Morning Player Notes in the Draft (Nov 5)

An upper-body injury has sidelined Buffalo Sabres defenseman Rasmus Ristolainen and there are plenty of questions as to the nature of the injury and how long he might be out. Ristolainen didn't join the team for the morning skate yesterday, where it was announced he was day-to-day with the ailment, but that's all the news we really received, other than him not playing against the Stars.  The Sabres could have used their number one blueliner as well, dropping the game against Dallas, 5-1.

For Benson's team, it has been trying to keep the pace with the leaders, but he has dropped back a little bit, down to 3rd place, thanks to only 25 points this week.  He's still within spitting distance of 1st, only 4 points back of Jeremy, so it's not all doom and gloom.

Saturday night marked the return of Roberto Luongo to the Florida Panthers' crease, after he missed the last few weeks with a hand injury.  The return didn't quite warrant 2 points, however, as the Panthers were not able to snag that extra goal in overtime, giving the Rangers a 5-4 victory instead.

With Luongo back, that means that the Panthers have three healthy pool goalies and that meant one was going to be the odd-man out.  It should come as no surprise that the odd-man out was the recently acquired Antti Niemi, who had to make a couple of appearances for the Panthers since his arrival, but still no wins.  His future might be the waiver wire, yet again.

Stuart's 12th place team gets a goalie back, while Derek B.'s 6th place team never really got much out of his goalie, but will certainly get nothing if Niemi doesn't get any NHL ice to play on.

In the post-game presser for the Dallas Stars, head coach Ken Hitchcock said that Radek Faksa, who scored a goal in their 5-1 win over Buffalo, had suffered an injury and is considered to be day-to-day.  There wasn't much in the way of what kind of injury it was, but Hitchcock did say that it would be updated at some point on Sunday.  He'll be considered to be day-to-day for right now and it would take something fairly significant to warrant an update on the blog. 

Faksa has been decent for Stacey M.'s team already this season, picking up 7 points in his first 14 games, including 2 points this week.  Stacey's team has been good this week, picking up 30 points and jetting up to 6th place in the standings and she still has three projected games left.