Girardi Suffers Rib Injury

The New York Rangers were without veteran defenseman Dan Girardi on Monday night against the Capitals, due to a rib muscle injury that he had suffered over the weekend.  Girardi is the second Rangers defenseman to suffer a rib injury in the last month, although they did manage to trade the other away, moving Michal Rozsival to Phoenix.  The injury to Girardi has been reported to have occurred when he took on the Thrashers' Andrew Ladd in a scuffle over the weekend and it is somewhat unclear as to how long he'll be out.

If we were to go back to Rozsival for a possible answer, he was out of the Rangers/Coyotes line-up for a few weeks and has likely re aggravated the injury again over the weekend.  The injury is likely a hard one to manage, especially since players would be able to feel it when they breathe.  Girardi will be listed as out day-to-day, but I won't be surprised if he's out for a while.

Girardi came into Week Seventeen on pace for one of his better seasons on record, having 23 points (3 goals and 20 assists) in 50 games with the Rangers, nearly bettering his 2010 season total of 24 points in 82 games already.  That has nearly put Girardi in the top 200 in pool scoring and came into the week in 34th among all defensemen.  That's a mighty fine effort so far.  His absence will be missed, if he continues to sit out games after the All-Star break.

In the draft this season, Girardi was a waiver draft pick up of Jani K.'s and the blueliner has done well for his new draft team, picking up 9 points in 21 games, nearly half a point-per-game, which is more than reasonable for a defenseman this year.  Unfortunately, Jani's defense as a whole has not been too great, ranking 16th in the pool this year with only 68 points.  The pool average in defense points is 85.2 through all 20 teams, so there is an idea of why Jani has dropped down to 13th spot in the standings.

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