{"id":322249,"date":"2025-11-25T14:02:15","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T14:02:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/322249\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T14:02:15","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T14:02:15","slug":"snapshots-werenski-olivier-karmanov","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/322249\/","title":{"rendered":"Snapshots: Werenski, Olivier, Karmanov"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Columbus Blue Jackets suffered a tough 5-1 loss to the Washington Capitals on Monday night, and a further blow was dealt to the team when veteran Zach Werenski<\/a> was forced to leave the game due to an injury. The club announced tonight<\/a> that Werenski suffered an upper-body injury during the game, and after, Columbus head coach Dean Evason told the media (including NHL.com\u2019s Tom Gulitti<\/a>) that it was too early to tell the extent of the injury. Evason did say that the team will evaluate Werenski\u2019s status tomorrow.<\/p>\n

Werenski has a strong argument as the Blue Jackets\u2019 best player. The 28-year-old is a Norris Trophy-caliber all-around defenseman who scored 82 points in 81 games last season and finished as the Norris Trophy runner-up. He has 21 points through 23 games this season, good for second on the team in scoring. He plays just over 26 minutes per night, and is relied-upon by Evason in just about every key situation. While it\u2019s too early to tell if Werenski\u2019s injury is anything serious, if the Blue Jackets have to go without their most important player for any extended amount of time, that absence would likely deal a significant amount of damage to their ability to keep pace in a hotly-contested Eastern Conference Wild Card race.<\/p>\n

Other notes from around the hockey world:<\/p>\n

Werenski wasn\u2019t the only Blue Jackets player to leave the game with an upper-body injury; the team also announced<\/a> that forward Mathieu Olivier<\/a> would miss the rest of the game with his own upper-body ailment. While Olivier isn\u2019t nearly as crucial to the Blue Jackets\u2019 lineup as Werenski is, his loss would also be felt by the team should his injury sideline him for any notable period of time. Olivier is one of the game\u2019s more intimidating physical wingers, and he also showed some goal-scoring touch last season, scoring a career-high 18 times. The Blue Jackets will evaluate Olivier\u2019s status tomorrow, as they will with Werenski.
\nThe Athletic\u2019s Scott Wheeler reported tonight<\/a> that prospect blueliner Alexander Karmanov<\/a> will sign with the OHL\u2019s North Bay Battalion tomorrow, registering as the team\u2019s third import player. Karmanov, 17, is notable as he stands 7\u20190\u2033 tall and weighs 278 pounds, according to Elite Prospects\u2019 listing. There are no defensemen in the NHL (or AHL, for that matter) with that kind of size profile, and in an NHL that has become increasingly focused on size and strength for defensemen, that alone is enough to help Karmanov garner interest as a pro prospect. A Penn State commit who is repped by Dan Milstein\u2019s Gold Star Sports Management, Karmanov\u2019s reported signing in the OHL gives him a greater platform to raise his stock as a prospect in advance of the 2026 NHL Draft, which he is eligible to be selected in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Columbus Blue Jackets suffered a tough 5-1 loss to the Washington Capitals on Monday night, and a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":322250,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5108],"tags":[3644,5180,897,230,5179,5,6813,4,625,2566],"class_list":{"0":"post-322249","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-columbus-blue-jackets","8":"tag-blue-jackets","9":"tag-bluejackets","10":"tag-columbus","11":"tag-columbus-blue-jackets","12":"tag-columbusbluejackets","13":"tag-hockey","14":"tag-mathieu-olivier","15":"tag-nhl","16":"tag-ohl","17":"tag-zach-werenski"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115610710446950002","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322249\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/322250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}