Morning Player Notes in the Draft (Dec 1)

With Carey Price extending his stay on the shelf on Monday, the Montreal Canadiens are committing themselves to Mike Condon for the foreseeable future and they realize that Dustin Tokarski still needs to play some games, so he was sent down to the AHL on Monday afternoon, making way for Zach Fucale to back-up Condon, and the play should be for Tokarski to eventually come back and then help with the workload, if needed.  Wow, that's a lot of goalies in one paragraph.

So, with that being said, John R.'s new goalie gets the bulk of the load, while John S.'s goalie is down, while Clayton's second goalie goes back to the minors.  Could their be a drop in someone's future here?

New York Rangers defenseman Kevin Klein reportedly left Monday night's game against the Hurricanes with a muscle strain in the abdomen area.  The team didn't disclose anything of note about the injury after the game, other than the nature of the injury, so they will likely be doing some tests and then disclosing more later on Tuesday.

This will put a wrinkle into the thought process of Dale C. at the Waiver Draft, who has been thinking about forwards and defensemen to drop and/or pick-up, so this injury could be something that tips the scale, in the 2nd round, if not the 1st round.

A nagging injury has forced Joffrey Lupul out of the Maple Leafs lineup for Monday night's game against the Oilers.  The actual injury itself and how long it might keep him out of the lineup were not disclosed, but if it is only a nagging injury, it shouldn't be considered to be too serious.  If the Leafs are going to try and make a push forward, they are likely preferring that one of their scoring wingers is playing at 100%, because anything less hasn't produced much of anything yet.

Lupul has 11 points in 23 games for the Leafs and for Stacey C., who has already moved a goalie in the Waiver Draft and he may still want to make one more move in the 2nd round.  His team is 41 points out of the money and would need Lupul (or his replacement) to go on a real tear.

It was another return to the press box for Sven Baertschi, as the Canucks struggle to find any consistent offense in their game, finding absolutely no offense against the Ducks on Monday night, losing 4-0.  With the Canucks losing non-pool rookie Jake Virtanen to an upper-body injury last night, it would be safe to assume that Baertschi will be made available for some more regular shifts for the time being.

This is better news for Neil, who yes, did miss one skater game with this scratch, but the outlook going forward isn't that bad.  He'll get more games in, trying to find some offense of his own... unless Neil has any designs on dropping him in the Waiver Draft this week.

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