"Aaron Johnson's right eye looked like the inside of a pomegranate yesterday, yet the Blue Jackets defenseman called himself "very, very fortunate."

If the stick blade that raked across Johnson's face in the second period of Friday's exhibition game in Carolina had been an inch in a different direction, he likely would have suffered a far more serious injury.

"My biggest fear right after it happened was that I couldn't open my eye," Johnson said. "There was too much blood around it.

"The stick went right across my eye. I'm just very, very fortunate that my eye was closed."

Johnson needed seven stitches to close a cut from the bridge of his nose to the corner of his eye."