Nobody wants to see injuries to anyone and it does seem a little bit worse when a hockey player goes down in the off-season. Mike Fisher of the Nashville Predators will now miss a good portion of the first half of the NHL season, as the team confirmed that he suffered a ruptured Achilles tendon and his estimated time out of action is around 4-to-6 months.
Even around the 4-month mark, that would put Fisher into the beginning of November for a return, missing out on the first month of the season. It would seem more likely, however, that Fisher figures in somewhere in the middle of that projected time frame, so I wouldn't be prepared to put any stock in him until the first waiver draft of the hockey pool season.
Last season, Fisher played in 75 games, scoring 20 goals and 49 points, ranking 115th overall in pool scoring, 86th among forwards. That would have likely put him into the first five or six rounds of the hockey pool draft, depending on the rush of defensemen to begin the draft.
Even with Fisher in the projected line-up, presuming he would have been 100% healthy, the Predators still had $14.7 million in projected cap space for three players, which would have been ear-marked for an improved blueline. The Predators, who will likely be in the Central Division mix this season, assuming everyone else is healthy, may look to the free agent market to fill the void, but there are rumours abound that they may try to swing Vincent Lecavalier out of Philadelphia, who carries the same cap hit as Fisher at $4.5 million in 2015.
Adjust your 2015 pool projections, if you got them!
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