Week Twenty-Two Newsletter

It's going to be somewhat of a quick Newsletter this week, as time wasn't in the cards for this week's publication.

There was a tie-breaking situation for the Player of the Week nod, but the tie-breaker was pretty easy this week, as it was a forward against a goalie and as we all know, the goalies don't do well here, especially if there was only one goal scored.

Sure enough, with 4 goals and 4 assists, Calgary's Jiri Hudler is our Player of the Week, knocking off Colorado's Semyon Varlamov for the honour.

Hudler played in four games this past week and in each game, he was able to register a couple of points.  A goal and an assist against both Boston and Philadelphia, scored a pair of goals against Detroit and then added a couple of assists against Ottawa to finish off his week.

The 31-year old Czech forward has had a good season, to this point, in Calgary, picking up 23 goals and 56 points in 63 games with the Flames, which is good for 37th overall in pool scoring.

Mike took the Flames' leading scorer down in the 7th round of the draft, making him into quite the bargain pick, since he is getting 2nd round production out of him this season.  No one really took the Flames seriously this year, so Mike cashed in on at least one of his picks.

Brian's team just continues to roll in this third segment and he is definitely being carried by his Waiver Draft goalies... so much so, he could be in the money before this is all said and done.

Week Twenty-Two was good to Brian, as his team picked up 32 points and moved into 6th place in the standings, now only 28 points out of the money.  In the last four week, Brian has already gained on Wes, who sits in 3rd, by 21 points, so with five weeks to go, it just doesn't seem out of the question that his team could do it.

His goalies indeed led the way in the week, as both Devan Dubnyk of the Wild and Cam Talbot of the Rangers each finished the week with 6 points.  John Tavares of the Islanders had 5 points and Jason Pominville of the Wild had 4 points, also in the mix to lead the way.

Brian did lose Nathan MacKinnon this week, so that is the only real danger of not making it that he faces.

Tough week for Brenda & Seward, as their magical run out of the Basement of the pool peaked at about 11th place in the standings.  Their team only managed to pick up 10 points this past week and it had dropped them back down to 17th and there is still some more room to drop.

Their best player this week was Anze Kopitar of the Kings, who had 4 points, but seven active zeroes on their team page sunk them in the end.  There was just no getting away from it this week, thanks in part to injuries to one of their key players and a couple of good support players.

This looks to be the end of the line for the pool's second duo, with only five weeks left to go in the season.

TROPHY TALK

For the big trophy, Kristy & Don's lead is down to 78 points from 79 points the week before.  I know what you're thinking... oh, lah-dee-dah!  For the rest of the money, Grant S. now holds a 14-point lead over Wes, as that shrunk by a couple of points.  Wes opened up his gap on 4th to 20 points, something that might be tough to shrink in this last stretch, barring a miracle or two.

The Olli bobblehead race tightened up again, as Allan was caught again by Wyllie and only 1 point separates the two teams from infamy.

The Jordan bobblehead is all Allan's at this point.  His team had the low total of skater games in the week and a couple teams would have to rest all of their players for a couple weeks, just to get a shot at this trophy.

Finally, the third segment, it still belongs to Brian.  His lead over Benson is now 19 points, but with a good week or two there, Benson could change his fortunes.

WINNING EVERY WEEK

We have a winner!  Brenda & Seward bowed out after Ben Scrivens of the Oilers couldn't keep their team alive in Week Twenty-Two.  Scrivens had been doing an admirable job without Henrik Lundqvist of the Rangers to help their team out, thanks to a vascular injury, but this week wasn't his week.

Kristy & Don take the title, thanks to a Frederik Andersen win against the Coyotes on Tuesday.

ROOKIE SCORING

Dale B.'s team picked up another 9 points from their freshmen this week and their leading gap is now 8 points over Wilton, who is struggling to keep up with only one rookie on his side.  Yes, this race appears to be over.

LIGHTING THE LAMP

No teams dropped out of the goal scoring streaks this week, although Grant K. just barely got the 3 goals he needed to stay alive.

Kristy & Don and Stacey M. still have the two most impressive teams, each with streaks of 4 goals per week, while Stacey C. and Ryan continue with their 3-goal weeks as well.

CHRIS STEWART VS ERIK COLE

In Minnesota, Chris Stewart picked up a couple points with his new team this week, while Detroit's new acquisition, Erik Cole, also picked up a couple of points, so the race doesn't change through the week.  Cole currently leads, 10-6, which means $4 heading to Clayton, if the season were to finish up today.

ROUND 4 IN THE DRAFT

Pick #	Round	Pool	Player	NHL	POS	Points
71	4	Dale Corley	Henrik Sedin	VAN	F	60
80	4	Stacey Campbell	Daniel Sedin	VAN	F	58
78	4	Stacey McDonald	Max Pacioretty	MTL	F	57
91	4	Cam Wagner	Brent Burns	SAN	D	49
72	4	Derek Wilton	Blake Wheeler	WPG	F	48
76	4	Mike Somerville	Mark Giordano	CAL	D	48
81	4	Dale Bradley	Patrick Marleau	SAN	F	48
90	4	Grant Kanwischer	Patrice Bergeron	BOS	F	47
73	4	Brenda Farrell	James Van Riemsdyk	TOR	F	46
89	4	Brian Towers	Jason Pominville	MIN	F	46
82	4	Leo Macht	Martin St. Louis	NYR	F	44
86	4	Derek Wyllie	Mark Streit	PHI	D	43
88	4	Troy Berkley	Eric Staal	CAR	F	42
84	4	Kristy & Don	Keith Yandle	NYR	D	41
74	4	Allan Scott	Ryan O'Reilly	COL	F	39
83	4	Tony Dourado	Chris Kunitz	PIT	F	39
70	4	Scott Gilmore	Loui Eriksson	BOS	F	38
77	4	Wes Moroz	Paul Stastny	STL	F	38
85	4	Clayton Corley	Drew Doughty	LOS	D	38
92	4	Stuart Greenley	Niklas Kronwall	DET	D	37
79	4	Grant Saskiw	James Neal	NAS	F	34
75	4	Benson Greenley	David Krejci	BOS	F	26
87	4	Ryan Miller	Anton Khudobin	CAR	G	0

This round has a solid mix of teams that are doing well, near the bottom of this round's standings, while some other team did quite well in this round and not so well in the standings.  With only one drop in the round, there is definitely a huge discrepancy between the best player taken in the round and the worst.

STATISTICALLY SPEAKING

After the dust settled after the Trade Deadline, it really appears that players got their legs underneath them and we finally saw some scoring again.  Weeks Twenty-One and Twenty-Two each had 47 NHL games on their schedule, but this past week saw 542 points collected, compared to the 481 collected the week before.

Games played and minutes played were only up slightly, so it really says to meant that players were bearing down on the playoff races and I think we might see some increased scoring to finish the season, barring more major injuries.

NEWS AND NOTES

There wasn't much from Sunday's action for news and notes, so we'll look ahead, as we've already heard that the Maple Leafs will be scratching forward Nazem Kadri for being late to a team meeting on Sunday. Kadri was sent home without getting a chance to practice and he is now being held out of the lineup for the game against the Islanders.

This is yet another little speed bump in Brian's quest to race up to the top for some pool money this season.  Kadri is likely required to help his cause out down the stretch, so he should be cursing the fact that his player can't make it to a simple player meeting in the morning.

The word is out of Detroit, that goalie Jonas Gustavsson was injured over the weekend, so the team has made the move on Monday to recall Petr Mrazek from Grand Rapids to back-up Jimmy Howard going forward.  Mrazek has been down in the minors for the last few weeks, but knowing the Detroit goaltending duo this season, either or were going to end up back on the shelf, I had that feeling... I'm not sure about if you felt the same way or not.

Scott has only picked up 40 minutes from his Week Eighteen Waiver Draft pick-up since activation and there wasn't a win attached to it.  There is no real indication as to how much playing time Mrazek may get on his recall, but any will help Scott, in theory.

The Philadelphia Flyers announced on Monday, that they will be without defenseman Michael Del Zotto for the next 7-to-10 days with an upper-body injury.  There is no real indication about what the injury actually is, but the Flyers don't fear he will be out for too long.

Chalk another injury concern up to Allan's team.  Yes, it is exactly what he needs to take home both non-pool winning bobbleheads this year.

Link to the Injury/News Page