Brain injury confirmed for Toronto's Mark Giordano

While the Toronto Maple Leafs took down the Arizona Coyotes on Thursday night at Scotiabank Arena, they suffered one key loss on the blue line. Veteran defenseman Mark Giordano suffered a concussion, and has been confirmed to have been placed on Injured Reserve. 

He lost his footing after joining an offensive rush, and crashed into the boards: 

Leafs general manager Brad Treliving confirmed the grim diagnosis for Giordano, and said that it won't be any time soon that he's able to suit up. 

"He is going to be out for some time," reliving said. "We either have or will be placing him on Injured Reserve. He was concussed. He is doing better today. As with any of these, he is in the protocol. We will just see how these things respond over the next few days, but he is going to miss some time.

I talked to him last night. He was in rough shape. We had a good chat today. For everybody in the building, you caught your breath a little bit. He went in hard. He was out for a little bit. He was doing better after the game."

The Leafs had just swung a trade to acquire defenseman Ilya Lyubushkin from the Anaheim Ducks, but that wasn't due to the Giordano injury. 

"It really didn’t speed up the process," Treliving said of the acquisition. "I think we had done the deal before the game had started.

"It’s unfortunate, but the other piece of this is that you anticipate you are not going to be healthy. Our blue line hasn’t been healthy all year. It is the nature of the beast."

The elder statesman in the NHL has scored one goal along with six assists in the 38 games he's appeared in for Toronto this season.

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