Week Twenty-One Newsletter

The Newsletter is getting written during the Trade Deadline festivities on Monday, so if there are any broken thoughts or unfinished sentences, you can just blame a freshly broken trade for those issues.

The blog has been loaded up with pool-related deals, I'm not going out of my way this year to do too much, as all of the extra work will be done in the off-season, when you're trying to polish up your draft lists for next season.

Well, we kick off the weekly review with a tie-breaker, as we have a couple of goalies in contention for the Player of the Week designation, as Corey Schneider in New Jersey and Carey Price in Montreal each shared pretty good weeks in the hockey pool.  Schneider went 2-1-1 with a couple of shutouts, while Price went 3-0-0 with a single shutout, the wins take it and we have another appearance on the blog for Mr. Price.

Price picked up wins against St. Louis, Columbus and Toronto in the week, with his shutout coming around against the Maple Leafs.

This makes for his third Player of the Week appearance this season, so it should come as no surprise that he now leads the league in hockey pool points, now with 36 wins, 6 shutouts and an assist, his 85 points are now 8 points better than anyone else in the race and he is only starting to heat up towards the playoffs.

Wes has certainly capitalized on Price, as his team is starting to close in on 2nd place in the standings.  Having the best player in the pool will certainly do that for you, indeed.

Well, if there was ever a title for it, now would be the time to give it out, as Leo takes the lowest team in the standings to pick up a Mover & Shaker nod this season.

Leo, with his 30 points in Week Twenty-One, moved up from 20th to 19th and now sits as the lowest ranking team this season to earn the honour, bettering Brenda & Seward, who were 15th with a nod this year.

In this game, you need your best players to be just that and for Leo, both Evgeni Malkin of the Penguins and P.K. Subban of the Canadiens were just that, picking up 6 points a piece to lead the way on his side.  On a team that is dominated by Flames and ex-Flames, you're going to have to hope that the players not associated with them will pick up the slack and they did.

Mike Cammalleri did chip in with 5 points from New Jersey, while Jussi Jokinen had 4 points in Florida, but otherwise, it was pretty quiet on his side.

Overall, it hasn't been a quiet third segment for Leo though, as his rag-tag group has done well since the second Waiver Draft, where they now sit in 4th spot in the standings there, picking up 84 points since, which is nearly a quarter of his entire season's output in only three weeks.

In the basement this week, it is quite the opposite story, as Wilton continues to tumble down, down, down.

Since the second Waiver Draft, Wilton has been the Basement Dweller, two out of three weeks, both times picking up only 13 points and he is now down to 18th place in the standings and there doesn't seem to be much getting in his way to stop the freefall.

Okay, that may not exactly be the case, as he is expecting Sergei Bobrovsky to come back to the Blue Jackets lineup, but the Jackets are not exactly firing on all cylinders anymore and have dropped out of the Eastern Conference playoff race, possibly to a point where they are too far gone.

The only player trying to keep Wilton a float this past week was Matt Duchene, who had 3 points for him and then it was nothing but nickels and dimes underneath him.

Wilton is still 46 points up on last place and thankfully, the last few teams in the standings didn't make all that much ground up on him.

TROPHY TALK

Speaking of last place, let's start with the Olli bobblehead, shall we?  It's now three straight weeks for Wyllie in the position, but his gap to move out is only 5 points from Allan, so all that would take is a little bit of luck and the fortunes could be reversed.  Both teams still have long-term lingering issues, so this race is far from over.

Okay, back up to the top then.  The lead is now up to 79 points for Kristy & Don, who haven't missed their injured goalie, Frederik Andersen at all.  Sure, Grant S. is doing a good job of losing ground, but that wasn't really a race, was it?

Wes does appear to be making up more ground on Grant for 2nd place though, as the gap is now down to 16 points.  Grant does appear to be missing his number one keeper, Ryan Miller, while THE number one keeper is doing it right for Wes.

The gap between 3rd and 4th also opened up a little bit more, as it had stretched to 15 points, as Clayton has lost some ground in recent weeks to Wes.

Finally, it looks like the Jordan bobblehead is all but locked up, as Allan lost all kinds of ground to his nearest rivals and he now holds a 37-game gap between himself and Tony, each team only registering 23 skater games in the week.

WINNING EVERY WEEK

The biggest concern for Brenda & Seward was that they only were projected to have two starts out of the Oilers and Ben Scrivens did the job, winning the first game of the week and keeping them in the contest.  Yes, Kristy & Don are still there too, so we move on for yet another week.

ROOKIE SCORING

I don't think this is a race anymore, as Dale B. has now eclipsed the top two teams in the rookie scoring race, as he had another 8 points from his freshmen, picking up 28 points since the Week Eighteen Waiver Draft, Dale has dominated this paragraph and I would wonder if it was really by design.

LIGHTING THE LAMP

Wilton's bad run has finally caught up to him, as his team only managed to score 1 goal in Week Twenty-One, thus eliminating his name from the unofficial contest this year.  Now, with six weeks to go, five teams still have active streaks.

As for getting close to elimination, the closest was Ryan, who only had 5 goals this week, he's in the 3 goals per week streak club, but that isn't to say he's on the verge or anything.

CHRIS STEWART VS ERIK COLE

As of writing this post on Monday morning, Erik Cole was still the only one of the two potential movers to be traded, as he left Dallas for Detroit on Sunday night.  Chris Stewart still awaits to see his fate.  In terms of the side bet, Stewart outdueled Cole in the week, 3-2, but Cole still holds the overall lead at 8-4.  A couple toonies from Stuart's pocket to Clayton's doesn't sound too bad.

ROUND 5 IN THE DRAFT

Pick #	Round	Pool	Player	NHL	POS	Points
106	5	Grant Saskiw	Ryan Johansen	CBJ	F	55
101	5	Kristy & Don	Kristopher Letang	PIT	D	49
100	5	Clayton Corley	Brian Elliott	STL	G	48
108	5	Wes Moroz	Ondrej Palat	TAM	F	47
105	5	Stacey Campbell	Marian Hossa	CHI	F	46
110	5	Benson Greenley	T.J. Oshie	STL	F	44
98	5	Ryan Miller	Kyle Turris	OTT	F	43
103	5	Leo Macht	Jarome Iginla	COL	F	42
102	5	Tony Dourado	Kevin Shattenkirk	STL	D	40
93	5	Stuart Greenley	Tyson Barrie	COL	D	39
99	5	Derek Wyllie	Thomas Vanek	MIN	F	39
111	5	Allan Scott	Patric Hornqvist	PIT	F	39
97	5	Troy Berkley	Mike Green	WAS	D	36
104	5	Dale Bradley	Milan Lucic	BOS	F	34
107	5	Stacey McDonald	Marian Gaborik	LOS	F	33
94	5	Cam Wagner	Jaromir Jagr	FLA	F	31
115	5	Scott Gilmore	James Wisniewski	CBJ	D	29
113	5	Derek Wilton	Cam Fowler	ANA	D	26
114	5	Dale Corley	Jonathan Drouin	TAM	F	26
109	5	Mike Somerville	Morgan Rielly	TOR	D	23
112	5	Brenda Farrell	Ryan McDonagh	NYR	D	23
95	5	Grant Kanwischer	Evander Kane	BUF	F	22
96	5	Brian Towers	Christian Ehrhoff	PIT	D	13

Only one drop in the 5th round of the draft and it was a long-term injury that forced the hand of Grant K. in dropping Evander Kane.

Some really good picks in this round, as Ryan Johansen was still in his RFA status at the time of the draft and Grant S. came up big with that pick-up.  Brian Elliott, the only goalie taken in the 5th, ended up being a starter in St. Louis, so a big steal there.

A few disappointments, namely Christian Ehrhoff, who has had some injury troubles in Pittsburgh; Jonathan Drouin in Tampa, not having the rookie season he should; maybe even Marian Gaborik in Los Angeles, not following up his playoff performance quite as well.

STATISTICALLY SPEAKING

Well, it didn't take long for the pool to return to it's former level of scoring, averaging less than 11 points per NHL game on the schedule.  Only 481 points collected this week, which is the leading reason why Leo won the Mover & Shaker with only 30 points this week, one of the lowest point totals in a full week of action.

Games collected were down, minutes collected from goalies were down... yeah, the injuries ramped up and they are not getting replaced as quickly as they are happening.  Maybe it's the deadline anxiety everyone is feeling.

NEWS AND NOTES

It sounds like Christian Ehrhoff was just fine after his first game coming back from injury this week, but the coaching staff may have seen something a little bit differently. The veteran German defender was held out of Sunday afternoon's game, likely for precautionary measures, making sure he doesn't over-extend any injuries or form any new ones.

Good news for Brian, as he climbs up the standings, he will need all guns a blazin', if he is going to make a move for the money in the last six weeks.

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