‘Walleye Weigh-In’: Depleted roster doesn’t stop Walleye from going 3-in-3

Among the Toledo Blade’s Mark Monroe’s “Walleye Weigh-In” notes:

Despite fielding a seriously depleted roster, the Walleye swept a three-game weekend series at the Huntington Center and moved back into first place in the Central Division.

The Walleye were down to 15 skaters for their third game in three days on Sunday. Toledo was missing three players due to injury (Alden Hirschfeld, Connor Crisp, and Patrick McCarron) and one to bereavement leave (Kevin Gibson). The team also is without four players due to call-ups to the American Hockey League (Zach Nastasiuk, Mike Esposito, Christian Hilbrich, and goalie Matej Machovsky).

“It’s hard. It was a tough weekend,” Watson said. “To grind out [Saturday’s] win was the hardest one. We put a lot of stress of these guys. We had some tired guys today but they pushed through it.”

The Walleye had six defensemen and nine forwards in Sunday’s 5-2 win over Greenville.

Fortunately, forward Mike Borkowski and defensemen Beau Schmitz were back in the lineup after stints on the injured reserve.

Watson said was the key to earning six out of six points with decimated roster was getting to the net and getting shots on goal with better puck management.

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George Malik

My name is George Malik, and I'm the Malik Report's editor/blogger/poster. I have been blogging about the Red Wings since 2006, when MLive hired me to work their SlapShots blog, and I joined Kukla's Korner in 2011 as The Malik Report. I'm starting The Malik Report as a stand-alone site, hoping that having my readers fund the website is indeed the way to go to build a better community and create better content.