Toews To Sit Final Six

As we lead up to the playoffs, more and more players are dropping out of their team's line-ups and an increasing amount are for precautionary reasons, trying to save these top players from further injury.

On the weekend, the Chicago Blackhawks felt another large injury, as their captain, Jonathan Toews, suffered an upper-body injury when he was hit by Pittsburgh Penguins defenseman Brooks Orpik.  Toews came away favouring his shoulder and did not return to the game.  All indications after the game were that Toews wouldn't be out for very long, but with only 10 night worth of action left in the NHL regular season, the Blackhawks made the move to rest up

The Blackhawks, losers of their last three games, are fairly safe in 3rd place in the Central Division, but would have to lose out to fall into a wild card spot, assuming Minnesota wins out their schedule.  With Patrick Kane already out of the line-up for the remainder of the regular season as well, one begins to wonder.

Toews will finish the regular season with 28 goals and 40 assists in 76 games for Chicago this season and as of Wednesday afternoon, he was ranked 29th in overall pool scoring, just outside of our 1st round selection rankings.

All in all, it was a pretty good year for Toews, who hadn't missed a game to this point in the season, but will now finish six games short of the full 82, but should still finish with a respectable ranking.  Kane, who hasn't seen any action in the last week and a bit, still ranks 27th, with one more goal than Toews this season.

In the standings, this will affect Cindy's chances at having her team stay in the top 10, as it stands in 10th, tied for the position and winning the goals scored tie-break over Mike.  Losing Toews could be the difference between finishing 10th and finishing 13th, by the look of things today.  Nevertheless, not much of a money threat here.