Spezza Doubtful for Thursday

Things are not looking so rosy for Jason Spezza, as his upper-body injury may be keeping him from re-joining the Senators for their next game on Thursday night against the Lightning at home. Spezza's upper-body injury is thought to be a sore back or some other ailment surrounding his back. He is currently listed as doubtful for Thursday and he's already missed the last two games for the Senators, which probably means that the team could put him on the IR retroactive to last week and get some much needed help in their line-up.

Numbers-wise, Spezza isn't having a terrible start to the season, but certainly wasn't playing at his best before the injury had occurred. In the first ten games of the season, Spezza had only registered eight assists. When Dany Heatley departed to San Jose in the epic trade this summer, it should have been understood that Spezza would have been looked upon to score a few more goals to make up for the 40-50 that Heatley took with him. The injury will certainly keep him from doing that.

Spezza was a 3rd round pick (47th overall) by Dale C. in the Draft and certainly hasn't played like a 3rd round pick just yet. He certainly isn't Dale's 3rd-best player on the team, ranking behind six other players in points at the moment, so there has to be plenty of disappointment there. Dale currently sits in 3rd spot in the standings, so he isn't too sore about Spezza, unless he starts to miss loads of time with the injury.

On the Sheet, he was taken once in Box 18, being selected over top of the likes of Crosby, Backstrom and Lecavalier... just once. It doesn't seem necessarily wise to keep Spezza at this point in time, because he is being dusted by at least two of the three mentioned earlier in the paragraph. Now would be a good time to trade him, just so you can cash in on the points you know you're going to get with the bigger guns.