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Lightning's Garrison and Sustr out as Bolts' defense takes more injury hits

Lightning's Garrison and Sustr out as Bolts' defense takes more injury hits

The Tampa Bay Lightning should be a contender. They sort of are a contender. But man … these injuries on defense could really hurt this status. Coach Jon Cooper (of no relation to the author of this piece) announced blueliner Jason Garrison is out three to four weeks with an upper body injury. Forward Tyler Johnson is also day-to-day and defenseman Andrej Sustr is out one to two weeks with an upper body injury.

The 30-year-old Garrison is clearly the largest issue amongst these problems, because he’s out the longest. The Tampa Bay Times sums up below as to why Garrison’s injury is particularly bad … again, the blueline has been bombarded with hurt players from him to Braydon Coburn. Which means, the Lightning will go into the playoffs without two guys acquired to bolster their defense. Garrison suffered the issue Saturday against Detroit.

The loss of Garrison especially hurts. He had been playing arguably the best hockey of his career, a stabilizing and calming force on the blueline. But now, both Garrison and deadline acquisition Braydon Coburn (lower body) are out, giving the once-seasoned blueline a greener feel. Rookies Luke Witkowski and Nikita Nesterov will likely have to play a larger role, especially with Sustr out too for a week or two.

On a team that’s pretty good at puck possession, Garrison was solid with a plus-98 shot attempts differential according to the NHL’s enhanced stats website. Also, his quality of competition per Behind the Net was a minus-1.125, which ranks pretty low amongst Tampa’s regulars. But, he has a howitzer of a shot, and started a lot in the offensive zone.

No matter, he’s big (6-foot-3, 222 pounds), he’s experienced, and he provides depth. Losing him and Coburn stinks, for Tampa, but nothing the Lightning have dealt with before this year. Victor Hedman did break his finger in October, and the Lightning remained one of the Eastern Conference’s top teams.

According to Joe Smith of the Tampa Bay Times, these were Monday’s practice defense pairings.

Gaaaaa …

It seems Coop (we share a last name, so I can nickname him in blogs) is pretty realistic on what he expects out of the young Lightning defense moving forward.

"They're our depth defenseman, they're prospects," Cooper said. "Are they ready for the NHL? Hard to say. But they're in the NHL now. They've been with us before, they know our system, know how to play, we're not expecting them to be Bobby Orr, expect them to move the puck to our forwards and defend, and they've done that. Are they going to make mistakes? Sure they are. But you've got to get games at some point and now is their turn. They have to step up."

Still, the Lightning can’t go out and get anyone else since the trade deadline is over. This is why you create organizational depth … but you don’t expect it to be strained this much.

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Josh Cooper is an editor for Puck Daddy on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!

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