Red Wings defenseman day-to-day with upper-body injury

The Detroit Red Wings are expected to recall defender Justin Holl from the minor leagues as Jeff Petry (upper-body) deals with a day-to-day injury, shares Helene St. James of the Detroit Free Press. Petry left the team’s Thursday night game partway through the second period, though it wasn’t clear when he sustained the injury. He recorded one shot, one hit, and a -1 in nine minutes of ice time. He is expected to miss Detroit’s Saturday game, at the least.

This move gives Holl another chance at earning a role with the Red Wings after failing to make the team out of training camp. That resulted in Holl being placed on waivers and sent to the minor leagues for the first time since the 2017-18 season, when he played an integral role on the Calder Cup Championship-winning Toronto Marlies. 

Holl used that season to spring into the NHL, grabbing onto the seventh-defender role for the Maple Leafs in 2018-19 and earning an everyday role in 2019-20. He’d go on to record 285 games across six seasons with the Leafs — recording 11 goals, 82 points and 150 penalty minutes. That wasn’t enough to hang onto his spot amid Toronto’s blue-line flux last summer, leading Holl to sign a three-year, $10.2M deal with the Red Wings in 2023. He worked into 38 games with Detroit last season, netting five assists and 22 penalty minutes but failing to score. That poor performance seemed to be foreshadowing the 32-year-old’s downfall and he now finds himself grappling for any NHL minutes just over a year after signing his multi-year deal.

Holl’s path to a role isn’t guaranteed by this injury, with Wings head coach Derek Lalonde adding that the team is considering utilizing seven defenders — including Albert Johansson — until Petry returns. Johansson managed 21 points in 66 AHL games last season, while emerging as a capable defender with an effective reach on his side of the red-line. He survived Detroit’s training-camp cuts and would be making his NHL debut, should Lalonde choose to deploy him.