Noon Player Notes in the Playoffs (Apr 14)

Both Philadelphia and Washington each had a rescheduled game on Sunday, but both teams rested a good portion of their big guns, Philly resting Claude Giroux, Wayne Simmonds, Sean Couturier, Mark Streit and Steve Mason, while the Capitals most notably sat Alex Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom and John Carlson.  Everyone is primed and ready to go on Thursday night.

I believe we can fully expect a full pool match-up in goal tonight, with Mason taking on Braden Holtby in Game 1, so we'll finally be guaranteed some points from a goalkeeper tonight.  Hooray!  It doesn't look like there are any surprise scratches, yet.

The first 37 entries into the hockey pool have been pretty decisive in the series between the Islanders and the Panthers, as Florida has a large 82-24 selection advantage this year.  Of course, we'll have some updated numbers, when they're all in tonight.  Everyone appears to be healthy, as the Islanders scratched a number of players on Sunday as well, including John Tavares, Kyle Okposo, Frans Nielsen, Nick Leddy and Johnny Boychuk... all expected to be good to go tonight.

As for Jaroslav Halak, his groin injury will indeed prevent him from playing a game in the opening series, which is disappointing.  There was some hope he'd be back for this series, but it doesn't appear to be the case.  This is probably a big reason why the Islanders are not favoured to win this series.

In net, Roberto Luongo will be the Panthers goalie and he'll get Thomas Greiss at the other end.

If the Minnesota Wild are going to do anything in this series, they are going to have to do it without both Zach Parise and Thomas Vanek, who will both miss at least the first two games in Dallas, with a good possibility that they'll miss more time than that.  Parise, the Box 2 player for the Wild, is out indefinitely with an upper-body injury, believed to be a herniated disc in his back, while Vanek is week-to-week with an upper-body injury of his own.  The early returns on the entries don't have either of these guys selected, so there's no impact on the pool, except whether or not they'll be around for the next round.

Dallas is not without their own injury concerns, as it appears that their Box 2 forward, Tyler Seguin, doesn't appear to be ready from his Achilles issue yet, as he has been ruled out by the coaching staff for tonight's game.  He'll remain on the list as out day-to-day.

The pool match-up appears to be complete, Devan Dubnyk versus Kari Lehtonen tonight.

The 2-3 Pacific Division match-up should be a good one, with the Sharks and Kings going head-to-head.  Game 1 goes tonight at the Staples Center and it looks like it will be all hands on deck for this one.

The Sharks enter this series with Marc-Edouard Vlasic and Paul Martin on the list, but both are expected to be in the lineup, Vlasic coming off an injury and Martin was rested in the team's last game of the season.

The same will go for Alec Martinez, who was sitting out for the last few days of the season with an undisclosed injury.  Martinez was skating regularly in practice on Wednesday, so that should be a good sign that he's ready to go.

Martin Jones against Jonathan Quick in an all-pool battle again in net.  It's a shame that it has come down to checking whether or not these goalies are in the pool or not.