#lower-body-injury

#lower-body-injury

Eriks Mateiko received one of the biggest honors of his career last week when he was named to Latvia's Olympic hockey team. Days later, though, Mateiko suffered a scary injury during Hershey's 3-2 overtime loss Sunday to the Cleveland Monsters, and it's unclear if it will impact his trip to Italy in February. The Capitals prospect was injured and helped off the ice with 11:19 remaining in the second period after having an incident along the sideboards with Monsters defenseman Corson Ceulmans.

The timing could hardly have been worse. With the game already decided and the Islanders searching for answers after a lopsided defeat, the sight of their leading scorer limping to the locker room cast a shadow over everything else. Horvat had only recently returned from a five-game absence in December due to a lower-body injury, raising immediate concern about whether this was a recurrence or something new entirely.