Evening Player Notes (Feb 27)

The Carolina Hurricanes blueline has suffered in the health department over the last couple of days and included in that mess is pool defender Justin Faulk, who is day-to-day with an upper-body injury, missing Tuesday night's game against the Kings.  It sounds like he will be expected to miss some more time, as the Hurricanes made a couple of call-ups on Wednesday, so that kind of news doesn't exactly bode well for Faulk and company.

Arguably, this is another chink in Stuart's armour, but his lead hasn't faded any more in the early part of the week, but there's some shakiness in there somewhere.  He's already been down a forward for nearly a week and now a defenseman on the mend.  We shouldn't get too ahead of ourselves, but the unraveling has to start somewhere.

Tuesday night's starting goalie for the Florida Panthers, James Reimer, was forced from the game against the Arizona Coyotes, due to a lower-body injury, believed to be a muscle tweak of some sort. There hasn't been any sort of timetable for his return and the Panthers have made an emergency recall of Sam Montembeault to backup Roberto Luongo for the time being, so there's that too.

Bad news for Dale C., who had made some gains early on in this third segment of the season, but they have all slipped away in the last couple of weeks.  His peak finish in a week was 9th place, at the end of Week Twenty, but since then, has fallen back down to 12th and is now down a goalie too.

The New York Islanders welcomed back some key injured bodies on Tuesday night for their game against the Flames, which meant that some bodies had to come out and one of those guys was pool defenseman Scott Mayfield, who was made into a healthy scratch for the return of Thomas Hickey.  The Islanders did not fare so well against Calgary on Tuesday night, so that usually means that a lineup shuffle will be in order, so Mayfield may still figure back in before too long.

When Tony picked up Mayfield in the Week Nine Waiver Draft, he wasn't doing too badly, but since, it's been a bit of a different story.  Since being activated, he's posted 4 assists in 36 games, hardly what Tony was looking for at the time.  Tony's defense has been mediocre this season, ranking 14th in the pool, heading into Wednesday's action.

The Vegas Golden Knights inserted Mark Stone into their lineup on Tuesday night against the Dallas Stars, which also meant that someone had to come out of the lineup and that would have been Brandon Pirri, coming out as a healthy scratch once again.  Pirri hasn't been the scorer that he was in the second segment and his trips to the press box have been a solid sign of that.  It's now time to wonder if he'll be up in the NHL for very much longer.

Clayton took a big gamble on Pirri, thinking he was one of the better scoring forwards available at the Week Eighteen Waiver Draft, but since, he has only picked up 2 goals in seven games.  Not a very good return at all.  All of his depth gambles have not paid off this year.