Ansar Khan reports that Mathieu Schneider will sit out at least the remainder of the road trip with a strained MCL. Apparently, his knee will be looked at again when the team gets back to Detroit on Friday.

To help fill in the gap, Chris Chelios will be rushed back into the lineup after missing six games. He did hook up with the team today in Denver and will play tonight against the Avs.

It’ll be great to have Cheli back in the lineup, but the Wings are going to miss Schneider at both ends of the ice. Their power play will suffer from not having his shot from the point and from being without his strong defensive play, which will make them a little more vulnerable in their own end. Chelios will certainly help with the latter, however.

Khan believes Jason Williams will be back in the lineup tonight, which means Jiri Hudler is a likely candidate to join Josh Langfeld wherever healthy scratches go during road games.

Also, a big congratulations to Christy for her great week. I will admit I was very jealous when I read her latest post, but she certainly deserves recognition for her work on Steve Yzerman Retirement Night. If we bloggers had an awards mechanism, that post would be up for Best of the Year.