Injury updates with training camps open, Kuemper's new deal, goalie rankings and more…

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Training camps officially opened across the league today. Hurray! With that, plenty of injury news trickled out. Boooo!

Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin both missed the start of camp for precautionary reasons. It sounds like very minor injuries and that they won't miss any real game time but I don't like it all the same and I've got a couple of reasons.

For one, Crosby and Malkin are injury prone guys. Today's precautionary time off is tomorrow's nagging injury. I'm not into it.

For another, the Penguins have plenty of new faces at camp. Guys like Patric Hornqvist and Christian Ehrhoff. Sure, they've probably already been skating together but this is valuable time to develop chemistry working on breakouts and power play formations, etc. all under a new coach.

If this even leads to one or two games where things don't click quite as well as they might, then we could be looking at a point or two that guys like Hornqvist might miss out on. Maybe not a huge difference over a long season but it's there.

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Fortuitous news for Darcy Kuemper owners, the young netminder has signed a two-year, one-way deal. This comes just a day after Josh Harding broke his foot and the team called up Ilya Bryzgalov for a tryout.

Bryzgalov will still presumably tryout but with this Kuemper news he won't make the team so write him right off your draft list.

What's crazy about this situation is that Harding apparently broke his foot after kicking a wall in an altercation with a teammate. You can't make this stuff up.

It's perfect timing for Kuemper who'd been battling the Wild in contract talks for that one-way distinction, even going so far as threatening to sign in the KHL.

What a contrast the careers of Kuemper and Harding are when you think about it. For Harding this is just another setback in what has been a star-crossed career full of untapped potential. Kuemper on the other hand, has everything break (no pun intended) perfectly for him to have an inside track at a starting job for a team with serious playoff aspirations. And all this for a former 6^th round draft choice who was no doubt an after-thought for the franchise.

Remember, this team was heavily committed to Niklas Backstrom as a franchise goalie until he crapped out. Harding was supposed to be next in line but he's never been able to stay healthy. Then Matt Hackett was the next guy with serious pedigree but he got shipped off to Buffalo. Now it's Kuemper's job to lose. I suppose that those are the breaks of the game (again, no pun intended).