Staal Update in Carolina

Well, the news isn't very good for Eric Staal and the Hurricanes, as the early reports are that the All-Star forward will miss "several games" due to the upper-body injury suffered on Sunday. So, without a finite number of days, weeks or months, we'll have to call Staal 'out indefinitely' for now. With the Hurricanes sitting in 14th in the Eastern Conference, this is not the injury, nor the timeframe, the team wants to be without their best forward.

Now, we call Staal the 'Canes best forward, because he does have some pretty large figures by the end of the year, but he does generally start slow. This season is no exception, with only three goals and two assists in the first 13 games, you can safely say that Staal is struggling to get his season going this year. Staal is known to be good for anywhere between 80-100 points in a season, but it would have had to take a good streak of games before he'd be able to reach that plateau again. If the injury is long-term, it's clear that his fantasy value is not high at all this year.

Of the three Staal brothers in NHL, it's actually Marc Staal who has the best scoring pace this season at 6 points in 15 games.

In the Draft, the Staal injury adds more weight to the giant lump of pain that is keeping Chris' team from coming out from the basement of the standings. Chris, already without Toews, Arnott, Malkin and Giguere, he's finding it harder and harder to have any interest in the pool. I can't say that I blame him. How incredibly rough.

On the Sheet, Staal was lumped in the same box as Alex Ovechkin and Evgeni Malkin, who are both injured as well. If you were going to switch from either Russian, you may want to avoid Staal.