The 2019 regular season is now in full swing and this occasion gets marked by the opening Newsletter of the season, which thankfully drops on a holiday Monday, where I can sit down and get the better part of it done in peace. The format remains the same, we'll get through the top performers of the week, we'll talk the money race and we'll have a look at how the mini-games are shaping up as well.
Welcome one and all! Don't forget to check back every Monday morning for the week's report and see if your player or team made the headlines.
Matthews led the blue and white gang with 5 goals and 8 points in the opening three games of the season, which consisted of a 2-goal opening night against the Canadiens, goal and an assist against the Senators on Saturday and then 2 goals and 2 assists against the Blackhawks on Sunday night. He appears to be really fired up and ready to go, which could be bad news for the league and for the rest of us poolies.
This is back-to-back seasons where Benson has had the Week One Player of the Week nod now and his start gets even better, if you continue reading here right away.
Matthews was top dog on his team in Week One, finishing with 8 points, as we all saw above, but he also had great weeks from Alexander Radulov of the Stars, Patrick Marleau of the Leafs and Jakob Silfverberg of the Ducks, who all had 4 points, while Tyler Toffoli of the Kings and Erik Johnson of the Avalanche both had 3-point weeks to help him out.
Out of his 14-player roster, five of his players were not able to score any points in the opening week, as mentioned, neither one of his goalies got a game in, one was injured and the other's number wasn't called, so this makes it a very unique Mover & Shaker nod, as it rarely happens without some help from the crease.
Historically, this is Benson's 8th mention as Mover & Shaker on the blog, he was mentioned twice last season and the 30 points is his lowest total he has seen as Mover & Shaker.
On the bright side from last season, they really embarrassed the lot of us, by not only digging themselves a hole last year, they managed to climb out of it and climb up the standings, finishing 7th, 41 points out of the money. For their sake, I hope they can turn it around much quicker and make up that ground or else it's mini-games for them!
Kyle Palmieri of the Devils and Martin Jones of the Sharks were their top performers, each picking up 2 points in the week. Deciding to take on the unsigned William Nylander in Toronto and an injured Christian Dvorak in Arizona didn't help their cause any, as they were two players of 10 that didn't pick up any points for them in the week.
Next week... it'll all turn around next week!
Also having 5 points and vaulting his team into 2nd place in the race, Henri Jokiharju of the Blackhawks lifted Brian's team right into the thick of the race and if he can keep that sort of pace up, Brian might have a good go at it at the Waiver Draft to give Clayton a good challenge this year.
So, it landed on the wheel and this is what we're stuck with. After Week One, only two shootouts happened in the league, 11 players had shootout attempts and only three players had goals. For Troy's team, he had three of those shots and a couple of those goals, so he starts the season with the early lead in the skills competition mini-game.
The answer is no. Statistically, the game-winning goals are only counted in regulation and in overtime, so they are separate stats.
Of the 31 games played in Week One, minus two shootouts... the pool still collected 20 game-winners in the week, leaving nine out there in statistical limbo, not for us to collect upon. That's still a pretty good turnaround. Sadly, Benson leads in this category as well, his team managed to collect three winners, but five other teams are right there with two each. 13 teams in total were able to collect a winner, so this could be a fun race through the next 26 weeks.
STATISTICALLY SPEAKING
I do like some comparables, when it comes to hockey pool stats and since we have made it three straight seasons with 25 teams in the hockey pool, that means we can have some direct comparisons to start the year.
2019 | 2018 | 2017 | |
NHL Games | 31 | 31 | 32 |
Total Points | 446 | 461 | 430 |
Games Played | 574 | 559 | 583 |
Minutes Played | 3,538 | 3,430 | 3,276 |
None of the stats seem to be very far away from each other, so I suppose we could just call it all average. We picked a good bunch of healthy players and goalies, so that's a plus, but we're not setting any records this year, so that's kind of disappointing. Here's hoping that all the recent injuries don't hamper our numbers too badly in Week Two.
I do have some more news and notes to touch on, but first, I have to get that goalie post out... I think.
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