Draft Player News (Dec. 23)

An undisclosed injury was enough to keep the Flames' Alex Tanguay out of the line-up for Thursday night's game against the Detroit Red Wings. The details are vague to say the least, but the coaching staff are saying that it is a day-to-day sort of thing.  I would imagine that Tanguay will be a game-time decision for Friday night's game in Vancouver, but that's about as far as I'll go.  If he doesn't play, it's more than reasonable to suggest that he gets an extra day off before the break to be 100% for their return to action next week.

With 22 points in 33 games this season, Tanguay is Darren S.'s second-best forward this season, which gives you a pretty good measure of how unlucky his season has been.  Darren's team remains among the pool leaders in skater games played, but he occupies the bottom spot for points-per-game this season at 0.41.

The Oilers were without Ales Hemsky again on Thursday night, as the playmaking winger was held out of the line-up with a touch of the flu. Hemsky was quarantined by the club on Wednesday, keeping him away from teammates and practice. He was able to suit up for the game-day skate on Thursday morning, but he was held out of the game against the Wild, likely for precautionary measures. The Oilers are already on their Christmas break, not having to play on Friday, so he'll have plenty of time to get better now.

It's been a pretty poor season for Chris M., who normally challenges among the top half of the leaderboard in the pool from year-to-year, but it just hasn't been his year.  Chris has Hemsky and mires in 17th spot in the standings at the moment, 23 points out of the top 10.  Maybe the New Year will bring him a bit more health and success.

Bad news for the Panthers, just before the Christmas break, as they have lost the services of Stephen Weiss, due to an upper-body injury that was suffered on Thursday night against the Senators.  The injury has ruled Weiss out of Friday night's game against the Boston Bruins and I would have to believe there will be further evaluation on the scoring forward's situation before anything is disclosed.

This is not good news for Wayne H., who has lost the pool lead this week to Stacey C. and is in danger of falling off the map with a severe lack of games to finish the week tonight.  Wayne now sits 4 points back of Stacey for the lead and only holds an 8-point lead over 3rd and 4th place going into Friday's action.  Scary stuff from our previous leader.

The new coach of the Montreal Canadiens, Randy Cunneyworth, has been taking a lot of flack for not speaking French and not turning around the Habs after the dismissal of Jacques Martin, so he has gone to the scratching method, sitting P.K. Subban for the team's game against the Winnipeg Jets on Thursday. That didn't help very much, as the team lost 4-0. Subban was ripe for a scratch, as he hasn't played well since the coaching change and the new staff is hoping that it's the wake-up call that the young defenseman needed.

I would imagine that Jani K. appreciated the fact that Subban hasn't been playing very well and probably would accept the scratch, if that means that one of his top defenders would pick up the pace after the time spent in the press box.  Jani sits in 12th place through Thursday night's games, 3 points out of the top 10 and would like to make a big push in this second segment.