Mitch Marner will not return to the game against the Philadelphia Flyers on Saturday night after sustaining an ankle injury off of the center-ice faceoff to start the second period.
Marner stepped on the stick blade of Flyers forward Carsen Twarnyski and fell backward awkwardly, with his right leg folding underneath him:
Marner gets tripped up awkwardly and has trouble getting to the bench. #LeafsForever pic.twitter.com/dU5spxFmgb
— Maple Leafs Hotstove (@LeafsNews) November 10, 2019
Legs dont bend that way. Ow. pic.twitter.com/Z5J9qfJ7Lg
— Gus Katsaros🏒 (@KatsHockey) November 10, 2019
Marner returned to the ice at one point and was seen putting all of his weight on his right leg to test the strength and feeling in the affected ankle. After he returned from the dressing room for the second time, it looked like he had to be talked out of returning to the game by the team trainer.
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Here is the clip of Marner returning, testing out the ankle, trying it out for a shift, and ultimately leaving the game.
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It has all the telltale signs of an ankle sprain, but if Marner was able to put his full weight on it in his attempts to return, that could mean we are talking about more of a grade-1 situation, which usually carries a timeline of 1-3 weeks recovery. The worst-case scenario is the high-ankle sprain, which Alex Steen just suffered in St. Louis with a four-week minimum timeline before the ankle can even be re-evaluated.
The lines have been in a blender since the start of the second period as a result, with Kasperi Kapanen shifting up onto the line with John Tavares and Trevor Moore and William Nylander rotating onto the top power-play unit on the half-wall in Marner’s place.
