Whitecloud out; Janmark back in; Miromanov to debut

Zach Whitecloud will be out week-to-week with an upper body injury after the Vegas Golden Knights defenseman blocked a shot with his hand in Friday’s game against the Edmonton Oilers.

Coach Peter DeBoer announced the latest in a series of injuries to befall his team. Last week, he lost forwards Max Pacioretty and Mark Stone to injuries against the Los Angeles Kings. Both are on injured reserve. Wednesday, defenseman Alec Martinez suffered  aslower body injury against the St. Louis Blues. DeBoer said Martinez remains day-to-day.

Now, with Whitecloud out for a while. It opens up a spot and Daniil Miromanov will get his chance when he’s in the lineup Sunday against the New York Islanders at T-Mobile Arena as he makes his NHL debut.

“I think we’re all excited to see what he can do,” fellow defenseman Dylan Coghlan said of Miromanov, who had three goals in the preseason for the Golden Knights before being reassigned to the Henderson Silver Knights of the AHL. “Hopefully he can pick up where he left off in the preseason when he was here.”

DeBoer, who has been an NHL head coach for 14 years with four different teams (Florida, New Jersey, San Jose and Vegas) said he can’t remember a run of bad luck like this.

“I’ve never had this many injures this early, especially to key people,” DeBoer said Saturday. “It is what it is. Everyone deals with it. But we’ll learn a lot about our group.”

Glad to be back: Mattias Janmark made his season debut Friday after spending 11 days in the NHL’s COVID-19 protocol.

“It felt good to be back,” said Janmark, who played just under 10 minutes skating on the Golden Knights’ fourth line with Brett Howden and William Carrier. “It was good to get up to speed and I thought the coaches did a good job of keeping me fresh.”

Janmark said he watched a lot of television while home and he’s still not sure how he found himself in the protocol.

“I tried to be careful and do everything the right way,” he said. “But sometimes, it’s not enough.”

Bad Luck Lids: Once again, the Golden Knights elected to wear those bright, shiny, chromatic gold helmets with their steel grey uniforms Friday vs. Edmonton. If it was supposed to change the bad karma which appears to have befallen the team, it didn’t work as the Knights lost to the Oilers 5-3.

Since introduced last season, the Golden Knights are a not-so-golden 1-3 when wearing the gold helmets.

Ref honored: Veteran NHL referee Steve Kozari worked his 1,000th game Friday night and he was honored before the game with signed jerseys from both the Vegas Golden Knights and the Edmonton Oilers with his name and the number 1,000 on the back

It was a classy gesture and the announced crowd of 17,798 gave Kozari, who was joined by his wife and family on the ice for the presentation, a nice ovation.