Chris Kunitz will undergo surgery to repair a tear in his abdominal muscle and will be out for 4-6 weeks. The Pens have recalled Luca Caputi. He showed some early chemistry with Malkin last year, so here’s hoping that it happens again. He has 26 points in 36 AHL games. The Pens aren’t going to rush him, so I would put his arrival time at 2011-12. But these cups of coffee will be fun to watch. Next season he’ll need to dominate the AHL and at that point will make the jump.

Ray Emery is looking to be back Saturdayish. When he returns, the Flyers are going to go with three goalies, but when the dust settles, I’m thinking Boucher missed his chance and will be out of the mix. Emery will have every opportunity to steal the starts back.

Carolina injury updates: Scott Walker will have surgery this week and will be out a month. Samsonov, Cole and LaRose could all be back this week.

Regarding my statement on Bergeron’s fragility – since all the Bergeron owners and Boston fans have taken huge exception to that – I’ll expand. I have been doing this for a lot of years. I heard the same stuff from Derick Brassard owners two years ago. “It was freak injury”, seems to be the common argument. One statement below – “”Fragile” because he took a point-blank slap-shot off the hand and fractured it? That’s a reeeeeal stretch”. Not really – some players are just susceptable to “freak” injuries a little more, and some players are just built a little more fragile. And some players are both. If one player’s bones are 0.005% weaker than another player’s bones, that just might be enough to turn what would normally be a bruise into a fracture. If one player looks up a microsecond later than another player, or tends to move parts of his body in a certain way that is just a micro-meter off from the norm, then he gets hurt. A broken hand from a teammate’s shot, on it’s own, is nothing. But add that to Bergeron’s foot injury in April. Plus his massive concussion. Plus is lower body injury in 2007. Or his shoulder injury in 2004.

It’s a laundry list, people.

Bergeron is a certified band-aid boy. I’m sorry if this hurts his trade value in your league – but I don’t own him in any of my leagues and have never been interested in owning him. Why? Because he might take a shot off his hand from a teammate and break it. Or because he might get hit awkwardly into the boards and hurt his shoulder. Or he might hit a rut in the ice and twist his knee. Freak injuries happen. They just happen to fragile players more often then other players.

Who would I have taken over Bergeron? Martin St. Louis.

In the span of four minutes to end the first period, Drew Doughty garnered three assists. He just makes me feel worse and worse for changing my mind at the last minute in September and taking Tom Gilbert instead. Worst move I’ve made in the past year, hands down.

That last point has me so depressed I don’t want to write the ramblings anymore. He added another assist in the second, just to kick me when I’m down ;)

Here’s a big reason why Bergeron would not have made my team Canada – fragility. Nothing would suck more than to lose a player two games into the tournament, so if it was between him and another player and liked them both equally in terms of their tools and their fit, I would go with the other player for this reason. Bergeron left last night’s contest after taking a shot off the hand. Kevin Paul Dupont of the Globe speculates that there may be a fracture and he is heading back to Boston. He will miss tonight’s contest obviously.

Washington updates from Tarik El-Bashir: Backstrom is back on the ice skating. His migraines come and go, thankfully they are usually gone.

Semyon Varlamov suffered a setback. He suffered an LBI (again) in AHL action and will be out for another two weeks. Neuvirth is looking like a pretty nice pickup for me last week – he gets an extended look and lots of W’s.

From AJC.com, John Anderson on Kari Lehtonen: "He's been doing a lot, actually," Anderson said Monday. "We took him on the [recent] road [trip] and practiced him pretty hard. He's getting closer. It's a matter of conditioning.  I hate to give a time frame, but 2-3 weeks I don't think is out of the realm."

Martin Erat will be “at most another week” according to the Tennessean.

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