Morning Player Notes in the Draft (Nov 12)

The Buffalo Sabres had a couple of injury notes to pass along this morning... defenseman Dmitry Kulikov was not able to dress for Friday night's game against the Devils, dealing with an undisclosed injury. He is currently listed as day-to-day and that's about the extent of the details we have on his status. Kulikov has been anything, but productive in this early part of the season, no points in 12 games, so it could easily have been a healthy scratch as well.

During the game against the Devils, Ryan O'Reilly left the game amidst fears that he has re aggravated his mid-body injury, which kept him out of Wednesday night's game against Ottawa.  The Sabres play the second half of a home-and-home with the Devils on Saturday night, no update on whether or not O'Reilly will be ready to go.

It's two players with polar opposite values to their pool teams, as Kulikov is struggling for Brian's 3rd place team in the standings, while O'Reilly has 9 points in 12 games, doing well for Dale B.'s 9th place team.  How is that fair, you ask?  That's the way the cookie crumbles.

Speaking of the New Jersey Devils, they were able to secure the 2-1 overtime victory against those Sabres, even without forward Mike Cammalleri, who was away from the team dealing with some personal matters.  There's no word on how much time the Devils expect him to miss, but they will certainly miss his 3 goals and 6 points in 12 games, as he was just starting to play a bit better over the last week.

Stuart's team has gone a little cold over the last week, currently tied for 19th in the week's scoring with only 12 points, heading into Saturday's action.  His team has dropped one spot in the week, down from 7th to 8th, but could recover with a busy weekend to come.

There is no word as to whether or not Tyler Myers also re-aggravated his lower-body injury last night against the Avalanche, but that is the injury that he had left the game with, not to return.  His status for Sunday afternoon's game against the Kings is certainly in question at the moment.  Myers has gotten off to a decent start to the 2017 campaign, picking up 2 goals and 5 points in his first 11 games, plus his size has made him very valuable in Winnipeg.  This has opened the door, however, for Jacob Trouba, who finally joined the lineup last night.

Ryan's proxy team is having an okay week, sitting tied for 10th in Week Five scoring, with 14 points, moving up one spot to 17th in the week and he should have one of the busier teams, with 18 projected games, assuming Myers will be able to play tomorrow.

The Colorado Avalanche are holding their collective breath on Saturday morning, as they await some results on Matt Duchene's injury, which he suffered against the Jets on Friday night. Duchene was hit by Trouba up high and the reports are that he has suffered a head injury and was unable to return. There was no immediate update, but it doesn't sound very good for the possibility of playing on Sunday, home to the Bruins.

After a rocking World Cup appearance, Duchene has been doing well to start his 2017 season, picking up 6 goals and 11 points in the first 13 games of the season.  This could be a huge chunk of production coming out of Mike's lineup, which has gone cold this week, with only 8 points and dropped down from 6th to 12th.

It appears that forward Anze Kopitar suffered an upper-body injury of his own on Friday night, having to leave the game against the Senators after a hit from Marc Methot.  It's hard to say what the injury was, as the descriptions were fairly vague, but he did try to skate whatever injury it was off, but it wasn't to be.  His departure in the 3rd period was a tough one and his status for Sunday is now up in the air.

Benson is not only the leader in the standings, he currently leads in the Mover & Shaker department for Week Five as well.  His 24 points this week is tops, 4 points better than Brian's total and his overall lead is now 8 points.  Kopitar has 8 points in 15 games already and would be missed, if he was to sit out for an extended period of time.