Heading Into Saturday's Action

Here we are, heading into Saturday's action in Week Twenty-Two and the race at the top of the Draft has tightened up, yet again. Our leader, John B., has dropped on his lead, which was 19 points coming into the week and heading into Saturday's schedule, it's down to 9 points. Marcus has made a huge leap, leading all teams with 24 points heading into action today, jumping over both Clayton and Jeremy to take second place. Clayton managed to keep his third place standing through the week, also watching Jeremy slip down into fourth, but it's all still very tight there. Between Marcus, Clayton and Jeremy (2nd, 3rd & 4th), there is only 2 points separating them. The gap has opened up between 4th and 5th, however, as Peter has dropped from only being 5 points back to 11 points back, but that certainly isn't unattainable at the moment.

It doesn't look like Week Twenty-Two will feature 500+ points, as heading into Saturday, the pool has only accumulated 256 points heading into Saturday, where last week, the pool was already at 353 points and had the same amount of games remaining in the weekend, 17. So, saying that, it is unlikely that a team will challenge the weekly record here, but that should bare no meaning on the money race. Last season, with 17 teams as well, Week Twenty-Two was the record week in points, with only 508 points, so we have a more offensively gifted set of players this year.

To compare last year and this year, through Twenty-Two weeks, the 2007/'08 season was already up to 9,159 points in total, while our current edition sits at 8,968 points. Maybe, I was a tad hasty in saying we have a better set of teams this season. Granted, this weekend would only need 192 points to eclipse that mark, which doesn't seem to be a problem with this crop of players. Hopefully, we see a lot of goals this weekend, right?

Last season's leader, Stuart, had a point total of 630 points after Week Twenty-Two, which is highly unlikely for John to reach, as he only sits at 589 heading into Saturday. A 41-point weekend is pretty well impossible. John will need to pick up his socks, if he's going to eclipse last season's high total at the end of the season, which Stuart finished with 820 points. John's team will have to average over 35 points a week to make it there. Unfortunately, his team average this season is only 26.8 points a week, which means they'll have play out of their skin to make that record.

Getting back to the week at hand, our leaders for the Player of the Week... Tim Thomas leads all pool players heading into the weekend with 7 points, followed closely by Marc-Andre Fleury with 6 and then a logjam of Mike Cammalleri, Jeff Carter, Jarome Iginla and Michael Ryder all with 5 points. Amazingly, none of these players are playing on teams that have two games this weekend, so they'll all have a single chance to improve their standing. Dallas, Florida, New Jersey and Washington all go twice this weekend, so don't be surprised if you see a player from those teams surprise.

Well, that's where I'll leave it at this point. We're still about a couple hours away from the first couple games to get started, so good luck all!