Morning Hits: Chara, Datsyuk, Devils, Sens, Flyers and Zuccarello
  • Boston Bruins: Zdeno Chara left last night’s game with an upper-body injury. Coach Claude Julien said there was no update on Chara’s status.
  • Chuck Pleiness: Red Wings GM Ken Holland said that Pavel Datsyuk will start skating in two weeks.
  • Tom Gulitti of The Record: Patrik Elias has been missing the Devils training camp with sore right knee. He won’t play in any preseason games and could miss the start of the season.

    “That’s still to be decided,” Hynes said of whether Elias will miss the opener. “I’ll probably know a few days from now a little bit better.”

  • Bruce Garrioch of the Ottawa Senators: Senators prospect Mikael Wikstrand is likely heading back to Sweden to join Farjestag. Problem is the that the Senators would like to have him the AHL. They could suspend him, or give him permission if he doesn’t report.
  • Tim Panaccio of CSN Philly: Flyers GM Ron Hextall on sending Travis Provorov and Travis Sanheim back to junior and Sam Morin to the AHL.

    “There’s decisions we felt were in the best interest of three young players,” Hextall said on Thursday.

    “We know these guys. Unless they showed us in their brief stay … if we thought they can help us, we would have leaned toward keeping whichever one.

    “We felt they weren’t going to help us on Oct. 8 and therefore it was best to get them back and get entrenched in their team.”

  • Pat Leonard of the NY Daily News: On April 24th Mats Zuccarello was hit in the helmet by a Ryan McDonagh slap shot, which fractured his skull, he had a brain contusion and brain bleeding.

    “Right away it’s kind of (worrying about) almost your life, you know. Like, how’s my life gonna be like this? I can’t talk. I can’t function,” Zuccarello said before Thursday night’s exhibition match in Boston, his first game action since the frightening injury. “It’s more like that, and then after that I was like, am I gonna play again?

    “The doctors were great. They said everything is gonna be OK,” he added. “But it’s hard not to have those thoughts when you’re in the hospital. You barely can move, you have all those things in your head, and you can’t talk. So for sure, it crossed my mind.”

    He was skating two weeks into September.