Saturday, November 27, 2010

Connolly Sitting Out With Groin Injury

On Friday night, the Sabres' Tim Connolly missed his second straight game with a groin injury, which he seemed to have suffered last weekend. Connolly has not bee able to skate, let alone participate in games for the club and there doesn't seem to be any timetable for his return at the moment.

The oft-injured Connolly is one of the centerpieces of the injury prone list every season, but his talent is what keeps him getting picked most years.

The Sabres' offense has been suffering from some serious power outages this year and missing out on Connolly won't exactly jump start it to reasonable levels again.  In 22 games this year, Connolly has only managed to pick up 5 goals and 8 assists, which is a sign of how bad the Sabres offense has been.

The two games that Connolly has missed due to injury was a 1-0 loss to the Penguins on Wednesday and a 3-1 win over the Maple Leafs on Friday, so I think you can read into that fairly well.  The offense was nowhere to be seen against a top tier team, while they could still manage to put a few past the struggling defense of the Leafs.

ImplicationsNow, 13 points is nothing really to scoff at, especially since Dale C. picked him in the 7th round.  I don't think anyone can really deny that Connolly has top five round kind of talent, but his durability is what knocks his production down, not to mention his draft value.  Dale could use a bit more of that production though, currently sitting in 13th spot in the standings, 27 points out of the money.

This is also back-to-back years for Dale picking Connolly in the draft, I think it's safe to say that he is a draft favourite.

Link to the Injury/News Page

No comments: