Draft Player News (Feb. 1)

The Buffalo Sabres may have suffered a pretty serious injury, as Thomas Vanek left Tuesday night's game with an upper-body injury, which the team is suggesting will need some evaluation from the team's doctors and it could be an injury that keeps him out for a while.  The team didn't say the word, concussion, but you get the feeling that was what they were hinting at.  The team also made mention that they expect Vanek to be out at least a week, but further evaluation would be needed.

This isn't great news for Clayton C., who lost a little bit more ground to Dale B. in the pool standings, trying to chase down the pool leader for 1st place.  Clayton finished the night with 10 points, while Dale had 12 and we've now seen the biggest lead in the pool this season.  When there is an update provided as to the nature of the injury and length, we'll have a blog post on it.

Prior to the Sabres taking on the Canadiens, the team made rookie forward Luke Adam into a healthy scratch, as he wasn't having a great stretch of play, leading up to the All-Star break.  But with the potential long-term injury to Thomas Vanek on the books, there appears to be a spot opening up for Adam to lose, so he must make the most o this opportunity or else he could lose out to someone in the system that is working much harder.

There are rumblings out in the draft landscape that Adam isn't going to last with Stuart G. in the draft, now that we are underway in the second waiver draft.  Stuart should be able to make his pick in the next day or so and it sounds like he'll be trading up his forwards at the time.

The Flames may have lost one of their brightest spots in the 2012 season, as Lee Stempniak suffered a lower-body injury on Tuesday night against the Red Wings, having to leave the game in the 1st period.  There has been no word, as of first thing in the morning on Wednesday.  The Flames have leaned upon Stempniak a lot this season, converting another regular third line grinding forward into a manageable second line player, so this will be a stinger, if he is out of the line-up for a significant amount of time.

The word from Munden G.'s team is that they've written off the year and an injury to Stempniak isn't going to help that cause much at all.  Even if the injury is serious, it doesn't sound like there will be any change to the roster this week.

The Red Wings were without veteran forward Tomas Holmstrom on Tuesday night, as a treatment for his knees had an adverse reaction and did a lot more bad than good.  Holmstrom was dealing with some minor instances of pain in his knees during the All-Star break and had a couple of injections given to his leg joints to try and ease his discomfort, but his knees instead swelled up and were unable to carry him out on the ice on Monday.  Holmstrom apparently skated on Tuesday, but was not deemed 100% for action.

This is actually another player on Munden's team, but this injury doesn't sound like it has as much of a doom and gloom feel as Stempniak's might, although Holmstrom may be expected to miss a couple more games this year with his sore knees.  It's a real possibility, but it doesn't look like Munden cares.

The groin problem that made the New Jersey Devils pull Adam Henrique out of the All-Star festivities over the weekend were enough to keep him out of action on Tuesday night, as the Devils opened their post-All-Star break part of the schedule against the Rangers.  Henrique has been a real bright spot for the Devils this year and the Devils would be much better suited to have him in the line-up than waiting for an injury to heal, but it doesn't sound to negative, likely just a day-to-day thing.

Dale C. is sitting just outside the money positions after Tuesday night and an injury to Henrique is going to help at all.  Dale currently sits 5 points out of 5th place and could really use Henrique to get back in the line-up for the team's next game, but there is no guarantee for that right now.  If the injury is diagnosed to be any worse, he'll get a fresh post.