The National Hockey League has very strict guidelines for teams to follow and criteria for players to meet before they are allowed to participate in game action following a concussion, and given that it took Visnovsky from the middle of October until late January to return from his last occurrence with the ailment, it is probably safe to assume the oft-injured blue liner is done for the year.
Visnovsky's injury was originally reported by the team as an upper-body ailment, suffered last Tuesday in the Islanders' 6-0 punking at the hands of the Minnesota Wild, and though a concussion is always suspected with such an ambiguous public diagnosis - particularly with Visnovsky - it wasn't confirmed until Monday.
The Islanders are merely playing out the string of this most disappointing season, their 63 points rendering them 17 points behind current seventh and eighth seeded Detroit and Toronto, respectively with just ten games left to play - and while that doesn't mathematically eliminate them from contention, it appears that the team has accepted their fate.
"It takes me longer to read the injury report now than anything else," Isles' coach Jack Capuano lamented. "It's extremely frustrating."
Capuano not only has Visnovsky on the skids, but also top line right winger Kyle Okposo who played through a lower-body injury in Sunday's 2-0 win over Columbus but missed Monday's practice with the ailment. The team's leading scorer was injured in practice on Friday and made the trip with the team to North Carolina for Tuesday's game against the Hurricanes.
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