Morning Player Notes in the Draft (Oct 18)

Calgary Flames rookie forward Sam Bennett sat out of Saturday night's contest against the Edmonton Oilers with an apparent upper-body injury. Although the details of the injury were not necessarily disclosed, there is some understanding that the injury is not all that serious and he could be back soon. For now, he'll be listed as out day-to-day.

In four games this season, Bennett does have 1 goal for Grant in the pool, helping him climb into the rookie race, as futile as it may seem right now.  Getting in is the key, but his team is already 11 points back of Ryan, who has nearly a handful of rookies on his roster.  Since Grant is 21st in the standings, he may consider going big into the rookie game before too long.

The Detroit Red Wings are not exactly struggling out of the gates this season, but they have been doing a lot of personnel shuffling already and on Saturday, some newly healthy bodies saw to some more shuffling against the Canadiens. Tomas Jurco was one of the odd-men out on Saturday night, as he returned to the press box after only two games on the active roster, failing to pick up a point.

Early on, this would make Jurco into a prime drop nominee for the Week Nine Waiver Draft, but since we're only finishing Week Two, Stuart has a lot of time to watch Jurco possibly pull himself out of this nose dive.  Early on, Stuart has a lot of decisions to make, looking at his side, but since he's only in 10th place, he doesn't have to hit the panic button yet.

With the return of Jaroslav Halak to the Islanders crease on Saturday night, the team now has three goalies on its active roster and one of them had to sit. It was kind of surprising to see Thomas Greiss get the night off, as most would have thought that J-F Berube would have been the guy to get the press box pass, since he's the new guy in town. Nonetheless, the back-up wasn't an issue, but either Greiss or Berube will have to pass through waivers to get to the minors, so the Islanders do have a decision to make.

Greiss was definitely a solid back-up option later on in the draft, around where Eric picked him up, the 10th round, 266th overall.  Eric ended up with a couple of back-ups in the pool but they have still come up big for him, already earning 6 points between the two in the first couple weeks.  Will be interesting to see how the Islanders play this one out.

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