Morning Player Notes in the Draft (Mar 18)

Don't expect Corey Crawford to dress for the Blackhawks tonight, when they visit Winnipeg, as he is dealing with an upper-body injury and he didn't even travel with the team. Rather the club opted to recall AHL all-time shutout leader, Michael Leighton, to back-up Scott Darling tonight.  Crawford should be considered day-to-day right now, pending some more updates from the team.

Stuart's team was in the hunt for the longest time, but his team has really dropped off and now is in trouble of dropping out of the top 10.  His team is now 9th, 30 points out of the money and only 2 points up on 10th place, 10 points up on 11th.

Here is the obligatory post about how Matt Carle was a healthy scratch for the Tampa Bay Lightning again.  Carle has been scratched numerous times, but was taken off the list last week, when he actually figured into some games and was in the lineup for a bit this week as well.  Carle's numbers remain insufficient, hence the return to the press box.

Wes' team has been trying to get out of the pool's basement and succeeded once or twice already this week, but immediately fell back in, once the rest of the scoring was sorted out.  His lead in the PIM pool is also shrinking, thanks to a boatload of injuries, so these three weeks can't go fast enough for his team.

A lower-body injury suffered this week kept Maple Leafs forward Leo Komarov out of the lineup on Thursday night, as they took on the Panthers.  Komarov has been a definite bright spot on a rebuilding year for Toronto, but his season certainly wasn't enough to make any noise in the standings for the Leafs, but at least they know what they can possibly get out of the Russian.  He's currently day-to-day with his injury.

If there was an award for just being unlucky, Troy's team may have a great case for it this year.  Thanks to all those unlucky injuries, his team's free fall has taken it down to 20th overall in the standings, which is really too bad after showing so much promise in the second segment of the year.

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