Noon Player Notes (Oct 10)

On Wednesday morning, the Detroit Red Wings skated in practice, preparing for their game against the Maple Leafs on Thursday night and they were doing so with some different pairings on defense, since rookie defenseman Dennis Cholowski was held out, due to an upper-body injury, and Niklas Kronwall was making his way closer to the lineup again, coming back from an undisclosed injury of his own.  The Red Wings coaching staff confirmed that Cholowski will likely miss the team's next two games, while Kronwall should be making his season debut tomorrow night.

Cholowski has been a productive rookie on Clayton's team to start the year, 3 points in three games, while John P. has still yet to see any action from Kronwall this season.  I would think that the Wings would ideally want both in their lineup, since one has been productive and the other is a veteran leader, but it looks like having both will have to wait another few days.

The Vegas Golden Knights are in Washington tonight for a rematch of the Stanley Cup Finals and ahead of the game, the coaching staff announced that forward Paul Stastny would miss tonight's game and the remainder of the road trip, Thursday in Pittsburgh and Saturday in Philadelphia.  Stastny is dealing with a lower-body injury of his own, but there was no indication about when and where he suffered the injury, only that he would be reevaluated when they return home next week.  He's listed as day-to-day for now, unless there are some other revelations about the injury in the next few days.

For Derek B., Stastny hasn't amounted to a whole lot yet, not registering a point in the team's opening three games.  The big money signing in the off-season has yet to produce and that has kept Derek's team down or is at least one of the reasons why his team is down.  Derek's team finished Tuesday night in 21st, already 22 points out of 1st place.