Morning Player Notes in the Draft (Dec 27)

It was a return to the press box for Los Angeles Kings defenseman Christian Ehrhoff, who has seen some scratches already this season, something already highlighted through the blog this year. His standing in the lineup hasn't been concrete and one would get the feeling that he could be expendable for a more useful player at the trade deadline.

Stuart's team is hanging around the money conversation these days, although this week wasn't great for his side, now 15 points away from 3rd place.  A lost skater game like this has to hurt a little bit.

The Pittsburgh Penguins got some healthy bodies back in their lineup for Christmas, including one of their top forwards, Sidney Crosby.  Crosby was back for their game against the Wild and did come up with a couple of points in the process.  Coming out of the lineup to make way, forward Sergei Plotnikov, who really hasn't panned out the way the team hoped he would, bringing him over from the KHL in the off-season.  Plotnikov is day-to-day as a healthy scratch.

This was good news for Mike and bad news for John R., both teams reeling down at the bottom of the standings these days.  Both teams finished up Saturday night with 9 points on the week, but neither are really teetering on the brink of the Basement Dweller, rather they appear to be safe, heading into Sunday.

Coming out of the Christmas Break, you don't normally think that you would add many injuries to the list, but the Vancouver Canucks opened up a 7-game home stand with an injury to their ranks, as Alexandre Burrows missed the game against the Oilers with an upper-body injury.  There wasn't much for details about the injury, just that he is day-to-day for right now and they will likely try to have more information, before the team's next game, Monday night, home to the Kings.

So, you could probably assume that this would act as a lump of coal in Stacey C.'s stocking, as he ended up with an injury for Christmas and that's not very much fun.  His team is down in 20th place in the standings and didn't need this, if there were any designs on coming back.

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