Player Notes in the Draft (Mar 4)

The Chicago Blackhawks may be willing to add a little bit more talent at the trade deadline, since they will be without forward Marian Hossa for the next 2-to-3 weeks with an upper-body injury. Hossa was hurt at the Stadium Series game against the Pittsburgh Penguins after a hit from Craig Adams.

 Hossa has been decent this year, scoring 24 goals and 26 assists in 57 games for the Blackhawks, good enough for 41st in pool scoring, through Monday night's action.

This injury will be a pretty huge hit to Ryan M.'s team, which has been looking at the top half of the standings with longing eyes. Hossa is his second-best forward this year, accounting for 11.2% of his team's points. That sort of production can't be replaced now, which likely means his dream of being above the equator in the standings is likely lost on him.

The lower-body injury that has been plaguing Detroit Red Wings forward Pavel Datsyuk is reportedly an inflammed knee, which he has now visited three different doctors and scheduled to see a fourth to see if he can get it under control. Datsyuk is expected to miss the next outing, tonight against the Devils and likely Thursday's game against the Avalanche.

Datsyuk struggled with the injury in the weeks leading up to the Olympics, through the tournament in Sochi and has now been sidelined again with it now. Something that really doesn't bode well for the Detroit playoff push, as they struggle to stay in a Wild Card spot in the Eastern Conference.

Ryan V.'s team has struggled as well this year and the Datsyuk injury is only one storyline for his team being in 22nd spot, through Monday night's action. Datsyuk has only been able to collect 33 points in 39 games for the Red Wings, harsh numbers for Ryan's 1st round pick this year. Th only pick worse was Steven Stamkos for Allan.

A minor undisclosed injury is set to keep Dallas Stars forward Rich Peverley out of the line-up for tonight's game against the Blue Jackets. The team has made an AHL call-up on Tuesday morning, but to curb all of the trade talk, it was announced that Peverley's injury should be enough to keep him out the game. There is a lack of detail on the injury news, except that it is minor and shouldn't keep him out of the line-up for much more than the one game.

Derek Wilton now has three names on the injury/news page with the addition of Peverley, not what he wants to see when he's only 3 points out of the prizes in the morning. Since it isn't too serious, Wilton should be able to stay in the race, hanging with all the money teams.

Boston Bruins head coach Claude Julien said today that he doesn't expect Loui Eriksson in the line-up for the team's game against the Panthers tonight, but Eriksson should be back for the team's next game on Thursday night against the Capitals. There was no idea of the nature of the injury, so it will be left as that... day-to-day with an undisclosed injury.

Already with one mention of a player going down for a number of weeks, Ryan M. is just taking hits left, right and centre. Maybe all that talk of keeping some hope on his side in the Newsletter was the death rattle of his team.

With the Trade Deadline looming large, the process includes a number of players hitting the Waiver Wire, as teams try to open up some space to make that extra deal underneath the salary cap. The Ottawa Senators were the only team to put a pool player on the wire this morning, as defenseman Joe Corvo, who has been a regular healthy scratch for the last month and a half, was made available to every team, in a waiver fashion, for free. Seems unlikely that he'll find a home, but he may get a look or two, if the prices for defensemen in the trade market remain quite high.

 I'm sure Leo would like his pool defenseman to move, as he has got nothing from Corvo for the last six weeks or so. Leo is 5 points behind Doug to get out of last place in the standings and if Corvo could move to a team with some offense or in need of an offensive defenseman, he might be able to get those extra points.