Afternoon Player Notes in the Draft (Nov 21)

The hairline fracture that Columbus defenseman Seth Jones suffered has healed sufficiently enough that the young pillar on the Blue Jackets blueline can now return to action. On Monday, the team activated the defender and he should be good to go against the Avalanche tonight.  Jones only missed a couple weeks worth of action, which is one short of the original diagnosis, so his pain threshold must be to a point where it's bearable.

At the time of the injury, Stacey M. dropped down to 21st in the standings and her team will now open the week in 16th.  Obviously, her team made good without him, so his return may expedite her assault on the top of the standings.

In last week's Newsletter, there were rumblings that Nick Bjugstad was almost ready to come back and it finally happened on Monday... the Florida Panthers finally activated him from the Injured Reserve.  Bjugstad suffered a broken hand in the preseason and his recovery took a little longer than initially expected, missing the first six weeks of the season, but now he's back!

With Tony just losing Mika Zibanejad, his poor team is barely catching a break here with the return of a rusty forward for losing a hot scoring forward at the same time.  There's no period of adjustment for Tony's team, which is in dire need of some real help.  Tony's team opens the week in 23rd, 39 points out of the money.

Usually, this sort of news byte would get its own post, but it isn't in the cards today, as I'm pushing everything through as quickly as possible.  Tomas Hertl was placed on the Long Term Injured Reserve on Monday, as you can safely assume that the tests on his injured knee did not come back with positive results.  Hertl will be out for at least the next nine games, already having missed one already and the minimum is 10.

This is especially bad news for Troy, who, much like Tony, hasn't seen much luck on his pool team.  This major injury may make Hertl a good candidate for a drop at the Waiver Draft and it will only be a matter of which mini-game he's going to play for.  Drafting scoring for the outdoor games or is he really going to goon it up?