. There's a number of players across the league that probably fall into that category, but there's not a lot of them and he's one of them.”
It’s unclear if Panarin will return to practice on Saturday when the Rangers take the ice for the third day of training camp.
