Kings Lose Williams

A scary incident in the Los Angeles Kings/Phoenix Coyotes game on Saturday night saw Kings foward, Justin Williams, fall awkwardly on his right leg. It was confirmed after the game that Williams has indeed broken his leg and will now be out of the Kings line-up indefinitely.

This injury comes on the same night that the Kings saw the return of Ryan Smyth and Wayne Simmonds to their line-up, so there is a great big cloud raining on their parade. It was fair to think that the Kings were on their way back to getting their top line back in form, but the loss of Williams saw the end of that right away.

In 33 games this season, Williams has 8 goals and 16 assists for the Kings, most of which came in the beginning of the season, when Williams & Smyth were on the same line as Anze Kopitar and they had their large run of points. The injury to Smyth saw a pretty quick halt to that trend and the Kings struggled to find a competent replacement for Smyth on the top line.

Williams has also seen more than his fair share of bad luck with injuries, already missing five games this season with a lower-body injury and the last 15 games of last season with Carolina/Los Angeles with a broken hand.

This is going to be a pretty big hit to Dale C. in the Draft, who had picked Williams in the 10th round this year. Williams isn't one of his top scorers, but is a part of a forward unit that ranks 7th in the pool in scoring this year. Dale currently ranks 2nd in the standings and a loss like this will hurt him severely. There is no immediate word as to the severity of the break in the leg, so we won't know if its six weeks or more until a later date.

On the Sheet, Williams was fairly popular in Box 9, as his injuries really limited his ranking in the preliminary pool thoughts. He currently has 10 selections in the pool and is poised to have another with a trade coming up here soon. That trade, of course, could be nixed before Monday's games, which will likely happen. Williams is far and away the best player in the box, so it'll be interesting to see how teams disperse that selection.