Wednesday's Daily Dosage - Backlund, Thomas/Rask, Schenn...

Good & bad news for the Flames as Jarome Iginla (back) sounds like he's improving and will be ready for opening night and Brendan Morrison (knee) is back practicing and he is a possibility for the opener but they very well could hold him out a little longer.  The bad news is that Mikael Backlund has a broken finger and is out for six weeks.  He was expected to start as the #1C but others are a lot higher on him than I am, so I don't think this hurts your team too much.

Claude Julien says he'll rotate Tim Thomas & Tuukka Rask this year and go with the hot goalie eventually.  This was not totally unexpected and basically how the Bruins started last year but then recall that Thomas started 8-0-0 with three shutouts and 1.39 & .959 averages through his first nine games and there was no way they weren't going to ride him after that.  But the split was still only 57/29 for Thomas/Rask and I could see something a little closer to even this year.  I still like Thomas a lot in leagues that don't heavily weight saves and I think Rask is probably the best backup to own in the league. 

Brett Connolly & Mattias Ekholm have survived final cuts and will be on the opening night rosters for the Bolts & Preds respectively.  Check out all the surprises in our Training Camp Heroes post which I'll be updating through to opening day.

Brayden Schenn will likely be demoted to the AHL for a game for some salary cap trickery purposes and then he's expected to be back up and in the Flyers lineup shortly thereafter.

The Islanders signed Ryan Strome to an ELC but they may still send him back to Jr. today.  The Hawks Brandon Saad also agreed to an ELC yesterday and he'll start the season on the Toews line... we'll see how long that lasts.

Dustin Penner is day-to-day with a LBI and is questionable for the Kings two games in Europe, Scott Parse should take his place on the top line if he can't go.

Sean Avery has been waived by the Rangers and it sounds like he'll look for work in Europe versus heading to the AHL.

The Cancucks claimed Dale Weise off waivers from the Rangers.  They have to keep him on the roster so he should get a look but I doubt he'll see more than 4th line duty.

The Leafs made a deal with the Devils and picked up David Steckel yesterday for a 4th... he's only fantasy worthy if a faceoff specialist is valuable to you.

Your notable cuts from the past 24 hours:  Jeremy Morin (CHI), Dana Tyrell (TB), Dmitri Orlov (WSH), Cody Eakin (WSH) & Mattias Sjogren (WSH).