According to an article in the Vancouver Sun, Joni Pitkanen has suffered a mild knee injury and will not play in the World Championships.From the article:
"I got a message from MacT (Oilers head coach Craig MacTavish) but I haven't talked to Joni yet. MacT doesn't think it's serious," said Oilers trainer Ken Lowe. "Joni's had three scopes on the one knee (right) to clean up the meniscus, and one on the other knee. There's no instability in the knee."
"When guys are in contract years, they break a thumbnail and they hurt a bit more," [Doug Shedden, Finland's Head Coach] said. "I don't know if the commitment was totally there. I didn't see a lot of commitment in practice. You don't want to put a gun to anybody's head to play for their country in the world championship."
Not a terribly flattering image of Pitkanen emerging here. The good news is that the injury is minor, but the bad news is that perhaps Pitkanen exaggerates injuries. Given the number of games he missed this season with a laundry-list of ailments, one wonders how many times he could have dressed for the Oilers, but didn't.
On the other hand, perhaps he's leery of aggravating injuries that bothered him during the season. Either way, there's something here that should worry the Oilers.