Morning Player Notes in the Draft (Nov 11)

It was a bit of a crazy last couple of days, which took a bit of the focus off the blog for a bit, but we're back now and hopefully, we get a good long run at it again. We'll go over the last couple days in one post and hopefully, we'll get to a goalie post as well. It looks like that is getting interesting into the weekend as well.

We'll start this post in Montreal, where Thursday night, the Canadiens were without both Jonathan Drouin and Shea Weber for their game at home to Minnesota.  Drouin is dealing with an upper-body injury and he was questionable for Thursday's game, which probably meant that he wasn't too far away.  Reports say he practiced on Friday and that his status for tonight's game with Buffalo in town is still up in the air.  Weber is said to be dealing with a lower-body injury and he too was on the ice for Friday's practice and will be a game-time decision tonight as well.

Sounds fairly promising that both will play tonight, which means that Derek B. and Neil will only miss out on one game each, due to these injuries.  It's not ideal, by any means, but it could be so much worse.  Both players, if they can't go, will still be listed as day-to-day for the time being.

The New Jersey Devils got off to a pretty good start to the season, but now that they have seen some of their results taper off, they are now trying to find a way to ramp their team back up or give cold players a new boost.  Pavel Zacha is one of those kids that needs a boost and on Thursday night, he got to watch the game against the Oilers from the press box.  That move didn't exactly help the team much of any, dropping the game 3-2 in overtime, but it may have lit a fire under the young forwards butt... or so the team hopes.

Dale C.'s team has jumped up into a tie for the lead, a 3-way tie at that, and he could really use some help breaking that tie from Zacha and the Devils.  The Devils play twice this weekend, so he could be the perfect candidate to boost his pool team up into the outright lead.

Vancouver Canucks defenseman Chris Tanev left the team on their current road trip, which ends on Tuesday, as he is dealing with an upper-body injury, believed to be a hand hand injury, possibly a broken bone.  Tanev was placed on the Injured Reserve in this trip and is expected to miss about three weeks worth of action, because of it.  On the flip side, Alexander Edler was able to come off the IR, as his knee injury had finally healed, and he was able to play on Thursday night, in the loss to Anaheim.  Edler missed 12 games with the injury, but was unable to provide that spark that the team needed against the Ducks.

Scott B. hasn't had the best of luck in the start of this season, as his team is mired in 25th and now down another body.  This week hasn't been great for him, only picking up 11 points, heading into Saturday's action.  He'll certainly miss Tanev for the time being.  As for Edler's return, that should help Tony's team, which is 25th in skater games played, to date.  His team has truly been decimated by injuries.

The saga of Vadim Shipachyov is now over in Vegas and between the team, the league and the Players Association, they have poured enough salt over this one, that it won't be growing into anything else for a long while.  Shipachyov signed his voluntary retirement papers, which means he won't be eligible to have any NHL free agency until he's 35, if he so chose to come back this way.  Any desire to play in the NHL over the next five years would have to go through the Golden Knights.  A damn shame that the numbers didn't work out in his favour, because there were a lot of people excited to see what he could do.

That now makes two retirements in the hockey pool this season, which has to be a first in the 10+ years this website has been going.  Stacey M. has a pretty easy decision to make, when the first Waiver Draft comes around, as her team will get a forward for sure, early on.  Her pick position might not be so good though, as her team has jumped up to the top five this week.

The Edmonton Oilers have finally recalled Jesse Puljujarvi from the AHL on Friday, as they had suffered an injury to Anton Slepyshev, putting him on the IR to make room for the young Finn. Puljujarvi has 5 points in 10 games in the AHL this season and he'll get boosted into the Oilers' top six, by the sound of things, getting to play with Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Milan Lucic, as soon as this afternoon against the Rangers.

Great news for Eric's team, which took a chance on the top end draft pick from two summers ago, as it is now 24th in the standings and possibly getting a bit of a boost here.  Eric's team hasn't had a ton of luck early on in this season, but getting a potential scorer in the lineup now will only leave some real gaps in his goaltending, which the Waiver Draft will hopefully help.