Week Sixteen Newsletter

I thought there would have to be some tie-breaking to figure out the Player of the Week for this shortened week, but one goalie in the pool registered a shutout and that was enough to give him the title, straight away.  Rookie goalie for the Winnipeg Jets, Michael Hutchinson, shutout the Blue Jackets on Wednesday night, picked up 4 points and that was good enough to be the top cheese in Week Sixteen.

Well, the usual amount of banter for a Player of the Week nod was taken up in the first paragraph, thanks to how short this week was.

Damn.

Nevertheless, Hutchinson has been gaining a little bit of press of late, thanks to 14 wins and 2 shutouts this season, amassing 32 pool points over the unofficial first half of the season.  Overall, he currently ranks 90th in scoring, but this season, he was a Waiver Draft pick-up for Cam, who has collected 9 of those wins and 1 shutout, for 20 points.  Hutchinson is tied for the lead in points from picked players in the Waiver Draft, even after being the 15th player picked up.

If the Jets are going to do well in the playoffs, it may be on the back of this hot goaltender.

The short week in the pool meant that there wasn't really enough time for teams to really make their mark on the weekly scoring, which led to some ties.  There was a tie for the Mover & Shaker, as Cam and Dale B. each saw their teams finish with 14 points.

With the goal department, Dale B. came away as the winner, taking it by a 5-3 margin.

This is Dale's second Mover & Shaker nod of the season, but it also goes with his two Basement Dweller nods, which puts him right in the middle of the pack, in terms of the standings, as he finished the week in 13th, not moving any positions up at all.

The big week was owed to Henrik Zetterberg, who led the team with 3 points, while four other players each picked up a pair of points in the 3-day week.

Dale is only 10 points out of the top 10, which could definitely be made up in the latter half of the year and if he can make it into the top 10, he would at least be going the right way to try and make up the rest of the points for the money positions.  There is one more Waiver Draft, so it doesn't seem out of the question that with a little luck, things could happen.

The real work in this short week Newsletter is trying to break the tie for the Basement Dweller.  Four teams picked up 7 points and if I could give the Basement Dweller to all of them, I probably would.

Grant S., Brian, Stuart and Grant K. were all at the bottom of the weekly table, so then we go to the tie-breakers.  First, goals... Grant S. and Stuart move on to the wins, as they were at the bottom of the pool, each with 1 goal to their team names.  The next, wins... Grant had 1 win, while Stuart didn't have any, which means our Basement Dweller for Week Sixteen is... Stuart!  Congratulations!

Stuart's team didn't drop any positions with the designation, remaining in 16th place, but there is some wiggle room as there are a number of teams close for him to either move up or down.  Luckily for him, most of the teams around him also had poor weeks.

TROPHY TALK

Blah, blah, blah... Kristy & Don are 53 points up on Grant S., Grant is now 38 points up on Cam for 2nd place.

Wes and Clayton are tied for 4th, Wes having more goals gets the spot, and they're only 5 points back of Cam after the week, so it remains close.

For the Olli, Allan drops into the lead for the first time this season, losing out on the tie-breaker with Ryan, but both teams are only 1 point back of Wyllie, as they all shuffled around a little bit, in the midst of a low-scoring week.

The Jordan, that got a little bit more interesting, as Benson still has dibs on it, but he only holds a single game lead on it on Allan, while Dale C. still remains 10 games away.

WINNING EVERY WEEK

The two teams still in it have survived the shortened week.  Henrik Lundqvist won on Tuesday for Brenda & Seward and Frederik Andersen won on Wednesday for Kristy & Don, so the speed bump was passed and now they continue on.

Brenda & Seward will go into Week Seventeen with a pair of healthy goalies, while Kristy & Don will continue to lean heavily on the Ducks and their number one guy, we'll see if either break this week.

ROOKIE SCORING

Johnny Gaudreau continues to be doing the job for Wilton, as the lead in this category went back up to 4 points.  I would be curious to see if Mike makes a move for a rookie or two in the Week Eighteen Waiver Draft, just to make this race interesting, since his team appears to be out of the money race, heading into the final segment of the season.

LIGHTING THE LAMP

So, if survival was based on 4-goal weeks, we're down to two teams, as Stacey M. and Kristy & Don would still be in this race, even with a 3-day week.  Both teams are among the top in goals for this season and have stayed consistent.

If survival was based on a 3-goal week, four more teams would remain, as Grant K., Stacey C., Wilton and Ryan would still be alive.

Dropping out of the races this week were Grant S., Mike and Brenda & Seward, as their teams only scored 1 goal each in Week Sixteen.

ROUND 10 IN THE DRAFT

Pick #	Round	Pool	Player	NHL	POS	Points
222	10	Kristy & Don	Mike Ribeiro	NAS	F	39
209	10	Dale Corley	Tomas Tatar	DET	F	34
229	10	Cam Wagner	Cody Franson	TOR	D	29
223	10	Clayton Corley	Marcus Johansson	WAS	F	27
227	10	Brian Towers	Nick Bjugstad	FLA	F	27
217	10	Grant Saskiw	Clarke MacArthur	OTT	F	24
215	10	Wes Moroz	Erik Johnson	COL	D	23
216	10	Stacey McDonald	Jake Muzzin	LOS	D	22
224	10	Derek Wyllie	Johnny Boychuk	NYI	D	22
218	10	Stacey Campbell	Teddy Purcell	EDM	F	20
230	10	Stuart Greenley	Hampus Lindholm	ANA	D	19
220	10	Leo Macht	Kris Russell	CAL	D	17
212	10	Allan Scott	Jared Spurgeon	MIN	D	14
226	10	Troy Berkley	Jason Demers	DAL	D	13
228	10	Grant Kanwischer	Cam Atkinson	CBJ	F	13
219	10	Dale Bradley	Brandon Dubinsky	CBJ	F	12
210	10	Derek Wilton	Eric Gelinas	NJD	D	11
213	10	Benson Greenley	Matt Moulson	BUF	F	11
214	10	Mike Somerville	Jake Gardiner	TOR	D	11
211	10	Brenda Farrell	Cody Hodgson	BUF	F	3
221	10	Tony Dourado	Boone Jenner	CBJ	F	3
208	10	Scott Gilmore	Valeri Nichushkin	DAL	F	0
225	10	Ryan Miller	Ryan Murray	CBJ	D	0

There were a few pretty good picks in this round, as we can see.  A couple top end forwards, a very good defenseman and more than a handful of 20-point players.  Most of the teams up and around the money conversation had made some pretty good picks in Round 10.

As you would also care to notice, there are a good number of drops in this round, as injuries, poor play and a trip to the minors highlighted the dropped players.  Being this close to the bottom of the draft, this was where you expect to see some in-between players fall off from the cut lines.

STATISTICALLY SPEAKING

Well, it's kind of a moot point, because it was only a 3-day week in the pool, not even getting half the days, nor half the games played, so the numbers may skew a bit.

Unlike the Christmas break week, scoring didn't skyrocket, as the games have been getting tighter, since the need for points in the standings had also gotten more interesting.  Skater games and goalie minutes per NHL game went up from the previous week, but that didn't help the scoring rate, as it went back down to Week Fourteen's levels, which wasn't great.

Let's hope this week gets more interesting, which is optimistic, since there were some pretty serious injuries to finish last week.

NEWS AND NOTES

There was one more injury to divulge from the All-Star weekend, as Lightning forward Tyler Johnson made the trip to Columbus, but pulled out of the on-ice festivities, due to a lower-body injury of his own. Since Johnson made the trip and supported the All-Star weekend, he won't be forced to miss out on Tuesday night's return to action, when the Bolts head to Carolina to take on the Hurricanes.

The injury only left Brian with one player on the active All-Star rosters on Sunday afternoon, as he had John Tavares, who scored 4 goals in the game.  Not too sure Johnson would have had enough points to help him win among pool teams for points, but it sure would have helped.

It's hard to say how much hockey that Kris Versteeg is going to get through the rest of the season, as the Blackhawks have finally placed the injured forward on the Injured Reserve and by Injured Reserve, I mean the Long Term Injury Reserve.  I believe Versteeg has already missed enough games to be eligible to return from the LTIR at any point, but the Blackhawks will now receive cap savings on his absence, which will no doubt help the club, both today and at the trade deadline.

Versteeg was a Week Nine pick-up for Stacey C., who managed to collect 5 points from 11 games played before the injury, but the future of Versteeg in his lineup is questionable, as we go into Week Seventeen and start to decide on who will pick where in the Week Eighteen Waiver Draft.

Link to the Injury/News Page