With the Ducks firmly out of the playoffs, they did one of the wise things to do and give some of their youthful legs a good skate around, while their veterans get a nice night off from the grind. Anaheim played the Stars in Dallas on Thursday night and left Ryan Getzlaf, Teemu Selanne, Saku Koivu and Scott Niedermayer out of the line-up as a veteran privilege.Getzlaf has been dealing with an ankle problem in the last few weeks, so his inclusion in this group shouldn't come as a big surprise. There was no need to risk further injuring his ankle and make it harder to rehab in the off-season, so he took a seat.
Selanne has had a pretty rough ride in 2010 with some injuries already, but he already hit some great milestones, including scoring goal #600 this season. He earned some well-deserved rest.Koivu enjoyed some reasonable success, but it was fairly streaky for the better part of the season. His veteran presence was probably a big help to players like Bobby Ryan, but it wasn't really enough to put wins in the column at the end of the day.
Finally, Niedermayer had an accomplished 2010 by just winning gold with Team Canada at the Olympics, but he really wasn't terribly effective for the Ducks during the season, even casting doubts on his inclusion on the Olympic team.
Keeping Getzlaf out of the line-up was almost expected, but Leon's team continues to tempt fate by having guys stay out of the line-up with so little time at the end of the year. Would you believe that Leon also has Niedermayer as well? Now, that's walking an interesting line, don't you think? Fortunately for him, that 27-point lead into Friday night's action is pretty safe.
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