Morning Player Notes in the Draft (Dec 28)

The Florida Panthers are expecting to be without forward Radim Vrbata again tonight, as he picked up a case of "something" that is keeping him under the weather these days.  The Panthers play their first game out of the Christmas break tonight, hosting the Flyers at the BB&T Center.  Vrbata will be considered day-to-day right now and his 12 points in 30 games production is held out of the conversation.

Wes' team is already hurting in the projected games department, yet the healthy players are keeping his team from dropping any further, already picking up 5 points last night.  It's beginning to look like the only hope for Wes to get any money back is a Hail Mary pass at the All-Star Game festivities.

There appears to be a lot of hush-hush concern for New York Rangers forward Chris Kreider, as he left last night's game against the Washington Capitals somewhat mysteriously in the 1st period, not to return.  The team did confirm after the game that the scoring forward did suffer an upper-body injury, but he would need more evaluation on Thursday.  Early Thursday morning, the Rangers had already made a call to the AHL, bringing up Vinni Letteri for his first recall, which usually indicates some bad news on the horizon.  Stay tuned.

Jeremy's 3rd place team is now in danger of losing a key forward for the next little while (or longer), by the sound of things.  Kreider has 22 points in 37 games and doesn't hesitate to get the puck to the net.  Jeremy has already lost Corey Crawford for the next while, so things are starting to fall apart for his team and quickly.

Even more concern in Winnipeg on Thursday morning, as they are now waiting for the test results to come back on forward Mark Scheifele, who went into the boards after a good shove from Oilers defenseman Brandon Davidson on Wednesday night.  It didn't appear to be the most violent collision into the boards, but it did certainly look like something that could have done some damage and Scheifele's reaction did suggest that it did.  The centre has been scoring at a 1st round draft pick pace, currently 38 points in 38 games, 23rd overall in pool scoring, so this will be a huge loss for the Jets.

As it will be another massive loss for Brian, if this turns out to be something significant.  The fall from 1st place has already been well-documented in the last couple of days, but now, if Scheifele is out for any significant amount of time, a point-per-game player, not to mention already being without Jaden Schwartz, the rest of his scoring depth will seriously be tested to even keep him in the top 10 over the next couple of weeks.