Niskanen Out

The Dallas Stars are shutting down one of their top offensive defenseman for at least the next five days after a slew-footing incident this week. Matt Niskanen was the victim of the incident and has apparently suffered a head injury and will not be allowed to take to the ice for at least the next five days. The team isn't ruling out the possibility of a concussion, which would extend his time on the shelf considerably.

Niskanen was not in the line-up for the Stars last night versus Los Angeles.

It's been a bit of a slow start for Niskanen, on the offensive side of the ledger. The 22-year old defender only has two assists in his first eight games of the season. In 2009, he had a really good season, scoring 35 points in 80 games for Dallas. He was due to pick up a lot of the slack with Sergei Zubov heading to Russia, but he hasn't quite grabbed the reins as his own yet. We can only hope that the head injury isn't too serious and he'll be back in the line-up sooner rather than later.

Niskanen was thought to be a pretty good steal in the Draft, taken in the last round, 225th overall by Stacey. As defensemen went in that final round, he was thought to be one of, if not the, best one available at the time. Stacey is still sitting in the top four, only out of the money by the first tie-breaker at the moment. Having only two points already, it's only the potential of points that Stacey will likely miss out of Niskanen, which really is something when you think about it.

On the Sheet, he was put with all the other top defensemen in Box 10, which was not going to fare well for the young defenseman. Needless to say, with Nicklas Lidstrom and Dion Phaneuf in the box, Niskanen was not going to get picked at all.