Airing Fantasy Hockey Frustrations: Part 4- That Pesky Injury Bug

There aren't many headlines scarier to a fantasy GM than "insert key player name here to miss extended period of time due to injury".  In fact, the only thing scarier than seeing that headline pop up in your fantasy notifications is seeing it pop up not once, but three times within one season.

I lost TJ Oshie a while back when he broke an ankle and parked himself on the IR. Now I know what you're saying-why the heck is he still on the team?  The answer is very simple really-it's a combination of too much optimism and a little bit of GM incompetence.  I'd like to say my delayed reaction is justified because everyone worth having is already on a team, but Osh-Kosh-B-Gosh went down a while ago and odds are I could have grabbed a replacement when it happened.  But I didn't and here I stand on December 20th thinking, "oh maybe I should try and replace him since he's doing me absolutely no good."  Yeah I know.  Lessons learned. 

With him injured, I have a whopping TWO centers on my team (one of them being half of the team name and the other being half of the biggest hockey-country music power couple since...well ever) and I'd like to take some pressure of them by adding a third center.  The leading two options at this point are Nik Antropov (yeah who thought he'd EVER be listed as the solution to ANYTHING) or Scott Gomez.  Gomez may get the nod here because then I will have matching Montreal Canadiens mighty mites.  They are  like tiny salt and pepper shakers-so fragile yet oh so collectible.  We'll see.  Maybe Oshie will miraculously heal over Christmas, but odds are either Antropov or Gomez will be on the team by 2011.

The man, the myth, the Mullet went down next with a sprained ankle.  Things were looking good there for about a minute and a half when it was rumored he'd be able to play again before Christmas. Then he ran into an assistant coach during practice and isn't expected back until after the holiday.  I'm not kidding.  You can't make this kind of stuff up.  Apparently a steady diet of Belvedere and Bud Light is not the recipe for strong tendons and ligaments.  Who knew. 

Finally, as if the RW position hadn't taken a bad enough hit, Ryan Callahan broke his left hand and will be out until February.  Well actually, he'll be out of the Sutterly Camtastic lineup longer because I could not even begin to justify keeping him on the roster while injured.  Odds are he'll still be floating around the FA market in a few months anyway.  No hard feelings buddy.  We'll keep your picture up in the locker room. 

I couldn't make it through the next few months with only one fully healthy RW so I searched the FA market for a solution.  ANY solution.  And much to my surpirse, I found the solution to not just my problem, but possibly the solution to the question of whether eternal youth is a myth or a reality.  Because ladies and gentlemen, one Mr. Mark Recchi is joining Sutterly Camtastic!  :insert celebratory trumpets here:  Not only does the Recchin' Ball instantly increase the average age of the team by about a decade, but he also brings a surprisingly effective scoring touch for someone who's 42 years old.  Holy cow.  They need to study this man's secret. 

Sutterly Camtastic seems forever doomed to reside in the bottom half of the league, but hopefully once key players get healthy again, things will turn around.  If not, we can always wait for the teams ahead of us (which at this point is all but two) to exceed their "games played" limit.  Now that is the plan of a future champion-waiting for another team to run out of a valuable resource and then swooping in to scavenge the remains.  Just call us the Atlanta Thrashers.