Grigs is never going to get back that fifth gear he once had—he’s more like a 3-and-a-half gear player in terms of skating now—but he’s got the potential to be, for lack of a better comparable, a poor man’s Dany Heatley.  He lurks around the periphery of the crease, and most of his goals are jam-ins…He could put up 30 goals, but…

As Nill suggested, he really doesn’t have anything to prove in Russia anymore.  He got tossed from his hometown team after over 20 years in Togliatti’s developmental system, enjoyed the lovely little outpost that is Ufa, he headed west to Cherepovets and played for Severstal (aka Stalin’s steel mill, and the guys who own the Rouge Steel plant now), and then made up with his hometown team…

And he’s progressively been tossed off the Russian national team thanks to concerns about his leg and the fact that he’s…there…

He doesn’t post inspired numbers anymore, and he makes me wonder whether Grigs is in fact settling in to a comfortable career in the Russian league instead of one more push toward the NHL.

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I had a chat with a nurse who I happen to be related to about pressure cuts, and I was told that they’re nasty, nasty, nasty wounds.  The skin basically peels at the site of the cut, and it’s extremely hard to stitch things up as, and I quote, “Those cuts bleed, and bleed, and bleed, and bleed.” 

Willie suffered the cut right on the seam where his head meets his helmet at the point of impact, so he’s got to squeeze a sore, stitched-up, and puffy forehead back into a lid that’ll be jostling and rubbing against his wound for an entire game…It’s very reasonable to suggest that he’ll be back any time between Saturday to the end of the month, depending on how long it takes for the stitches to stick and his wound to stabilize enough to deal with the scraping and rubbing of his helmet.

Posted by George Malik from South Lyon, MI on 11/16/06 at 06:37 PM ET