Lightning’s Simon Gagne hopes to return this week; Kubina unlikely

Posted May 1, 2011 by Erik Erlendsson

Updated May 1, 2011 at 01:23 PM

Lightning left wing Simon Gagne said Sunday he feels good and hopes to return to the ice when Tampa Bay returns home.
Gagne will miss tonight’s Game 2 against Washington with what the team is calling an upper-body injury sustained when Gagne’s head hit the ice in the first period of Friday’s Game 1.
Despite the scary looking incident, Gagne said he never lost consciousness and was alert on the ice when head medical trainer Tom Mulligan arrived to attend to Gagne.
“I remember everything, I remember the hit,” he said. “It looked a lot worse than people think. I felt good yesterday and I feel good today, too. And we’ll go day by day.”
Gagne said he was able to respond to all questions that medical personnel asked after the hit, including knowing where he was, what the score was in the game at the time and was even able to recite his wife’s phone number while in the locker room when the team wanted to call her to provide an update.
“That was good, the doctor was impressed that I remembered her number right away, that was a good test,” he said. “So I think I’m pretty lucky that it was not worse than it is.”
With Gagne out of the lineup for tonight’s game, Blair Jones will make his NHL playoff debut.
In addition to Gagne, defenseman Pavel Kubina will miss tonight’s game with an undisclosed upper body injury suffered when Jason Chimera put his elbow up and drove Kubina’s head into the glass. Kubina is listed as day to day by the team but was not made available to th media. Randy Jones will take Kubina’s spot for Sunday.