Week Two Newsletter

Everything is slowly coming together through two weeks (one full week) of the NHL regular season. The draft is almost 100% up and running, which looks pretty good. I want to get the Trash Talk page and the prizes announced here soon. The Trash Talk page was supposed to go up this weekend, but the schedule didn't find time for it to be done up, but I'm thinking the early part of this week should work. The prizes will be announced when the jerseys I have on order for the segment prizes arrive, which should be this week.

In the selection sheet pool, I have a number of statistics pages to put up, which will hopefully go up this week. Due to some Excel issues before the season started, I lost a lot of my formatting for some previous year's sheets, so I have to go back and do those up, but they are coming, I assure you. Don't let that stop you from making any trades or checking up on your teams. By the way, have you seen the new-look team pages this year? Are they easier to read?

Anyways, things are coming along smoothly and we should be up to 100% working capacity soon. The NHL season looks like a good one, so be sure to stay tuned to the blog and the newsletters!

It was a very competitive second week to the season for our Player of the Week nod, which is exactly what we want to have happen, here at the OpiatedSherpa.com studios.  It makes for more exciting paragraphs here from week to week, rather than the same old drivel.  There were a couple of candidates for the weekly nod in Week Two, but by arbitrary decision, we have ourselves a winner.

Tomas Vokoun of the Panthers went 2-1-0 in Week Two, posting back-to-back shutouts against the Flames and Lightning, giving him 8 points on the week and Chris a huge lift out of the Basement Dwelling position he was in after Week One.

In Vokoun's only loss, a 2-1 decision to the Canucks on Monday, he still was able to make 33 saves in the contest, which looked pretty good on him.  Thursday, he made 27 saves against the Flames and on Saturday, in the Panthers' home opener, he made 29 saves against their Southeast Division rival.

After Week Two, Vokoun ranks 7th in the league in pool scoring with these 8 points.

The runner-up to the Player of the Week in Week Two goes to Anaheim's Ryan Getzlaf, who also had 8 points in Week Two, but didn't make the cut, due to Vokoun already having his picture ready for the honour.

The Mover and Shaker award this week was also a very closely drawn battle, with five teams within 2 points of each other at the top of the week's standings. A tie for first needed a tie-breaker, which works out to be goals scored in the end and that gives Benson G. our second Mover and Shaker nod for the year.

Benson finished the week with 31 points (11 goals) and with a superior goal total altogether in the first two weeks, he has also drawn himself into 1st place in the standings, albeit a tie for 1st, so it is far from a safe lead.

12 of 14 players on Benson's roster were able to pick up points in the week, led by Patrick Sharp of the Chicago Blackhawks, who finished with 5 points in the week.  Alex Goligoski also had a good week in Pittsburgh, racking up 4 points of his own.  Matt Moulson, R.J. Umberger, Dustin Byfuglien and Tobias Enstrom, all kicked in with 3 points a piece.  A very good effort all around.

Just for fun, the team that led the draft in the 2010 season ended up finishing 6th; in 2009, they finished 7th and in 2008, finished 4th.  Definitely not the best of omens here.

In the Basement this week, we also had a tie for lowest week in the pool.  So, we'll go to our handy-dandy tie-breaker to see who we pick out as the wee little piggy that had his house blow down.

With only 12 points and 3 goals to his team in Week Two, Ryan M. gets the unfortunate nod at the bottom.  Ryan also finished the week in last place in the standings, which he finished with a 3-point edge in that department as well.

It was definitely a tough week for Ryan, who has a couple of players on the shelf, including Rene Bourque and Jamie Benn, but also had a pretty tough week in scoring altogether.  He had five zeros on his active roster and his best players only picked up a couple of points each, so there was very little scoring depth to speak of for him.  Ryan may have a tough time recovering from this spot, thankfully there is a long way to go.

Well, sadly, we only finished with 33 teams this year in the selection sheet pool, so the prizes will be down this year, which I'm kind of sad to say.  I was kind of hoping for a better year, but I can't say I did a great job of pushing it this year either, so that's about that.  The numbers do look a little skewed with some late omissions and submissions to the standings, but we're all good now and can work with what we've got.

Top team in the pool after two weeks is Adam H., who finished with 97 points, 64 points in Week Two alone.  Adam benefitted from good weeks from Henrik Sedin and Daniel Sedin, who had 6 points each in the week.  Patrick Sharp and Tomas Kopecky each had 5 points, while Alex Ovechkin and Martin Brodeur each had 4 points to their name.  With the big week, Adam moved up 7 spots, from 8th to 1st.

Chris M. had a better week moving up and down the list, gaining 13 spots, from 24th to 11th in the standings,  thanks to a 61-point week.

The race is good and tight to start the season, with 9 points separating 1st and 11th, with a much bigger swing available for most teams at any given time.  No one is at all out of this competition, even being 36 points behind 1st after Week Two.  With a little bit of patience and a keen eye watching out for injuries, making your trades when needed, any team can still be in this competition.

Speaking of trades, we did have a couple before Monday morning, as 6th place Gerald and 11th place Chris each made a swap in their line-ups.  They each found a player to move because of injury and did the deed.  Remember, you have until the puck drops on Monday evening to get your trades in for Week Three.

NEWS AND NOTES

After scoring his 1st NHL goal on Sunday night, Ducks defenseman Cam Fowler fell awkwardly into the end boards in Anaheim's game against the Coyotes. Fowler left the game and didn't return.  He was kept out of the remainder of the game for precautionary measures and reports are saying that he should be fine to continue his rookie season.

Minnesota Wild defenseman Brent Burns had to leave Saturday night's contest in a walking boot, thanks to suffering a foot injury against the Columbus Blue Jackets. There are several conflicting reports to how serious the foot injury is, saying it is either fairly minor and there is an 80% chance he'll play on Tuesday night to it being a broken foot and he will likely miss a few weeks with the injury. Right now, we'll call him day-to-day, but don't be surprised if that gets changed before too long.

It appears that the Nashville Predators are ready to regain their number one goalie again, since they have now assigned Mark Dekanich back down to the Milwaukee Admirals of the AHL. Dekanich was up with the big club, backing up Anders Lindback this past week, when Pekka Rinne went down with a lower-body injury. Dekanich was hopeful of being the Preds back-up this year, but fell short in training camp.

Ed Jovanovski was not dressed for the Coyotes as they took on the Ducks on Sunday night.  He was scratched because of an upper-body injury, which seems to be a popular diagnosis in Phoenix at the moment.  Jovanovski is considered to be out day-to-day, which might sit a little better with Neil in the draft and if there are any owners of Jovanovski from Box 11.

Link to the Injury/News Page

HOCKEY NIGHT IN CANADA

A return of the Toronto Maple Leafs to Hockey Night in Canada leads off the usual Saturday doubleheader this coming weekend, as they host the Philadelphia Flyers. The Flyers are the most popular team in this year's draft, with 13 picks, so there should be plenty of interest in that game from the 20 people in the pool. The Leafs only have eight selections in the pool this time around, which isn't the worst in the pool, but not too far off.

In the late game, the Edmonton Oilers play on back-to-back weekends, this time hosting the San Jose Sharks in, what should be, a pretty good test for the young team from up North. The Sharks were a popular team in the draft, having 11 players taken this year, while the Oilers youth and potential also saw 11 picks made from their side. If the Oilers can keep this little hot streak of theirs alive, they should give the Sharks a good run for their money.