Big bodies Yanis and Milley suffer injuries in 4-2 win vs Buffalo State

According to Men's head coach Guy Gadowsky, freshman defenseman Mark Yanis (Grosse Pointe Woods, MI) will miss approximately two months with a broken ankle. In addition, freshman forward Jonathan Milley (Gatineau, Que.) suffered a hip pointer on a in Saturday night's home game against Buffalo State and his status for this weekend's two-game series against Air Force is still undecided. Pictured below is Milley against American International in the inaugural home opener. Photo credit to Mark Selders of gopsusports.com.  

For those not aware of what happened to Milley on Saturday, he was viciously slashed from behind by Buffalo State forward Nick Melligan in the second period and came off in a lot of pain and was helped into the locker room. For those of you hockey historians, it similar to the Adam Graves on Lemieux hack in 1991 but not as blantant and bad. I saw Milley after the game sporting some crutches, which normally isn't a good sign before even getting a prognosis. Hopefully there will be more details to come later in the week on Milley. The 6' 4" Milley has played the majority of the season alongside 6'3" Max Gardiner and 6'3" Casey Bailey to make a trio of monster power forwards who are troublesome for opposing defenders down low and in front of the net. Granted, they have 32 penalty minutes between the three of them (two for Gardiner, 18 for Bailey, 12 for Milley) but they epitomize the type of system Gadowsky likes to implement.  My guess would be junior Justin Kirchhevel (Brookings, SD) to take Milley's spot in the lineup if it comes down to it. He's appeared in five games this season and somewhat fits the bill of a power forward. He's yet to find the scoresheet in those five games, but I think he could fill in with Gardiner and Bailey just fine because of his hard-nosed style of play.
 
As for Yanis, the 6'3" blueliner has not missed a game this season and has been a reliable and versatile defenseman for the Nittany Lions. He sees time on both the power play and penalty kill and has teamed up with fellow freshman Luke Juha to make for a solid pairing for Coach Gadowsky. He's mostly shown to be more of a stay at home blueliner but has tapped into some offensive ability with two goals and two assists so far this season. He will be a tough guy to have out for that chunk of time, especially with Air Force coming to town this weekend and then on the road against 2011 Frozen Four participant Union on November 24-25. Then they get more tough opponents in the Three Rivers Classic in Robert Morris and potentially Ohio State or Miami (Ohio) rounding out the schedule in that two month span. Coach Gadowsky will probably have to look for someone like Rich O'Brien or Brian Dolan to step up and take Yanis' spot in the lineup. The senior O'Brien has three appearances this season while Dolan has only appeared in one. Both bring a veteran presence to the Nittany Lions blueline as both were carry overs from the club program. But saying that O'Brien or Dolan could slide right in and replace Yanis' game for two months is expecting a lot out of O' Brien and Dolan. Lets see what Coach Gadowsky does during his first big test to his depth in this inaugural season.