Howard Suffers Broken Finger

In a bit of surprising news on Friday morning, the Detroit Red Wings announced that their number one goalie, Jimmy Howard, suffered a broken pinky finger in the shootout victory over the Canucks on Thursday night.  It is believed that Howard will be out of commission for at least the next couple of games and then will be looked at when the team returns home from their current road trip.  The early speculation is that it will be at least a couple weeks on the shelf, but we'll wait for confirmation.

Howard leaves the Red Wings line-up as the top-ranked point-getter in the hockey pools, winning 32 games, 5 of them by shutout and picking up an assist for 75 points, averaging 1.73 points per 60 minutes on the ice, one of the best scoring rates in the league as well.  Howard currently has a 8-point lead on his nearest compeition in the scoring race, Pekka Rinne, and a 16-point lead on the nearest skater, Evgeni Malkin, so he should be in good shape when he becomes healthy from his injury.

This is a pretty big hit to Stacey C.'s money campaign, as he loses the best player in the pool this year and that will certainly shift some doubt into his mind and there really isn't anything he can do to combat this.

Going into Friday night's action, Stacey sits in 3rd place, 11 points out of 2nd and 18 points out of 1st, 12 points up on 4th.  With almost every Detroit start Howard misses, Stacey pretty well misses out on almost 2 points, so it could add up quite quickly, if Howard turns out to miss more than two weeks.  Three starts a week already translates into 10 points, which could land him in 4th quickly.