Morning Preseason Notes (Oct 2)

The Chicago Blackhawks were rather forthcoming on their update of young forward Alex DeBrincat, who was unable to practice on Monday, due to an illness.  In all likelihood, he was just feeling under the weather and it's a day-to-day sort of issue.  I would have to think that he will be on the team's charter to Ottawa for their opening night game on Thursday, but I suppose you just won't know until the day of.  The youngster is poised to do some big things in Chicago and he'll want to get a healthy start to the year to achieve some of those projections.

Brian used his 8th round pick to pick up the kid in the draft and is hoping to get a really good bargain pick out of that spot.  If the Hockey News' projection of 60 points is correct, then he certainly will get some pretty good bang for his buck there.

A mysterious injury forced Vegas forward Alex Tuch out of action on Sunday night, in the team's last preseason game against the Sharks. Tuch left the game in the 2nd period and there hasn't been much in the way of updates on his condition or what it was that forced him from the game, so we'll keep a close eye on that. Vegas opens up their schedule on Thursday night with Philadelphia in town and if there are no updates, we'll assume he's day-to-day and possibly probable for the opening night game.

Of course, if that isn't the case, Mike's team will have taken a second significant hit in this preseason and this one may be worth considering finding a replacement for, but he'll have to hurry to decide, as the cutoff is puck drop tomorrow night.