A massive blueline loss for the Bruins; Neal, Kronwall and Hartnell among the stars of the night, lineup info, fantasy tips and more in Scott Cullen’s Statistically Speaking. [url=http://www.islanderssale.com/authentic-billy-smith-islanders-jersey /]Billy Smith Jersey[/url] . Bruins D Zdeno Chara suff

A massive blueline loss for the Bruins; Neal, Kronwall and Hartnell among the stars of the night, lineup info, fantasy tips and more in Scott Cullen’s Statistically Speaking. Billy Smith Jersey . Bruins D Zdeno Chara suffered a knee injury (torn posterior cruciate ligament), when hitting Islanders C John Tavares, that will keep the Bruins workhorse defenceman out 4-6 weeks. With Chara playing only 4:13 against the Islanders and Kevan Miller already out of the lineup with a dislocated shoulder, Matt Bartkowski played 20:57 for Boston, which ranked fifth on the Bruins’ blueline. (Small sample oddity: before getting hurt, Chara had been on the ice for one shot attempt for and 11 against, 8.3%, vs. the Islanders.) Chara has been a dominant performer on the Boston blueline, putting up excellent possession stats, year-in and year-out. Big Z, Possession Machine YEAR Corsi% RelativeCorsi% 2009-10 55.0% +3.6% 2010-11 54.2% +5.5% 2011-12 57.9% +5.7% 2012-13 55.6% +2.1% 2013-14 55.2% +1.9% 2014-15 56.6% +2.6% That he posts positive relative possession numbers while facing the opposition’s top lines shows how dominant Chara can be, though he’s also had the benefit of playing with Patrice Bergeron in a lot of those situations and Bergeron tends to be a positive possession driver. Even so, this is going to cause some short-term pain for a Bruins team that is already off to a 4-5 start to the season and appears to open up the competition at the top of the Eastern Conference. HEROES James Neal - The Predators’ right winger scored three goals, all at even-strength, for Nashville in a 3-2 win over the Chicago Blackhawks. Neal had nine shot attempts (6 SOG) for the game and now has five goals in seven games. Niklas Kronwall - Detroit’s to defenceman had two goals, including the game-tying goal with 39 seconds left, and an assist in a 4-3 overtime win against Pittsburgh. All of Detroit’s four goals came at even strength, with Kronwall on the ice, and the Wings earned 65% (13 for, 7 against) of the unblocked shot attempts when Kronwall was playing at evens. Scott Hartnell - The Blue Jackets’ winger assisted on four of Columbus’ five goals, thriving against the Sharks’ shutdown defensive pair of Justin Braun and Marc-Edouard Vlasic, with 11 shot attempts for and four against (73.3%) when matched against Vlasic and slightly better (12 for, 4 against, 80%) against Braun. ZEROES Brad Marchand - Boston’s shift disturber didn’t generate a shot attempt for the Bruins in 14:12 of ice time against the Islanders. Marchand has three points in nine games to start the year, but his 2.11 shots on goal per game is his best rate since 2011-2012. Cam Ward - The Carolina goalie surrendered five goals on 24 shots for the Carolina Hurricanes in a 5-0 loss at Calgary. In three starts this season, Ward has stopped 63 of 76 shots (.829 SV%). Tyler Myers - It’s not easy playing big minutes on an inferior Sabres team, but defenceman Myers was on the wrong end of the possession game (8 shot attempts for, 25 against, 24.2%) at Los Angeles SHORT SHIFTS Red Wings C Henrik Zetterberg had a goal and two assists, giving him nine points on 10 Detroit goals in the past four games…Predators LW Filip Forsberg had a pair of assists, giving him seven points in seven games…Blues RW Vladimir Tarasenko registered 11 shot attempts (4 SOG) vs. the Canucks…Sean Monahan scored two goals for the Flames, while Joe Colborne, Jiri Hudler, Paul Byron and Kris Russell each had two assists…Kings D Alec Martinez had a dozen shot attempts (4 SOG) vs. Buffalo…Ryan Johansen and Mark Letestu each scored two goals for the Blue Jackets…Joe Pavelski scored two goals for the Sharks…Sharks D Brent Burns had 11 shot attempts (6 SOG)… Kings RW Dustin Brown had a dominant possession game (25 shot attempts for, 4 against, 86.2%) against Buffalo. LINEUP NEED TO KNOW Islanders LW Josh Bailey suffered a broken hand against the Bruins and is out indefinitely. Blues C Jori Lehtera returned to the lineup after missing a game with the flu. Coyotes C Martin Hanzal remains out with a lower-body injury. Flyers defencemen Braydon Coburn and Andrew MacDonald are both out approximately four weeks. MacDonald ranks second on the team with an average 22:56 of ice time per game (Coburn played 20:02 in the only game he’s played this season), so the Flyers are going to have to force more minutes on the rest of their defence corps. FIRSTS Islanders D Lubomir Visnovsky played 17:50 in his first game of the season, in the lineup for an injured Travis Hamonic. Islanders LW Anders Lee played his first game of the season. He was recalled from the AHL, where he had three goals and five points in five games with Bridgeport, after the Islanders placed Mikhail Grabovski on the injured list. FANTASY FOCUS Penguins LW Blake Comeau moved up to a line with C Evgeni Malkin and RW Pascal Dupuis, played 18:24 against Detroit, his most in a regular-season game since March 31, 2012, and contributed a pair of assists. Anyone skating with Malkin on a regular basis is worth your attention. Some players to keep in mind for tonight’s games: D Trevor Daley, getting first-unit PP time for Dallas. D Anton Stralman, taking first-unit PP time for Tampa Bay with Victor Hedman out. RW Jakob Silfverberg, has four assists in the past five games, and is skating with Ryan Kesler and Andrew Cogliano. Much of the data included comes from www.war-on-ice.com, www.puckalytics.com, www.hockeystats.ca and www.naturalstattrick.com Scott Cullen can be reached at scott.cullen@bellmedia.ca Tom Kuhnhackl Jersey . None of them was better than playing with LeBron James again. Adam Pelech Islanders Jersey . PETERSBURG, Fla. http://www.islanderssale.com/authentic-scott-mayfield-islanders-jersey/ . He was signed to help with depth to the receiving corps because of the loss of Shamawd Chambers to the 6-game injured list.INDIANAPOLIS -- A slick surface was all it took for Sebastian Saavedra to win his first IndyCar Series pole. It was also just enough to slip Ryan Hunter-Reay out of the top starting spot for Saturdays Grand Prix of Indianapolis. Saavedra won the pole Friday when Hunter-Reay appeared to drive through a patch of standing water that caused him to spin and crash at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The accident exiting Turn 14 came on the lap after Hunter-Reay had moved to the provisional pole, and IndyCar penalized him by taking away his two fastest laps for causing a session-ending caution. "We definitely gave that one away," Hunter-Reay said. "Every time through there I almost lost it. I had a few big moments there, but in qualifying youve got to go for it. In the wet, youre always going for it. "Theres a very fine line between stepping over getting that good lap in the wet and throwing it off." Rain showers changed the track conditions for each of the four qualifying sessions, and it picked up moments before the start of the final Fast Six session. IndyCar brought the cars back to pit road because of standing water on the track for a red-flag period that lasted about 20 minutes. Saavedra had just bumped rookie Jack Hawksworth from the pole when Hunter-Reay turned his fast lap. But the IndyCar rule is to strip a driver of his two fastest laps for bringing out a red flag during qualifying, so Hunter-Reay was dropped to third. Hunter-Reay, the only driver to advance to the Fast Six through the first four races of the season, has not started lower than third this year. But his Andretti Autosport team had work to do to repair his bright yellow No. 28, which sustained heavy damage to the right rear of the car. Saavedra, who turned a lap at 1 minute, 23.8822 seconds, will lead the field to the green flag for the first IndyCar road course race at Indianapolis. "I love the rain," Saavedra said. "It was crazy at first because we didnt know what to expect from the track -- if it was going to be wet, if it was going to be dry. The whole session was just weird. It started to rain and went from wet, to dry, to super dry, to super wet. I loved it." The previous road course was reconfigured into a 14-turn, 2.439-mile course to accommodate IndyCar, which is using the race to open the speedway and create buzz in advance of the Indiaanapolis 500. New York Islanders Jerseys. . Drivers for the first time are running clockwise at the famed speedway, which will run the Grand Prix on Saturday and then revert to the traditional oval Sunday for the opening practice for the May 25 main event. Because the event and the track configuration are new, the field may be even headed into Saturdays race. It appeared even when Saavedra advanced into his first Fast Six of the season, then hung on to win the pole and give IndyCar a relatively inexperienced front row. Saavedra has 41 career starts dating to 2010, but his longtime backer this year brought him to KV Racing, the team that won the Indianapolis 500 last year with Tony Kanaan. Hawksworth, starting on the outside of Saavedra, has three previous starts. The British driver is in his first season with Bryan Herta Autosport. Hawksworth spent last season racing Indy Lights, where he won three times. Meanwhile, a tough qualifying assignment made it a nearly impossible session for Andretti Autosport, which had all five of its cars in the first group. With only six drivers advancing from that group, the odds were stacked against the organization. Indeed, only Hunter-Reay and James Hinchcliffe moved on while Marco Andretti, Carlos Munoz and Franck Montagny were eliminated. "Obviously, Im not very happy," Andretti said. "It was a team decision to go out, we were worried about the wet, but we plateaued too early and the track got better at the end. Weve been on the outside looking in of this hundredth of a second. Im losing sleep over this couple hundredths of a second." Wished good luck for Saturdays race, Andretti, who will start 13th, said: "Thanks, Im going to need it." Mikhail Aleshin, the first Russian in IndyCar history, had been strong through three practices and advanced into the second round of qualifying. But his fastest laps were wiped out when he was hit with an interference penalty. He and Sebastien Bourdais had raced each other hard for many laps two weeks ago at Barber, and Bourdais was eventually penalized for contact. The two drivers disagree wildly on who was to blame. Simon Pagenaud, teammates with the rookie but friendly with Bourdais since their days racing in France, wasnt sure what happened in qualifying. "What I know is him and Sebastien Bourdais are becoming best friends," Pagenaud joked. ' ' '