Morning Player Notes in the Draft (Nov 15)

It sounds like the flu is dominating the Edmonton Oilers' dressing room these days, so much so, it kept Ryan Nugent-Hopkins out of the lineup, as the Oilers went into Los Angeles to face the Kings on Saturday night. Nugent-Hopkins was a late scratch to the game, bumping Leon Draisaitl up the roster for the night and it almost paid off as well.

It sounds like a minor day-to-day issue for Stacey C.'s pivot, but Eric's pivot is sure making decisions tough on Oilers management, as Draisaitl is quickly earning a name for himself, since his recall.  The Oilers don't play again until Wednesday, so there's lots of time for recovery and decisions.

There was no prior injury report on Brayden Schenn and with a little bit of digging on Sunday morning, the suggestion about him being a healthy scratch for the Flyers ended up being true. In 15 games this season, Schenn has 5 goals and 7 points, ranking 237th overall in pool scoring, which doesn't seem to be enough for the Flyers coaching staff and rightfully so.  His name has been bandied about in trade rumours, so who knows how long it will take before someone snaps him up.

John S. is still swimming in the money spots, sitting in 3rd place after Saturday's busy night, but there are teams nipping at his heels, as he's only 10 points ahead of 10th place, so a sudden drop off in scoring could really hurt his cause.  He'll need Schenn back in a hurry.

There were reports last night during the Florida Panthers/Tampa Bay Lightning game that Florida defender Dmitry Kulikov left the game with a lower-body injury and wasn't expected to return.  There was no immediate update on his condition, nor has there been much early on Sunday, but we should see something soon, as the two teams head to Sunrise, FL for the return game in a home-and-home series on Monday night.  We'll wait and see how the evaluation goes and should see something in the next 24 hours.

It has been a bit of a bounce back week for Grant, as his team has climbed back up to 21st from 24th at the end of last week, but there's still lots of work to do.  Grant's 20 points this week are off the pace of the weekly leaders by 11, heading into Sunday, but he has five projected games to play, so he can possibly jump back into the top 20 with a big day.

On Sunday morning, the Nashville Predators announced that they have activated back-up goalie Carter Hutton from the Injured Reserve, sending Marek Mazanec back down to the AHL. Hutton was on the IR for the minimum week, dealing with an upper-body injury. Mazanec didn't get a start in that week, so I couldn't honestly say that Hutton missed any scheduled starts in his absence, so there wasn't a big loss there at all.

I'm not too sure how comforting that might be to John R., as he has retaken the 27th position in the pool, but it is getting some projected games back in his column for the coming weeks.  We're only a couple weeks away from the Waiver Draft itself and a few weeks away from those players being active, so he might still have a good shot at one of those good (or better) available goalies.

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