An undisclosed injury has now sidelined defenseman
Kris Russell of the Blue Jackets and it sounds like it could finish off his regular season by some of the snippets that I've been reading this weekend. Russell had to undergo an MRI for his injury and the results came back negative, so now that the Blue Jackets are out of the playoff picture, I would imagine that the team will shut him down for the final week of the year.
The Avalanche continue to tailspin out of control in the Northwest Division & Western Conference and blueline chemistry continues to be an issue. On Friday night, the Avalanche decided to include
Ruslan Salei as one of the healthy scratches for their game against the Flames in a key match-up for the final playoff spot. Without a doubt, Salei has struggled as an individual and his stats in the last five games suggest that: 1 assist and a -4 rating, averaging around 18 minutes of ice-time.
The Oilers have clinched the last place position in the NHL, so now it's time for the team to just play out the games with more an intention of giving ice-time to some different legs and get a look at what kind of talent they have in the wings. Both
Patrick O'Sullivan and
Robert Nilsson drew out of the Oilers line-up on Friday night to make room for
Ryan Jones, who is coming back from injury, and
Charles Linglet, who leads their AHL team in scoring this season. I would expect a few more of these moves down the line in the season.
The Minnesota Wild were officially knocked out of the playoff race mathematically on Friday night, but being on the verge was obviously enough to not rush
Martin Havlat into the line-up with an illness on Friday. Havlat has been having a tough go of it in Minnesota after being signed there as a free agent to replace Marian Gaborik, but he'll have enough time there to work out the kinks and hopefully get the Wild back into the playoffs.
The illnesses were running rampant in the league on Friday night, as the Montreal Canadiens were without
Jaroslav Spacek due to the flu bug as well. You would think it was the middle of Winter will all the flu bugs going around, but they are still out there and knocking out players late in the regular season. I would expect to see Spacek back in the Habs' line-up before too long, since they will need him to help clinch their playoff spot in the Eastern Conference.
It was a touch of the flu that kept
Dainius Zubrus out of the Devils line-up on Friday night, but the team does expect him to draw back into the line-up as they take on the Hurricanes in Raleigh on Saturday night. The Devils have already clinched their playoff spot and have been locked in a battle for the Atlantic Division with the Penguins, so they will want everyone healthy for that fight in the last week of the season.
It doesn't appear that
Stephane Veilleux was actually a healthy scratch, but it does appear that he isn't important enough to have his situation elaborated on these days. Veilleux only played five minutes worth of the Lightning's game on Wednesday night, when he's usually a 12-15 minute player, but since there is no actual word of an injury just yet, we'll count him as a healthy scratch. Since the Lightning are considered out of the playoffs anyways, I don't think this is a big deal overall.
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