Ladd joins the casualty list

Appendicitis stops left wing

RALEIGH -- The Carolina Hurricanes have had players slowed by offseason surgeries and a myriad of groin, shoulder and the team-favorite "upper-body" and "lower-body" injuries.

Andrew Ladd is the latest to be sidelined -- because of an emergency appendectomy. The left wing underwent surgery Thursday night at Rex Hospital.

Ladd, 21, was recovering at home Friday, and the Hurricanes recalled forward Keith Aucoin from the American Hockey League's Albany River Rats to fill Ladd's spot.

Carolina coach Peter Laviolette to estimate how long Ladd's recovery will be. He noted, however, that Ladd underwent a minimally invasive laparoscopic surgery, which uses three or four smaller incisions as opposed to the one larger incision used in a traditional appendectomy.

Aucoin, 28, was tied for 10th in AHL scoring and led Albany with 10 goals and 18 assists.

READY TO WEAR: Cam Ward did not spend much time breaking in his new gear. The Hurricanes' goaltender wore a new blocker, glove and custom-fit Vaughn pads at Friday's morning skate for the first time and dubbed them good to go.

Contrast that with former Carolina goalie Arturs Irbe, who hung on to his game pads until they were all but threadbare.

"That's just the luck of who made them, since it's all by hand," Ward said. "I put these on, and they felt great. But I had another set once that was brand new that I laced up, and I didn't even want to step on the ice, they felt so bad."

STILL OUT: Hurricanes captain Rod Brind'Amour missed his third consecutive game with a groin injury. His availability was listed as "day-to-day."

Laviolette said a coach can't always plan to control how much a player plays when he's returning back from an injury.

Brind'Amour was averaging a team-high 23:05 on the ice.

"You can always say that you want to control the minutes, but situations happen, and players come back and they feel good," Laviolette said. "We did the same thing with Cory Stillman the other night [against the Colorado Avalanche]. We wanted to keep him at 10 minutes ... found ourselves needing a goal in the third period, and, before you know it, the thing gets stretched to 14, which wasn't a problem."

TAILWINDS: Carolina defenseman David Tanabe also missed his second consecutive game with a lower-body injury. ... N.C. State's new football coach, Tom O'Brien, was introduced during a first-period break and was presented with a Hurricanes sweater. Carolina could not spare an apostrophe for the "OBRIEN" on the back, but O'Brien did get a quarterback's number (07).