Canucks' Hamhuis expected to miss at least 2 months with injury

The Vancouver Canucks will be without defenceman Dan Hamhuis for at least two months, after he took a Dan Boyle slap shot in the face on Wednesday.

Coach Desjardins said #Canucks are looking at "at least two months" without Dan Hamhuis.

— Vancouver Canucks (@Canucks) December 11, 2015

Hamhuis suffered a facial fracture on the play, and is going in for surgery today.

Coach visited Hamhuis in the hospital Thursday. Said he was in good spirits, was with his daughters. #Canucks

— Vancouver Canucks (@Canucks) December 11, 2015

It was a gruesome injury, to say the least. You could tell that Hamhuis was in a considerable amount of pain right away, even before seeing the amount of blood he lost.

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Hamhuis wasn’t having a strong season by his standards, but it’s still a massive blow to the Canucks blue line. The Canucks defence is not stacked with top-4 quality defenders like Hamhuis.

At practice this morning, the Canucks boasted these pairings:

Canucks d: elder-Tanev, Hutton-weber, biega-bartkowski

— Jason Botchford (@botchford) December 11, 2015

Hamhuis’ injury might force Willie Desjardins’ hand. He could split up his best pairing of Alex Edler and Chris Tanev. He could also keep Edler and Tanev together and play them 25+ minutes a night.

Vancouver is paper thin on their back-end right now, so expect GM Jim Benning to be working the phone lines for a possible trade. Along with Hamhuis, they are also without Luca Sbisa, who did not travel with the team on their road trip. The injury bug has bitten the Utica Comets also, as one of their best defencemen, Taylor Fedun also recently suffered and injury and is listed as week-to-week.

Our @DTSN1040 tells us he expects the @Canucks to keep a keen eye on the waiver wire for D-men who could fill-in for Dan Hamhuis.

— Matthew Sekeres (@mattsekeres) December 10, 2015

Given that the Canucks are in the middle of a quasi-rebuild, they are not in a good position to add a defender for a draft pick. The waiver wire might be the way to go, depending on what is available.

The Canucks begin a six-game road trip in Chicago on Sunday.