Greene to Miss 4 Weeks

It was announced on Thursday night, just after the games had started, that the New Jersey Devils will be without defenseman Andy Greene for upwards of four weeks because of a non-displaced fracture in one of his toes, an injury he has supposedly been dealing with for a while now. Greene went in for X-rays on Thursday and the results had shown some significant damage, so he will be on the shelf for the next month or so, just to get back to 100%.

Greene hasn't had a great start to the season, but it hasn't been too bad either. In 23 games played, Greene has picked up 9 assists, well below the half a point-per-game rate you would like out of your defensemen, but he is only a couple of a really good games away from that kind of pace, so it has been an okay year to this point. His 9 points are good enough to rank him 69th among defensemen, through Thursday night's games, but we will expect that to drop off significantly.

It hasn't been a great season for Wayne H.'s defensemen, but that shouldn't really faze him, since he still has a 14-point lead after Thursday's action. Wayne has one of the lower point totals from his blueline, collecting 31 points from back there, which only makes up for 11.5% of his overall points this year, but he is just running away with the forwards points at the moment, that it won't really matter to him for a while.