Aaron Pionk

The fact that he continued, even if he didn't look right, played through the, the weekend, tells me maybe if this injury occurred in March, he's still out on the ice.

Like, the timing may say, hey, where we're at, you know, Aaron, Aaron Pionk, uh, is on day-to-day right now.

Um, he also might've been held out, uh, Saturday, and maybe he misses the Augustana series here for precautionary measures.

Like, but my, my kind of met to the news is I, I think this team is deep enough to, in the short term, absorb it.

Plant, Plant, Shagabay, Hanson, and Arnott on that first unit.

And then your second unit would be something like Victor Plant and Hunter Anderson, Barrett Hall, Seatman, and then Aaron Pionk or somebody like that helping run things.

But they hadn't really decided on that yet.

So, I'm interested to see what they're thinking there because I do think Hunter Anderson's a guy that he's got that ability maybe to play up on that first unit if there's something going on there you don't like because the second half of the year, especially like you said, it felt like that second unit playing a little more simple, a little more direct.

I think I was talking to somebody on the bench, and there was a drill they did and a play that got made, and I don't know who it was made on, but Keith McInnes bodied up a guy and won a puck battle and just lickety-split the pucks out of the zone.

And I'm thinking to myself, right now it feels like Keith McInnes is the seventh defenseman on this team.

Maybe he's on that third pair with Aaron Pionk.

I don't know, but it feels like he's the seventh defenseman.

He's a junior.

Aaron Pionk's a senior.

Brady Cleveland's a senior.

They're rolling out guys who have played a lot of college hockey on their back end.

And obviously we know what that group did, especially Scott Perunovich and Mikey Anderson, Dylan Sandberg.

But this year's freshman defensemen don't have to come in and shoulder a ton of the load, right? Because you've got Ty Hanson and Adam Kleber and Aaron Pionk and Graydon Seatman, Brady Cleveland.

You've got the veteran group.

And these guys just have to come in and find their role.