Flyers' Giroux Out Indefinitely

The NHL should be looking to ban accidental contact with teammates in games, as the NHL's leader in goal scoring and the NHL leader in points have now been injured by their own teammates, both suffering concussions and both will be out for the long-term.  Claude Giroux, the latter of the two NHL leaders, suffered a head injury on Saturday night when teammate Wayne Simmonds couldn't avoid Giroux's head, while he was sitting on the ice after another collision.  Simmonds caught Giroux with his knee, forcing the scoring winger out of the game against the Lightning.

The team held on and re-evaluated Giroux for a few days before dropping the concussion bomb on Wednesday afternoon and now Giroux is not expected to be back in the line-up any time soon.

At the time of this post, Giroux currently sits 2nd in hockey pool scoring, now 4 points behind Detroit's Jimmy Howard, with 16 goals and 23 assists in 28 games played to date.  He has really started to make a name for himself among the elite players over the last few seasons and has taken the Flyers on his shoulders after the departure of Mike Richards and Jeff Carter.  With all of this new responsibility, he has flourished as a leader on the ice for the team.

Now that the Flyers will be without Giroux and Chris Pronger out indefinitely with a concussion as well, a lot of questions have arisen about how Philadelphia will fare with their leadership core on the shelf.

As for the draft, Clayton C. will certainly miss the pool's second-best player to date, as he goes into Thursday night's action in 7th spot in the standings, 17 points out of the money.

Injuries have been a big problem for Clayton already this year and now they look to be stacking up on him, as he has a below-average number of games played in the pool from his skaters, sitting at 301 (average is 314) and his goaltending has not seen the amount of minutes he would have liked.  This will be a huge blow to his team.