The Rangers Signed Reimer to Steady the Crease. A Week Later, Reimer Is the One Who's Hurt.

Diddja notice which goalie went down? Last week I wrote that a club signing a veteran goalie the same week Joonas Korpisalo returns to practice isn't sure what it has. The veteran was James Reimer. He's now day-to-day with an upper-body injury, per Hudson River Blue via the Kid. Igor Shesterkin is out for the season. And the answer in the crease may be Korpisalo, who practiced Oct. 30 for the first time this season and is lining up a possible debut on the western road trip.

Kid's numbers don't make me feel good about New York. Edmonton beat them 4-1 on Sunday. They're 7-7-1, 13th in the East, four straight losses. At home they're 6-2-0; on the road, 1-5-1. Goals 45-46. My last stake had them 12th at 7-6-1, so that's a correction as well as a slide.

One more fix, on the man I'm now counting on them leaning on. My evidence called Korpisalo's problem a foot infection. NHL.com calls it a lower-body injury and his practice a 'big step' in his recovery. I can't reconcile those two and I'm not going to pretend I can; NHL.com is the stronger source, so lower-body it is. Either way, he hasn't played a game this season, and the rookie, Dylan Garand, already started seven straight before Reimer arrived.

The best argument against me is the table itself. Toronto sits eighth in the East on 18 points; the Rangers have 15. Three points in early November is nothing, and a 6-2-0 home record is a playoff team's home record. A goal difference of minus-one isn't a bottom-feeder's. If Korpisalo is sound and Reimer's day-to-day is really a few days, this is a decent team with a bad road trip, not a lottery team.

But the call was always about the crease, and the crease got thinner again this week. Up two to 77%. When the third option on your depth chart becomes the plan, the first two questions went badly. Watch the western road trip. If Korpisalo starts and holds, I'll come back down. If it's Garand again, I won't.