Morning Player Notes in the Draft (Jan 25)

The Los Angeles Kings had announced previous to when they began their game against the Calgary Flames on Wednesday night, that their number one goalie, Jonathan Quick, would be held back from the All-Star festivities, wanting to nurse some minor injuries and keep the workload down on their backbone in goal.  With that being said, the NHL says that if a player skips the All-Star weekend, they would be forced to miss one game, either before or after the break and the Kings have opted to pick their first game back, Tuesday in Dallas.  This acts like a suspension, something the Kings seem to be okay with, looking at the long-term gains.

For Chris, this will be a missed start in the regular season, which doesn't help his 15th placed team in the standings, and it also doesn't help his chances in the All-Star mini-game this weekend.  Chris will now have to rely on Florida Panthers forward Aleksander Barkov to outscore everyone for his money back this year.

It sounds like Matt Murray is set to return from his bereavement leave, which means one of the two goalies had to go back down to the AHL and thanks to a solid run of play from Casey DeSmith, it meant that Tristan Jarry drew the short straw and is heading down to Wilkes-Barre Scranton for the next little while.  So far this season, Jarry has made 18 appearances in the Penguins net and has picked up 24 points in those appearances, so it wasn't like he was unproductive in his time, but the coaching staff has obviously taken a shining to DeSmith for the time being.

Well, as much as this is good news for Stacey M., getting her number one goalie back, this is certainly disappointing news for Derek B., who didn't think he would be losing a goaltender in this sort of fashion.  Derek's team is only 5 points back of Stacey's team, before the busy day before the All-Star break, but with the leading team getting a goalie back and the other losing theirs to the minors, that gap could increase substantially.