Morning Player Notes in the Draft (Mar 20)

The Buffalo Sabres were without their franchise player on Saturday evening against the Maple Leafs, as Jack Eichel was a scratch, due to the flu.  The flu has certainly been making the rounds again this year, but it hasn't seem to be nearly as bad as years previous.  Still, it's a day-to-day issue and since the Sabres don't play again until Tuesday, I would feel safe in speculating that Eichel should be good to go for that game.

Cindy's team has managed to climb into the top 20 in recent weeks, which could be a decent result, given how unlucky her team was to start the year.  I'm sure, if this was a keeper pool, she would be locking down Eichel for next season, no question!

Before Saturday's game against the Hurricanes, the Minnesota Wild called up Stephen Michalek to take the back-up spot for Darcy Kuemper, who is dealing with an upper-body injury. Kuemper was hurt sometime near the end of the week and because of that injury, he won't be able to go at all this weekend, including Sunday's game, which is back-to-back days for the Wild.

This is disappointing news for Tony, especially since his red-hot team is ready to move up into the top half of the standings, currently sitting in 16th and only 3 points behind 13th, 14th and 15th.  The Wild are in Chicago on Sunday, so there was no guarantee of points, regardless.

Making the playoffs or not, you really begin to wonder if Thomas Vanek is going to be sticking around with the Wild after this season or not, as he was made into a healthy scratch for the second time this season, under the new coaching staff. Vanek missed Saturday's game and with the Wild going on Sunday as well, his return could be questionable, given the fact they won without him.

Allan has one of the teams that Tony is chasing down from 16th, in actual fact, he holds the 13th position in the standings, so he's tops in that mucky tied up mess.  Without Vanek, he could offer up a shot at that spot in the standings, to any one of the three teams below him.

The New Jersey Devils are still scratching and clawing to stay in the Eastern Conference playoff race, but a loss to the Blue Jackets last night was a good kick in the pants. They were without defenseman David Schlemko last night, so that could have been a part of their troubles last evening. The well-traveled defender was out with an upper-body injury and is currently listed as day-to-day right now. That's about all we know about this right now.

For Dale C., he's found a comfortable little spot in 11th place, after Saturday night's action, 8 points behind 10th and 10 points up on 12th.  Schlemko was a Week Nineteen Waiver Draft pick-up for Dale, having picked up 4 assists in 18 games since activation.

World Cup shortlist defender for Canada, Marc-Edouard Vlasic, was held out of the Sharks' game against the Rangers, because of an undisclosed injury, suffered against Arizona on Thursday, thanks to a crushing hit from Shane Doan.  There doesn't appear to be much of an update on the veteran blueliner, which doesn't reflect well on his status going forward, but we're in wait-and-see mode here.

Vlasic has been one of the bigger steals in the 13th round, which was actually chalk full of steals, including the player that hit him to injure him, Doan.  Clayton did well with this late round defenseman pick, as he's having a career year in San Jose offensively.  This injury, however, won't help him get out of that muck of a tie, mentioned above.  His team is 15th.

The St. Louis Blues' goaltending situation is back to 100% with the return of Brian Elliott from his upper-body injury and the trade deadline acquisition of Anders Nilsson will now be relegated to the number three spot in the depth chart for the team. It's hard to say whether or not the Blues would actually demote Nilsson, which seems a bit unlikely, given that they probably want to give starts in the AHL to their kids, so he'll likely sit in the press box going forward, occasionally giving one of the two starters the night off from being back-up. That's my best guess.

Another hit to Cindy's bid to staying in the top 20, but Nilsson wasn't necessarily being a very productive member of her team, since being picked up in the Waiver Draft. Cindy has only collected 2 wins and 4 points in 502 minutes (8+ games) since being picked up, so the best hope for him is that he stays up, gets the occasional action in the last three weeks and those points will be a bonus.

The mysterious undisclosed injury has befallen Tampa Bay Lightning forward Ryan Callahan and it forced him to miss Saturday's game against the Coyotes. If we're trying to draw some kind of positive, he was thought to be a game-time decision before the game, so whatever is ailing him couldn't be too significant, if there was a chance he'd play. He's currently day-to-day and Tampa doesn't play again until Tuesday, home to Detroit, so there's lots of time for recovery now.

There's still a shot that Stacey C.'s team could finish in the top 20 this year, as his team has been going at an okay pace this week.  Going into Sunday's action, his team is 22nd, 2 points behind 21st (Mike) and 7 points behind 20th (Troy).  If Callahan can get back and get into playoff mode early, there's a real good shot for Stacey to move past his table-mates.

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