Pisani Out Indefinitely

The Edmonton Oilers have already run into a bit of an injury concern before camp. Fernando Pisani will be sitting out from club activities indefinitely with ulcerative colitis, which is a pretty ugly condition of the intestines, which could possibly be treated with some surgery. There doesn't seem to be a clear timetable of when Pisani would be available to play again.

Pisani was penciled in to be a 10th round pick in the pool draft with his 28 points last season, but now will have his spot taken by some other young pup who is healthy going into camp. A big disappointment for a guy who was going into his second camp of a 4-year deal that he signed last summer.

Dustin Penner	Shawn Horcoff	Ales Hemsky
Raffi Torres	Jarret Stoll	Marc Pouliot
Geoff Sanderson	Marty Reasoner	Robert Nilsson
Patrick Thoreson	Rob Schremp	Ethan Moreau
		Fernando Pisani

Sheldon Souray	Joni Pitkanen
Steve Staios	Ladislav Smid
Matt Greene	Dick Tarnstrom

Dwayne Roloson

Mathieu Garon

The Oiler line-up continues to look very young with some splashes of veteran leadership, so it should be very interesting how they fare in the very difficult Northwest Division. The loss of Pisani really opened the door for a guy like Ethan Moreau, although he probably had a spot reserved with MacTavish anyways. The spots that really opened up were for Schremp, Thoreson and Nilsson. Those three could be the weighing point for the Oilers season. They will need to really step up to ensure some success with secondary scoring.

Technorati Tags
NHL, Hockey, Hockey Pool, Edmonton Oilers, Fernando Pisani