Injuries Impacting Red Wings, Canucks, Oilers & Flames

Our favorite UK-based blogger, LW3H, released the CHIP numbers for the first quarter of the season. CHIP, (Cap Hit of Injured Players), a metric developed by LW3H to measure the impact of injuries throughout the league for a given season is defined as follows:

The concept again - multiply each game missed by a player by his (annual) 2012/13 cap charge, then take the aggregate of these figures for each team and divide by 82. This indicator of value lost to a team by injury/illness is called CHIP (Cap Hit of Injured Players).

He's got the breakdown by team up at his site Springing Malik, but here are some early takeaways:

• Remove Chris Pronger from the equation and the Red Wings have been most affected by injuries - they're just now getting healthy and still sit 7th in the conference, bad news for the rest of the West.
  
• The Canucks and Oilers sit 5th and 6th in the CHIP standings and the problems both teams have had without Ryan Kesler and Shawn Horcoff are well-documented. That Vancouver sits on top of the division is impressive. Edmonton is surviving without Horcoff, but need him back for a chance at the playoffs.
• The Flames and Avalanche sit 7th and 11th, meaning the Northwest has been the most affected division in the league.
• On the other side of the ledger, the Wild have been the healthiest team in the league thus far, and still are just 12th in the conference in points percentage and 26th in the league in Fenwick Close. Their only injury has been to Jared Spurgeon, who has missed nine games. Throw in some injury regression they're likely to experience and they could be in for another long season.
• The rest of the healthiest teams? The Blues, Devils, Canadiens, Ducks and Penguins - all of whom sit near the top of the standings.