Morning Player Notes in the Draft (Mar 1)

Hurricanes forward Jeff Skinner is currently dealing with an upper-body injury and he has been returned back to Raleigh, while the team continues through the State of Florida, to get checked out. Skinner missed last night's game against the Panthers and will also miss tonight's game against the Lightning. He's currently listed as day-to-day, but it could be worse than that, but that all depends on the tests.

More bad news for Dale B.'s team, which isn't getting many breaks these days.  His team now clings to a 1-point lead after Tuesday night's action and if he is without Skinner for a while, you're writing off a good bit of production out of his lineup, 40 points in 57 games.

With the Montreal Canadiens acquiring Jordie Benn from the Stars this week, that means someone had to come out of the lineup and that unlucky body was Nikita Nesterov, scratched to the press box again by the Canadiens, not having a great deal of success, since moving from Tampa Bay a few weeks ago.

This scratch won't likely bother Wes too much, since his team caught fire on Tuesday night and now leads the pool in this week's Mover & Shaker race, with 17 points through two nights.  I'm sure he would prefer some more scoring from everywhere, but his team is doing just fine with one guy upstairs.

First, the Rangers took to the deadline activity by sending Russian forward Pavel Buchnevich down to the minors on Tuesday, ahead of possibly making some moves. Buchnevich had been a healthy scratch on a number of occasions leading up to this move, so the writing was somewhat on the wall.

Mika Zibanejad was held out of Tuesday night's game against the Capitals, due to a hand injury, which has him on the list as out day-to-day.  On Wednesday, he was seen out at practice, so it likely won't keep him out of the lineup for too long.

Of course, the demotion is taking projected games away from Tony's team, but with the rosters expanding after the trade deadline, we could see Buchnevich back up with the Rangers, possibly getting his confidence back in the AHL.  The injury to Zibanejad might just be a blip on the screen for John's team, but his team is pretty much out of the overall race and is just watching the goalies play.