It was a late scratch for Philadelphia Flyers defenseman Shayne Gostisbehere on Monday night, as the team originally cited a lower-body injury, as the reason for the offensive defenseman to miss the game against the Winnipeg Jets and it was later clarified to be a bruise of some sorts, not considered to be a major issue. The team is apparently hopeful that he'll be able to dress for Thursday's game in Boston, already ruling him out of tonight's game in New York. He's on the list as out day-to-day for now.Gostisbehere has been okay for Scott's team this season, putting up 20 points in 48 games, ranking 2nd on his blueline in scoring. Unfortunately, Scott's blueline as a whole hasn't been all that great, ranking 23rd with 64 points, the Flyers rearguard nearly one-third of those points.
Muzzin is a pool guy, belonging to Neil's team this season and has been his best defenseman this year with his 21 points. It's not a good year for defensemen for Neil. This is actually a pretty good gain for his team, especially in the week of the Waiver Draft and his activation on the new team starts at the end of the week, a couple days before the new players go live from the Waiver Draft. Neil's defense ranks last in the pool with 57 points this season, but could move up with these gains, Wilton's blueline is only 1 point better and ripe for the picking.
Welcome to Week Eighteen! The Waiver Draft is in full flight, the numbers have been reset and looking at the schedule... well, it's still looking a bit light, thanks to all of those bye weeks, but we'll get through it just fine.
Keith Kinkaid (Neil) versus Matt Murray (Picked)
The Boston Bruins have ruled out Tuukka Rask for Tuesday night's game at home to the Winnipeg Jets and in order to get a backup goalie into the fold, they have placed Rask on the Injured Reserve, retroactive to January 19th, which means that he is eligible to come back when he's ready to go. Rask suffered a concussion just before the break and the team's bye week and All-Star break couldn't have come at a better time for him, limiting the amount of games/starts he could have missed. The team has not issued any timetable for a return as of yet.
The New York Rangers didn't have forward Mats Zuccarello at practice on Monday morning, as he is nursing an infection in his foot. The Rangers coaching staff didn't think that the problem was anything more than a short-term issue, but they have ruled him out of Tuesday night's game at home to the Flyers, but are optimistic that he could be ready for Thursday's game in New Jersey. In 35 games this season, the Norwegian forward has 8 goals and 24 points.
It sounds like the New York Rangers will have Kevin Hayes back in their lineup tomorrow night, when they host the Flyers. Hayes has been out for the last month with an upper-body injury. Hayes is a top target for the trade deadline this year, given the Rangers lacklustre season, so it's good news for Wilton's team, who gets a boost of a body back here soon and possibly a trade to a more potent offense too. Miles Wood could be returning from injury for the Devils tonight against the Penguins, he's been out for the last couple of weeks with a lower-body injury, but was seen on the ice for the morning skate today, which is a good indicator that he's close. Good news for Ryan's team, as he wouldn't have to waste a drop and a pick on him.
The head start proved to be rather useful for the Waiver Draft, as we managed to get through 15 total selections in the opening round, possibly saving me three days of panic and worry, not to mention the "are we in the bonus round?" text messages on Wednesday. I'm not saying we'll be in the bonus round by Wednesday, but could you imagine if we were? We had five more picks on Sunday, which really rounded everything out and here's hoping we get off to a bright start on Monday, possibly even finishing round one?
Brian needed to take care of an injury situation in the crease, as it doesn't sound like Antti Raanta is returning to the Coyotes from a lower-body injury any time soon. The selection to take Raanta's spot was decided on Pheonix Copley, who has been the capable backup to Braden Holtby in Washington this season. Brian's goalies have been a bit of a let down this year, ranking 19th with 45 points.
Another Week Nine selection got the chop with the 14th swap in the Waiver Draft, as Dale C. parted ways with Dallas' Jason Spezza, who had only posted 6 points in the last eight weeks of the season, which ranks 36th among all the players taken in Week Nine. Dale is hoping for a vast improvement by taking Nashville's Nick Bonino for the stretch run, a forward on a playoff-bound team couldn't hurt.
Eric kicked everything off on Saturday with the drop of a regular healthy scratch in Joakim Ryan in San Jose, picking up Nate Schmidt in Vegas to help him out. Eric's defense has had a rough second segment of the season, ranking 17th in scoring since the start of Week Ten, so this acquisition will look to improve upon that.
A hand injury in December saw Alex Pietrangelo of the Blues get the drop in Week Nine, but he makes his glorious return to the hockey pool in Week Eighteen, thanks to Stacey C. and his need for more scoring from the blueline. Marco Scandella of the Sabres just wasn't doing it for his team and the upgrade will certainly help. Stacey's defense has 35 points in the second segment, good enough for 14th, but it got a whole lot better with this pick.
It was definitely another successful All-Star weekend, as the NHL and their best players really put on a good show, between the Skills Competition on Friday night and the 3-on-3 tournament on Saturday night. It's certainly a showcase of skill and speed and there was more than enough for everyone in San Jose.
Crosby's effort wasn't quite enough for the mini-game victory for Eric though. The 8 points was good, but since Crosby was his only representation for the weekend, it fell short to both Clayton and Stuart, who each had five games played between the three games and they both came away with 5 goals and 9 points from their players. If this was a paid mini-game, it would be considered a tie, since they were even on goals, no wins and points.
I didn't think Scott was going to pass up on the chance to get Matt Murray, the best player available in this player swap. I'm sure he doesn't want to finish in last place this season, so taking the best player available was a pretty solid move on his part. He dropped Cam Ward of the Blackhawks to pick him up, who could be seen as a reasonable pickup in the next round, one might think.
Chelsea's team was also looking to the forward ranks for some more help, letting the injured Montreal grinder Andrew Shaw go and picking up the much-coveted Micheal Ferland of the Hurricanes. Ferland is among those players who will likely move at the trade deadline and head to a contender, which certainly gives him plenty of potential for the stretch run.
On Thursday, the Anaheim Ducks did some roster shuffling for salary cap purposes, as we head to the break. All of these days that we are in the All-Star break, do count against the cap, so a lot of teams dropped their rosters down to the minimum, trying to maximize what they can spend down the stretch. The Ducks were no different, assigning a handful of players to the AHL, bringing up some cheaper alternatives that don't need to clear waivers to go back down and activating Jakob Silfverberg from the IR, since he counts against the cap anyways.
On Wednesday, the Anaheim Ducks provided an update to injured forward Ondrej Kase, saying that he will require surgery to repair a torn labrum in his shoulder and that his recovery will be in the 5-to-6 months range. With that being said, that effectively ends his regular season, but if the Ducks were somehow going to make it deep into the playoffs, I suppose there is a chance that he could return to action before the summer.
5 points was the best total of the week and it was a 4-way tie for top spot, so we had to get deep into the tie-breaking process to get there. T.J. Oshie of the Capitals and Joe Pavelski had 1 goal, Eric Staal had 3 goals, but as you can see, it was Alex Ovechkin of the Capitals taking top spot, finishing with 4 goals out of his 5 points.
There was another tie-breaker to be had in the Newsletter in this shortened week, as the Mover & Shaker was a sprint to the finish and there were a number of teams that were vying for it and only two teams came in for the photo finish, both Dale C. and Neil each topped the pool with 14 points in Week Seventeen, but the results of the snap at the line showed Neil edging out Dale by a 4-3 margin in the goal scoring department, which means Neil is our Mover & Shaker of the week.
The Mover & Shaker nod didn't really hurt Neil's team when it comes to the Waiver Draft, his team didn't move up any in the standings, remaining at 19th position, but now his team is only 2 points back of 18th and is also poised to make up some ground, when he is able to drop some players in the next 11 days.
The light schedule was also going to wreak some havoc on the standings, because some pool teams were destined to be heavy on certain divisions or just have some horrible, horrible luck. Chelsea's team felt that bad luck. Her team did have a number of opportunities for points, two goalie starts, nine skater games, but only 1 point to show for it all. Just a truly disappointing result.
Even though there wasn't a lot of action this week, there was some movement in the top three teams in Week Seventeen, as Grant's team leapfrogged over Stacey M. for 2nd place, giving up that crucial selection spot in the Waiver Draft, which I mock drafted him to pass on both picks anyways. Grant's team now has a small 2-point buffer over Stacey's team, but more importantly, made up some ground on Stuart's team in the week, now back by 22 points.
Not a lot doing in the rookie pool this week, but Ryan's team found another 2 points from David Rittich of the Flames, picking up a win this week. Clayton's team picked up the only other point this week, extending his lead to 11 points and he may be shopping for a little more help to defend against Ryan's team and Derek B.'s team this coming week.
The shootout was employed in this shortened week and the pool did collect a couple of goals once again, four straight weeks with 2 shootout goals. Incredible. Jesse's team moved up into a tie for 5th at 5 shootout goals, while Stuart's team only scored it's 2nd goal in the shootout this season this week, one stat his team isn't particularly strong in.
The pool picked up 9 game-winners out of the 15 games that were on the schedule this week, which is a pretty nice return for us. Grant's team was best in the limited schedule, picking up a pair of winners, bringing his total up to 18 on the season, good enough for a tie for 15th. 
Clayton's team was the goon team of the week, somehow finding 20 minutes in penalties in only three days worth of action. That brings his total up to 259 minutes this season, 12th in the pool in that regard.
The goalie survivor pool ended weeks ago, but I thought it was worth noting that the streak of wins in weeks has now stopped for Troy, as his team wasn't able to pick anything up in the All-Star shortened week, the streak finishing at 16 weeks.