
Welcome to the first Newsletter of the 2018 hockey pool season! For those who haven't been here before, this is the quick little recap I like to do after every week, going over the weekly activities, recap the best players, best teams and the worst team of the week, not to mention give a quick heads up on the mini-games as well.
Every Monday morning, I like to pull off the data from the NHL website and perform an audit of the points and other statistics from each week (and the season combined), just to make sure that everything is accurate and up-to-date. But somewhat like clockwork, the Week One numbers on the NHL site are not quite up and it is really getting my goat!
This Newsletter will publish on-time today, as you are already reading it, I'm sure, but some of these numbers are unofficial, as the stats haven't been posted or made available for me quite yet. There are some early afternoon games in the NHL, given the Columbus Day and Canadian Thanksgiving Day holidays today, so nothing will be done with the points in the live sense, until the statistics are done in the audit. The results below may change, although they probably won't, but don't be surprised if they do.
Otherwise, another warm welcome to all of you for another season! Only 26 more weeks left to go!


Ovechkin potted the hat-trick against the Senators on Thursday night and had his 4-goal night against the Canadiens on Saturday night, giving him 7 goals and no assists and the current scoring lead in the hockey pool, by virtue of a the goal-scoring tie-breakers.
This is the sixth time that Ovechkin has been named the Player of the Week in the hockey pools and believe it or not, this is the first time he has been named since Week One of the 2014 season, four years ago. This is also the third time he's been Player of the Week in Week One of the season, also adding on the 2010 season as well, go figure. That's an interesting record.


Evgeny Kuznetsov, who is tied for the league's scoring lead, assisted on every goal that the Player of the Week scored this week, so he finished with 7 assists to lead the way for Jeremy. Jakub Voracek of the Flyers, Mike Green of the Red Wings, Alex Pietrangelo of the Blues and Corey Crawford of the Blackhawks all finished with 4 points as well, while Chris Kreider of the Rangers and Ondrej Palat of the Lightning had 3 points each.
Eyeing up his top players, I am beginning to wonder how we let him get away with all of these guys on one team... maybe this was our faults? Well, he could just be very lucky too. It's a long season, this couldn't possibly keep up, could it?
This is the start of the third season with Jeremy in the pool and this is already his sixth Mover & Shaker nod and he does already have his name on the trophy, winning in his first spin in the pool. You're not going to let him win again, are you?

Brenda & Seward had a very poor start to the season, unable to get any results to go their way this past week. They were tied for 22nd in skater games played, they had a couple starts (and a relief appearance) and it just wasn't adding up for them. Their team finished with 9 points, already 28 points behind 1st place, and they are now left with hoping for a miracle to happen.
Brayden Schenn of the Blues was their only bright spot in the week, picking up 4 points to lead the way, but two forwards were unable to play and Erik Karlsson hasn't been given the green light yet, so her team waits for all their cylinders to fire and then they'll take off like a shot.
The duo do have some company near the bottom to start the season, as newcomer Scott B. and Tony are only a point or two away, so it isn't like they are mired in last place... they can climb out, any time they are ready to.

As it stands, Jeremy has his huge lead over Benson, but then it really gets interesting, as 5 points is all that separates 2nd place to 10th place, which is one of the joys of the first week of the season. Big leads don't always seem to last either, as it is not uncommon to see a double-digit lead disappear in a week's time, so Jeremy's team better keep its foot on the pedal or else it may fall off rather quickly.

It will be quicker to point out who was eliminated, rather than who stayed in, so here goes: Brenda & Seward, Dale B., Eric, Kristy & Don, Neil, Steve and Stuart. All seven teams will not be going any further in this year's survivor pool, but that's not all we have in this pool to win money, so keep your chins up.


STATISTICALLY SPEAKING
Unofficially, scoring was up in Week One. By a lot! Week One of the 2017 season saw 13.4 points per NHL game collected by the hockey pool, which jumped up to 14.7 points per NHL game, which is pretty good, considering there were 32 & 31 games, respectively, in those weeks. We saw around the same number of games played and minutes played by goalies in each NHL game, so everyone is just scoring. Let's hope that this trend continues, but not just for Toronto and Chicago, who have lit it up early on this season.
NEWS AND NOTES

Benson probably didn't mind too much, seeing as though his team did finish 2nd in scoring this week, although it is still behind the leader, Brian, by 13 points. There are still 26 weeks left in the season, lots of time to chop down that lead.

Chris' team got off to a good start, among the leaders in the standings after the first week and he was without one of his guys in the first week and gets him back for the second week. This is pretty good news for his club.

Stuart only missed one skater game this week, which isn't too bad, seeing as though his team is still tied for 7th in skater games played last week, only three games off the lead in that regard. It hasn't quite translated for him on the standings page, as his team starts the week in 12th place.
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