According to Andrew Gross (just the first to report it) the news out of the morning skate in preparation for tonight’s game with the Blues is that both Marian Gaborik and Ryan Callahan are participating. That Gaborik is there is not a huge surprise as he has been at each of the last three morning skates. Callahan’s presence also is not a big surprise as the expectation since Friday is that he would play tonight, but always good to have one of your leaders looking like he is getting healthy and playing tonight.
On Gaborik the talk for the past week has been that he is aiming to return on the four game homestand which opens tonight and that fits into the rough timetable laid out when he was first injured on October 15, 2010 vs Toronto. The initial reports were 2-4 weeks and as of today he is at 23 days since the injury. If I was to venture a guess, as I am about to do, I would look for Thursday vs Buffalo as the target as it is a less physical team to bring him back against and I wouldn’t suspect they would bring him back Sunday for a back to back against Edmonton and Pittsburgh. The thing waiting until Thursday would do is give him a couple of contact days in practice as even though he has been skating with the club he still hasn’t taken any contact in practice.
In other news looks like Todd White will go back to the press box with the return of Callahan and Prust and Fedotenko have been swapped bringing Prust and Boyle back together to go with Avery while Fedotenko goes to play with Frolov and Christensen.
