Leg Injury for Zidlicky

A leg injury forced the scratching of Minnesota Wild defenseman Marek Zidlicky on Wednesday night, as the team played Philadelphia at home. Zidlicky has been battling the leg problem for a few days by the sounds of things, but has been skating and likely isn't far away from playing again. Zidlicky will likely be a game-time decision on Friday night, when the Wild play host to the Predators on another busy night on the NHL schedule.

Zidlicky has been in and out of the Wild line-up for what seems to be the better part of the season already, playing in only 14 of the team's 20 games this year, scoring only 2 goals and 6 assists in the process, which works out to be a decent scoring rate for defensemen in the pool.  If Zidlicky can make a return to the line-up soon, he should be in good shape to keep up that pace and finish up with a reasonable number at the end of the year.

Derek, who currently sits in 18th spot in the draft, is the one who is missing out on the games not being played by Zidlicky at the moment and that's really onlly going to help his standing for when the waiver draft rolls around.  At this point, Derek will be drafting 3rd in the first round of the draft and should be able to greatly improve on one of his weak areas.

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