Morning Player Notes in the Draft (Jan 16)

The Anaheim Ducks are still trying to find their overall stride in the Pacific Division and trying to find that lineup that works every single night. A 4-2 win over the Stars on Friday night doesn't mean good things for forward Chris Stewart, who was a healthy scratch in that game. This is a quick way to find yourself as the odd-man out.

This is a situation that Ryan has to keep an eye on, as his side is in need of some more consistent scoring from someone else that isn't a rookie.  Ryan's team is 11th, heading into Saturday's action, now 23 points out of the money and could really use a boost, not a scratch.

The Buffalo Sabres suffered a couple of injuries on Friday night, as both Zemgus Girgensons and Evander Kane left the game against the Bruins with injury and one will sit tonight with Washington in town, while the other has been given the green light to play tonight.

Girgensons suffered an upper-body injury on Friday night and he will be the one that is sitting for the game against the Capitals, while Kane suffered a lower-body injury blocking a shot and ending his game early last night obviously helped him be good to go tonight.

This means that Scott misses out on a skater game tonight, while Derek & Dan continue to have an active body in their lineup, trying to help them out in the PIM race.

Arguably, Derek Dorsett has been one of the more effective Canucks in their last stretch of play, which hasn't necessarily been all that good, but the 4th liner wasn't able to dress for the team in Carolina on Friday night, as he was sidelined with a bout of the flu.  The Canucks are in Brooklyn on Sunday afternoon and there is a chance that he should be ready to return to the team by then.

Dorsett is the PIM leader in the NHL, which is why Derek & Dan had selected him in the Waiver Draft, but he only ranks 3rd among players taken in that Waiver Draft in PIM since being activated with 19 minutes to his credit.  There's no question that the new duo to the pool were expecting much more.

Finally, being "banged up" is reportedly good enough for Winnipeg forward Drew Stafford to miss a game on Friday night.  This may be one of those whole-body injuries that have popped up from time-to-time or maybe we'll just call it a general body injury.  Either way, it's undisclosed, he's currently listed as day-to-day and his availability for Monday's game against Colorado is still questionable.

Stafford has ended up being a pretty good pick for Benson in the draft this season, a bargain pick taken in the 9th round of the pool and getting scoring like a 6th round pick.  That isn't too bad, one would think.  Today, if we sorted players by overall rank and then their bargain rating, Stafford would be the 66th best pick in the draft this year.

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