FANTASY HOCKEY – Blues GM Confirms Kevin Shattenkirk to IR

Anyone who owns Kevin Shattenkirk in their fantasy hockey league was dealt a stinging blow this week. After suffering a fluky abdominal injury in a collision with Alex Ovechkin, he’ll be undergoing surgery in 7-10 days and from that point will be “week-to-week,” which could mean anything from a few games on the shelf to spending the rest of the regular season eating sorbet in bed.

An injury of indeterminate length can sound the death knell for a fantasy team. In order to put a player on your fantasy injured reserve, he has to be on the real-life injured reserve. I couldn’t clear a spot for a replacement until that move had been made by the Blues’ GM! These are the problems in my life.

Shattenkirk’s been one of the most valuable players in the entire league this season, currently tied for first in assists and power play points amongst all defensemen, so I was loathe to drop him. But as a long-term scratch who may never hit the IR, he could sink my fantasy team.

Details were scarce about whether he would be put on the reserve or not. To the St. Louis Blues fan, it doesn’t mean much – hurt is hurt – but it’s make or break for his fantasy owners, and in my rotisserie league, every day counts. So rather than Twitter search “Shattenkirk IR” for the twelve hundredth time, I decided to go to a definitive source – Kevin Shattenkirk’s actual GM, the St. Louis Blues’ Doug Armstrong. I took an educated guess at what I thought his email address might be and got to it…

A little more than a day later, he responded:

Unsolicited harassment gets results! Good luck to you, Doug.