Welcome to the Fantasy Hockey Injury Report. Once a week, we’ll take a look at some injuries around the league that may affect your fantasy hockey team. Injuries will always happen and you can’t predict when, but it’s important to be ready for the aftermath and to have a plan ready. Let’s take a look and some players who are on the shelf for the upcoming week and beyond.

Wayne Simmonds - Philadelphia Flyers - Winger

Injury: upper-body, day-to-day.

Looks like Wayne Simmonds won’t be out too long with an upper-body injury. The team thinks he should be back Thursday when the Flyers take on the Columbus Blue Jackets. We should get confirmation about his return closer to game day, but so far, no need to look around the waiver wire for a short-term solution.

Connor McDavid - Edmonton Oilers - Center

Injury: Illness, day-to-day.

Nothing to worry about here. McDavid missed Monday’s game with what the team is calling an illness. There’s a good chance that their captain is back Wednesday when Edmonton travels to St. Louis to take on the Blues. If Monday was an indication of what the Oilers would look like without their best player, it was #NotGood. He should be back to full health by game time, so fantasy owners can plug McDavid into their lineup and forget about it.

Robby Fabbri - St. Louis Blues - Winger

Injury: Shoulder, three weeks.

I don’t like to use the term “injury prone”, but Robby Fabbri just can’t seem to stay healthy. After missing two seasons with back-to-back knee injuries, he return this season and looked ready to revive his career. Now he’s expected to miss a minimum of three weeks due to a shoulder injury. I talked about him last week as a waiver wire option, but at this point, he’s not worth picking up until he can stay healthy for an extended period of time. It’s a shame to see a kid with so much promise not be able to stay healthy.

Filip Forsberg - Nashville Predators - Winger

Injury: hand, four-to-six weeks.

Filip Forsberg is the latest Predator to be sidelined with an injury, joining P.K. Subban, Viktor Arvidsson and Kyle Turris. The team hasn’t confirmed it, but it looks like Forssberg is dealing with a broken bone in his hand. He’s expected to be out four-to-six weeks, which usually means a fracture of some sort. What’s tricky with hand injuries is you can’t predict how the hand will heal and how long it will take a player to get his strength back. Well get a good idea of when Forsberg is likely to return once he starts shooting pucks again, but for now, fantasy owners will have to look to the waiver wire for some help.

Alex Pietrangelo -St. Louis Blues - Defence

Injury: hand, three weeks.

The injury bug continues to wreak havoc on the St. Louis Blues. Already without Fabbri, Jadeen Schwartz, Alex Steen and Carl Gunnarsson, Pietrangelo is expected to be sidelined until after Christmas, which gives us a minimum time frame of three weeks. The team has come out and said that they will re-evaluate their captain after Christmas and determine if surgery will be needed. If he does need surgery, we can expect Pietrangelo to miss about two months of action, which isn’t ideal. For now, all fantasy owners can do is hope that the next three weeks off helps the 28-year-old heal quicker, and hopefully, avoid going under the knife.

Alex Steen - St. Louis Blues - Winger

Injury: concussion, no timetable.

It was not a good weekend for the Blues. They lost three players in the span of a week to three different kinds of injuries. Steen isn’t exactly the goal scorer he once was, but he can still help a fantasy hockey team. Now he’s out with a concussion and the team has no timetable on when he may return. He hasn’t been placed on IR, so the team doesn’t expect him to be out very long, but with concussion, you can never say exactly. We should know more this week about when Steen should be back, but for now, just look for help elsewhere.

Ilya Kovalchuk - Los Angeles Kings - Winger

Injury: ankle, four weeks.

The return of Ilya Kovalchuk to the NHL has not gone as planned. Kovalchuk hasn’t been able to find his scoring touch we’ve all been accustomed to, and now it looks like the Russian winger will be out about four weeks with an ankle injury. Maybe the time off will help the veteran clear his head and help him come back fresh. Prior to his injury, Kovalchuk was skating on the fourth line and was seeing limited minutes. At this point, he’s droppable in most formats and isn’t worth stashing on IR.

Dustin Byfuglien - Winnipeg Jets - Defence

Injury: concussion, out indefinitely.

The news out of Winnipeg about Dustin Byfuglien’s concussion isn’t verygood. The team has placed him on IR and have said that they expect their star defenceman to be out an extended period of time. Maybe we are talking a couple of weeks, but we could also be looking at more than just a month. The first step in his recover is for Byfuglien to get back on the ice, but that could be a couple of weeks away. It’s too early to drop him, and even if you did, there isn’t a defenceman on the waiver wire who can replace him. For now, fantasy owners should just sit tight and wait for more news to come. Once we get a better time frame of when we can expect “Big Buff” to return, we can decide what to do with him from there.