Following up on what Yerdon wrote Monday about Columbus C Jeff Carter’s foot fracture, the Blue Jackets have now placed Carter on injured reserve, meaning he’ll be shut down for a week to 10 days.
The timing couldn’t be worse. Columbus is winless in five and has a pretty tough schedule ahead -- at Detroit, at Ottawa, home versus Detroit then back on the road to Buffalo and Chicago.
What’s really disconcerting for Columbus, though, is that the injury sounds like a preexisting medical condition from Carter’s time as a Flyer. Jackets GM Scott Howson confirmed as much, saying “it’s close to the fracture that he had a couple years ago in Philadelphia. He has a plate in there with some screws in there, it’s right along the same bone.”
Even with Howson’s savvy diagnosis, this whole situation seems uncertain. Carter first broke his left foot in March 2010, then injured his right foot during the playoffs (it’s the right foot that’s giving him problems now). The only way to fix the issue could be rest and time -- which Columbus doesn’t have much of right now.