Draft Player News (Jan. 7)

On Friday night against the Hurricanes, the Buffalo Sabres lost forward Derek Roy to an upper-body injury, as reported by the team's Twitter account during the game.  Roy did not return to the game and the nature of the injury was not disclosed at the time of this post, although the coaching staff has said that he will be out for more than a few days.  Take that as you will.  Once there is an official update, it sounds like there will be a post to update his status on the blog.

This appears to be bad news for Chris M. in the pool, as he has Roy this season, adding to the list of injuries he has seen all year long.  Chris sits in 16th place, as of Saturday morning, thanks to some average health among his skaters and below-average playing time for his goaltending, not to mention scoring rates that cannot make up for those losses.  It's been a rough season for him this year and it does look like it will let up any time soon.

One of the odd selections in the draft this year, Sean O'Donnell, was made into a healthy scratch again for the Blackhawks on Friday night, as he still has some traction with the bottom rotation of blueliners on the team.  O'Donnell only has 5 assists in 26 games for the Blackhawks this season and is generally employed in the line-up for some steady play in his own end, more than he is used as an offensive force.  O'Donnell has been a scratch a number of times this year and until he is dropped in the pool, he'll keep showing up in these posts.

Barring any further injury issues on Munden G.'s pool team, he may be looking to improve on his defense at the second waiver draft, which is now only a few weeks away.  He hasn't been terribly fortunate with some of the players that should have been much better for him, which has cost him big time this season, but O'Donnell should be considered for the drop this time around.  As of Saturday morning, Munden's team sits in 19th place, 13 points better than 20th, but 15 points back of 18th.  He could be stuck there for a while now.

If there was a list of teams cursed with injuries this season, it would have to have the Pittsburgh Penguins up near the top of the 30 teams. On Friday night against the Rangers, they lost the services of Jordan Staal again, who suffered a knee injury on a collision with New York grinder Mike Rupp. Staal reportedly had to be helped off the ice, which wasn't a great sign and now we await word on how bad the injury is.

It has been a tough season on Wes M., who loses Staal again this year and it could very well be for the long-term.  Wes had one Staal brother return for his team this week and another has to go, just to regain somewhat of a balance, I would suppose.  Wes' team sits in 17th, sort of in limbo for any real position in the standings, the second waiver draft cannot come soon enough.