Can a sick/failing wifi card screw up a router?

Ever since my ThinkPad suddenly had its internal wifi adapter vanish from Device Manager (and an onboard driver could not be found to reinstall -- I had to download one after hunting), it's been weird and the router has been weird.

At least 2-3 times a day, the internal wifi card would disconnect from the router. And in about one out of three of those times, a "Repair Connection" would fail. And usually the router was hosed too (the Ooma box, e.g., connected via ethernet to the router would go offline too, as would the wifi print server and internet radios). The only thing that fixed things was to reboot the router. Then the laptop would re-connect, Ooma and printer server and wifi internet radios would come back.This got old.

For the last three days, I've borrowed and have been using a wifi usb stick adapter. The connection has been solid and the router has not gone down once.

It will become moot soon when my new ThinkPad arrives, but I have never encountered a problem like this before and am wondering what the experts think.