Sunday, December 08, 2013

Eriksson's Bell Rung Again

It has been an incredibly rough year for Boston Bruins forward Loui Eriksson, who has now suffered a pair of concussions this season, in close-succession. The first was from an ugly incident against the Buffalo Sabres, getting popped illegally by defenseman John Scott, which led to a suspension and now the second from a clean hit by Pittsburgh Penguins defender Brooks Orpik, which started the ball rolling into another ugly incident later on in the same game.

Nevertheless, it sounds like there has been a recurrence of a concussion and this will keep Eriksson out of the Bruins' line-up indefinitely.  One may argue that Eriksson may have returned prematurely from his first concussion, but another may argue that the move to the Eastern Conference has not played well to his style of play, which is leading him down the same path as Marc Savard.

In 24 games played this season, Eriksson has 5 goals and 9 assists in a scoring system that isn't necessarily based on individual efforts, rather than scoring by committee.  His season, despite already missing five games to the first concussion, hasn't been too bad.

Unofficially on Sunday morning, I have Eriksson ranked 198th in pool scoring, which doesn't look too bad for a guy that has missed time from a concussion already this year.

ImplicationsUnfortunately for Ryan M. this season, he picked Eriksson 90th overall, in the 4th round of the draft, so he is not getting as much bang for his buck that he would have been hoping for this season.  Ryan is still on the move up the standings, moving up one spot in Week Ten (17th to 16th), but the loss of Eriksson might be pretty big.  Eriksson account for 7% of Ryan's points this year, but failed to register a point this week and will now miss out on a number of games, how many will need to be decided still.

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