Alexander Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals battles Columbus forward Jason Chimera for the puck during Sunday's game.Greg Fiume
In the advice that I occasionally dispense to fantasy hockey players, one rule is always paramount in my mind: Avoid, where possible, injury-prone players and rely on those with a track record for durability.
So for example, it's always buyer beware with the Philadelphia Flyers' Daniel Briere. He's out with another groin injury again? No one should really be caught off guard.
It's the same for other players with a history of fragility. It didn't surprise me that the New York Rangers' Marian Gaborik missed his homecoming game against the Minnesota Wild as a result of a lower-body injury. I was more surprised when he was back in the lineup after missing only a single game. Players such as Gaborik, or the Wild's Martin Havlat or the Flyers' Simon Gagne will always tempt you with their potential. Let's face it, they're offensive whiz kids, reliable point-per-game producers, or more, when in the line-up. The problem is always keeping them in the line-up, for most or all of a season.
However, this year, even that simplest of strategies - loading on players who perennially stay and play in the pink of health - is desperately flawed. On the weekend, both the Carolina Hurricanes' Eric Staal and the Washington Capitals' Alex Ovechkin went out with injuries. If you watched the games, you'd be hard pressed to know how they even got hurt - and neither of their respective teams is saying much to enlighten you, only that they're not available for next game.
Up until this year, despite his willingness to play a physical style, Ovechkin had missed exactly four games in four NHL seasons - and a couple of them, last year, were to return to Russia so he could attend his grandfather's funeral.
Staal had had a run of playing 369 games in a row, one of the NHL's true iron men. Ovechkin's Russian compatriot, the Pittsburgh Penguins' Evgeni Malkin, had played 245 games in a row before he went out with a shoulder injury - again, not even attributable to a single play, but the weird culmination of getting banged up over the course of a couple of weeks. It's been that way right down the line lately: Daniel Sedin of the Vancouver Canucks plays 82 games every year like clockwork; the Atlanta Thrashers' Ilya Kovalchuk has missed only 12 games over the past six years.
It's one thing for a rough-and-tumble winger such as the Boston Bruins' Milan Lucic to get injured. Power forwards - players who mix it up along the boards every night - tend to get hurt more often. It's another thing for Lucic's teammate, Marc Savard, who plays a Gretzky-like style and stays in the middle of the ice, to get bounced from the lineup.
It isn't as if every injury can be attributable to a single development either - say a shot to the head; or a hit from behind. Those are factors in some cases; blocking shots is another strategy that is taking a toll on players' limbs.
Moreover, it does bear repeating: Injuries do happen; and they will continue to happen in a game played on skates, in close quarters, at high speed.
Maybe it's just that their collective numbers all came up at the same time.
Or maybe the league's power brokers need to take a long hard look at where the NHL is at, some four years and change after the lockout ended - and see if there hasn't been a law of unintended consequences unfolding in front of their very eyes, as a result of all the rule changes they made to bring speed back in the game.