Lance Bouma Injured Yet Again

The only real “news” item from tonight’s 5-4 overtime loss to the Los Angeles Kings was the third-period absence of Calgary Flames winger Lance Bouma. The forward was shut down by the team near the end of the third period after taking just four shifts, three of them extremely short ones.

When asked about Bouma’s status after the game, Flames head coach Bob Hartley noted: “It’s upper body. it doesn’t look very good. We’ll have more for you probably tomorrow, but talking with him, just watching him on the bench, he tried one shift, he just couldn’t go so it doesn’t look very good.”

It wasn’t immediately clear how Bouma was injured. He appeared to take a bit of a slash on his left hand early in the third, but he was still able to grip his stick enough to get a wrist shot on Jhonas Enroth. He hit Andy Andreoff early in the third, but beyond that he doesn’t appear on the NHL’s official play-by-play of the game.

Bouma’s seen above during his second-last shift grabbing at his left mid-section following brief contact along the boards. He had another shift after this, left the game for awhile, and then had one more shift before leaving the game.

Bouma has had awful injury lucky this season: he missed 30 games with a broken leg early in the second, then missed four more with a leg laceration suffered shortly after his return.