Babcock Playing Roster Cards Close to the Chest

Freep.com's George Sipple posted this today about the pending final roster spots...

Of course with Darren Helm out with a sprained shoulder joint, everyone is wondering who is going to take his place. To which Babcock replied:

"Real good question. One I'm going to find out myself."

Gee...thanks for clearing that up, Uncle Mike. Seriously though, what is this lineup going to look like when it's all said and done?

"We haven't talked about our roster once since camp started. We go into Philadelphia last night with about a quarter of a lineup, and they've got their real team. It's pretty evident very quickly some guys can't play. ... We've got three games in three nights here on the weekend, so we're going to play a lot of people that probably won't be on our team."

Pretty much echoes what Chris said in his post about Philly beating up on Grand Rapids. Babcock went on and in true fashion, answered questions with more questions...

"Guys who might play on a line with two good players have had to play more with players of their own class. If you can't survive that, you're not going to make the club. So who is on our team? I don't know the answer to that. How much is it going to be financial? Are the best players going to start the year? Is the tie going to go to the veteran like it always does in Detroit? Those are questions that we're going to answer here in the next few days."

Don't ever play poker with this guy...you will lose. While we all wait for Babcock and Ken to put the final pieces of the winning puzzle together, I have to turn my attention back to being more than a little worried about these groin injuries. Precautions? Sure, but Sweden and the St. Louis Blues are about a week away and those players injured have not gotten enough time to be ready for the games next Friday/Saturday. Or have they? Mike?

"We'll get a couple practices together. We'll get an exhibition game and have all NHL players playing together. That part of it, if you could take the travel out of this situation, this would be the best thing that could happen to us."

So where does Patrick Eaves fit in? How about Kris Newbury and Jeremey Williams? Do any of these guys have a shot at filling that last spot instead of Justin Abdelkader or Kirk Maltby? I guess we'll all just have to wait and see.