Rangers D Ryan McDonagh played on broken foot
New York Rangers defenseman Ryan McDonagh played on a broken foot for "a couple of games."
Early in the first period of Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Final on Friday night, New York Rangers defenseman Ryan McDonagh briefly left the team's bench before he stepped on the ice for his first shift. He would eventually return midway through the period and take three shifts before getting back to his regular workload over the second and third periods.
Considering he had yet to take a shift at the time of his absence, it was a little confusing to see him go back to the locker room.
Following the Rangers' 2-0 loss he refused to talk about what his absence was about, but coach Alain Vigneault confirmed in his press conference that McDonagh had been playing on a broken foot for at least a couple of games.
"Mac has been playing on a broken foot, and we sort of got caught there after warm-up," said Vigneault. "The freezing hadn't kicked in, so we weren't sure if he was going to be able to play. So at that time we made the decision to go with seven. He went back in right at the start of the first period, and it kicked in a little bit. But he played through a lot of pain."
Even with the injury McDonagh still averaged more than 20 minutes of ice-time over the previous three games in the series.
On Friday he played just a little more than 17 minutes, by far his lightest workload of the playoffs.
He finished the playoffs with three goals and six assists for the Rangers.
