Apparently, the “specialist” Lilja saw in Vancouver was a chiropractor. The initial reports on the visit were nothing exciting as his headaches continued, at least while the team was still in BC. But Ansar Khan now reports that Lils has been headache-free for three days as a result of whatever treatment he received there. Wow.
There’s no estimate on his return timetable yet, but if he responds well to contact, it’d just be a matter of getting into shape and remaining headache-free. The Franzen injury leaves plenty of cap room for him.
He’s already ramping it up in practice, as his appearance in the defensive pairings today (fourth unit) seems to indicate. He’s been skating for a while now, but to the best of my knowledge wasn’t taking part in practice in such a way as to rate such a listing.
The Wings could use him to anchor the third pairing, for sure. He’s gotten a lot of flak (some deserved, some not) from Wings fans during his time here, but getting him back would be a boost to the bottom end of the defense.
I like the sound of an Ericsson/Lilja pairing. Two big bodies, and Lilja is a definate upgrade over Lebda/Meech defensively.