Afternoon Player Notes (Mar 18)

Currently working on his own personal shutout streak, Ben Bishop of the Dallas Stars suffered a lower-body injury late last week and he was unable to put any starts in on the weekend, missing out on Friday and Sunday games.  He's currently listed as out day-to-day and did come out for a little bit of practice on Sunday, but there's no apparent timetable for his return at the moment.  The Stars are narrowly holding onto a playoff spot in the west and will be keen to get him back in the lineup.

Bishop was Clayton's 1st round pick this year, but some injury problems and some inconsistent play has really limited his overall success this season, posting 61 points in 41 appearances, good enough for 66th overall in pool scoring, an overall dud in the draft.

The three goalie system in Philadelphia will probably make some waves in these last few weeks of the season, but then again, if the Flyers are set to go with both Carter Hart and Brian Elliott for the stretch run, Cam Talbot may just stick around on the list as a healthy scratch, like he was, both on Friday and on Sunday.  The Flyers are spinning their wheels in the Eastern Conference playoff picture, now 6 points out and running out of time quite quickly.

This is more bad luck for Mike's pool team, which just couldn't find any good luck and is now the reigning Basement Dweller in the standings.  His 20th place team has been quite the disappointment this year and this is just a cherry on top, having a third goalie on a non-playoff team, thanks to a trade deadline deal.

A couple of notes from the Vegas Golden Knights over the weekend... Friday night saw the first scratch for forward Brandon Pirri, who has been a regular healthy scratch for the team, once the third segment of the season kicked in.  He was also a scratch for Sunday night's game against the Oilers and it may very well be the case that he'll play less games down the stretch, even though he'll likely remain on the roster.  Marc-Andre Fleury was also a scratch for Sunday's game, but he had suffered a lower-body injury and was unable to dress, as the team called up Maxime Lagace to take his spot on the bench, as Malcolm Subban took the start.  There's no word on the expectation for Fleury's return, but he's listed as day-to-day right now.

Pirri's absence from active duty is just another hit on Clayton's team, while Troy has probably lost a scheduled start from Fleury with this injury and the Golden Knights will play again tonight in San Jose, so back-to-back nights likely means he only misses one start.  Troy's team will open the new week in 10th place, but that spot could be in danger without his number one goalie.

On Saturday, the Flames were in Winnipeg taking on the Jets and they did so without both Sean Monahan and Sam Bennett, as they were dealing with an illness and an upper-body injury, respectively.  Both players are suggested to be day-to-day and neither of them took to the ice for practice on Monday, but neither of them have been ruled out for Tuesday's game, as of yet.  The Flames will host the Blue Jackets then, but with the team already clinching their playoff spot on the weekend, they might not be in the biggest of rushes to push these two back.

Both players are on top 10 teams in the pool, Monahan belonging to Wes' 7th place team and Bennett is on Troy's 10th place team and their two teams are separated by only 11 points in the standings.  Monahan will be the bigger of the two losses, with a pretty good scoring rate this season, but he's only under the weather, so I don't imagine he'll be out long enough to make an impact on that 11-point gap.

On Saturday night, Columbus Blue Jackets forward Nick Foligno was unavailable to the team, due to a personal matter. The team didn't divulge any of the details of the matter, but they did mention it was unrelated to his daughter's previous surgery, which kept him out of the lineup for a few games. He's currently day-to-day and is questionable for Tuesday's game in Calgary.

This is just another knock on Mike's season, which we won't go too much into, as we've already seen his name on this post already.  You can see why his team failed to climb out of the bottom of the weekly standings with all these games being missed.