The Dallas Stars have received some troubling news on Monday, as Brad Richards did not travel with the team up to Edmonton on Monday, as the team begins a Western Canada road swing. The injury, which is vague, to say the least, is not considered to be a major concern, but the question about his availability does cast a mean shadow of doubt on the days ahead. A report on Monday afternoon confirms that Richards will miss the game against the Oilers for sure, but there is a chance that he can re-join the team before their game against the Flames on Wednesday or the game against the Canucks on Saturday.
Until more details are known, he'll be considered out day-to-day with an undisclosed injury.
Well, if Richards is out for an extended period of time, it could be a pretty big loss, as he leads the team in scoring with 24 goals and 39 assists in 56 games this season, ranking 8th in pool scoring. With that kind of loss in the line-up, plus the absence of Jamie Benn already, the Stars will have to rely on some of their other big names to generate some offense on the road trip. 
Of course, the impact of this news byte is going to be graded on a curve, since it will only get exponentially worse as the number of games begins to increase. Missing out on one game will do little harm to Wayne H. in the short-term, especially since a team could just consider it to be like he just failed to score in one game. It happens, right? But when a point-per-game player begins to start missing more than one game in a stretch, you can begin to reasonably add up points a pool team has missed out on in his absence. After Monday night's action, Wayne sits in 7th place in the standings, 12 points out of the money and only 2 points out of 5th place. This is not the time to start losing out on top players like Richards.
Link to the Injury/News Page
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