This article is over 4 years old

Vitek Vanecek leaves game with injury in first period, replaced by Craig Anderson in net

by

35 Comments

Share:

Vitek Vanecek made his first NHL postseason start on Saturday. It didn’t last long.

Vanecek left Game One in the first period after an apparent lower-body injury.

Now in net: 39-year-old Craig Anderson. He turns 40 next week.

Video

Vanecek’s injury occurred on a Jake DeBrusk goal. The Bruins forward scored off a faceoff, forcing Vanecek to go to his splits. Vanecek struggled to get up, and after a discussion with Caps trainer Jason Serbus left the ice.

Vanecek faced four shots total, stopping three of them.

According to NHL.com’s Tom Gulitti, Vanecek grabbed “the inside of his upper left leg” while suffering his injury.

The Caps now turn to Anderson who played in four games and made only two starts this season. The Capitals were already without Ilya Samsonov who, after being suspended by the team for disciplinary reasons, landed on the COVID-19 Unavailability List.

Anderson won both of his starts this year and posted a 2.13 goals-against average and a .915 save percentage. He has the fourth-highest save percentage in postseason history according to Quant Hockey.

Update: Caps PR says Vanecek is out for the rest of the game. Pheonix Copley will join the team on the bench as an emergency goaltender.

RMNB Coverage of Game One

Screenshot courtesy of NBCSN

Related Articles

RMNB is not associated with the Washington Capitals; Monumental Sports, the NHLPA, the NHL, or its properties. Not even a little bit.

All original content on russianmachineneverbreaks.com is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International – unless otherwise stated or superseded by another license. You are free to share, copy, and remix this content so long as it is attributed, done for noncommercial purposes, and done so under a license similar to this one.

zamboni logo