Morning Player Notes (Mar 8)

A lower-body injury was what was keeping Boston Bruins forward Jake DeBrusk out of the lineup against the Florida Panthers on Thursday night, which was somewhat of a surprising turn of events.  No one saw the scratch coming and there he was on the injury report, but the coaching staff say that the injury isn't thought to be anything significant and that there is a chance that he could return on the weekend.

If Stacey M.'s team is going to make that move for 1st place, she'll need DeBrusk healthy and in the Bruins' lineup.  Her team lost the gains she had early in the week and is back to sitting 35 points back of 1st place after Thursday night.

A nagging back problem may keep Dylan Larkin out for a while, it's hard to say exactly right now, but he did come out of the lineup for Detroit's game against the Rangers on Thursday night, one his team managed to pull out in the shootout without him.  With the Wings well out of playoff contention this season, it wouldn't come as any surprise if they decided to give Larkin some extra rest down the stretch, but like most hockey players, they'll still want to jump back into the lineup, if they can, just for the sake of.

Wilton is sure hoping that Larkin comes back, since he has 62 points in 65 games on a fairly terrible Detroit team.  Wilton's side currently sits in 8th, 8 points back of 7th and 9 points up on 9th, so his team is comfortable at the moment, but may struggle to maintain that comfort level.

It appears that the New York Rangers have scratched Kevin Shattenkirk again this season, for only the second time, so it's not a huge deal or anything.  The Rangers are also not heading towards the playoffs this season, so there could be lots of tinkering with their lineup to come in coming days and weeks, so this could work out to be a regular occurrence.  With only 22 points in 58 games, it has been somewhat of a disappointing season for the mobile defender.

One team that is probably pretty disappointed with Shattenkirk would be Mike's team, as it sits in 20th place this season, it's just not having the kind of luck it would need to be vying for the money.  Mike took the Rangers blueliner in the 7th round, 167th overall, but he currently ranks 357th, so he has been a pretty big bust of a pick this year.

Finally, it looks like Ottawa Senators forward Bobby Ryan has suffered yet another hand injury on Thursday night, leaving the game against the Islanders, not to return.  The coaching staff didn't have any definitive updates on the injury, so there's not a whole lot to report early on.  Ryan has a long history of hand injuries and now with the Senators long since out of the playoff picture, there won't be any rush to work him back.

Another tough injury loss for Jeremy's team, which currently sits in 19th, still 12 points clear of Mike's team in 20th place.  I think he'll be riding out this last month, just waiting for the playoffs to hit.