It was a little bit of a runaway weekend away from the computer, so the updates were few and far between, up until Sunday night, that is. Nevertheless, this is the first Monday of a long stretch of weeks where I'll be waking up at home on some long weekends (for the rest of the calendar year) and the Newsletter could be jam-packed full of good stuff. Maybe. We'll see.
Monahan and the Flames played in four games in the week, winning all four and starting one hell of a run in the standings at the moment. The 24-year old is front and centre on this current winning streak for the Flames notching a pair of points in each game. On Monday, it was a goal and an assist against the Maple Leafs, Tuesday saw a pair of assists in Buffalo, Thursday's return home had a goal and an assist against Colorado and on Saturday, a pair of goals against the Blackhawks.
This great week has done wonders for his overall totals, as he has lifted himself into 9th overall in hockey pool scoring with 8 goals and 18 points in 15 games, as the Flames offense has been surging of late.
Wes' team has certainly benefited in the hockey pool standings, with his team collecting 27 points and jumping up four spots to 12th place in Week Five. Wes has seen his fair share of Player of the Week nods over the years, this is his ninth mention on the blog for one of his players, the first since Week Twenty of the 2017 season.
Leading the way for Grant's team was Buffalo's Jack Eichel and Tampa Bay's Ryan McDonagh, both of them finished the week with 6 points a piece. Vancouver's Brock Boeser and Tampa Bay's Nikita Kucherov were both good as well, finishing with 5 points, while Calgary's Mikael Backlund had 4 points in the week.
The opening week of the season certainly didn't help Grant's team very much, 10 points and finishing in 24th spot was a crawl out of the gates, but his team has now flown its way up to 5th place after Week Five, so they are prepared to be in the mix for the better part of the regular season now. If he can somehow work on that goaltending situation in the Week Nine Waiver Draft, his team might be one to look out for by the end of the season.
In positional scoring, Grant's team currently ranks 3rd at the forward spot, 1st among all defensemen, but dead last in goaltending. I'm sure this was no fluke, as the rush for goaltending does become the crux of a lot of teams in the hockey pool and it looks like Grant is out to prove that theory correct.
Three players on his team finished with 2 points a piece to lead the way for his team: Patrick Marleau of the Leafs, Jakob Silfverberg of the Ducks and Drew Doughty of the Kings. Eight players, including both of his goalies, did much, much worse, finishing with no points in the week and acting more as cement shoes in the standings, than acting as his angels, keeping his team afloat in the money positions.
According to my counts, since the start of the 2010 regular season pool, this is only the second time that Benson has been featured as the Basement Dweller. It's the first time he's been on here since Week One of the 2014 season, just over five years ago.
There are plenty of teams that want a piece of him and have an ample shot at it. Four teams sit 1 point back at 126 points, Brian, Troy, Kristy & Don and Grant have those spots right now. Steve is only 3 points back, Stacey M. is 5 points back, 15 points will stretch as far back as 12th place at the start of Week Six. That's pretty crazy stuff right there, wicked competitive!
Even Scott, who sees his team in last place today, is only 39 points back of 1st place, which isn't the end of the world, just yet. Some clever selections at the Waiver Draft has the ability to at least get his team possibly competitive and a touch closer, making the season more interesting.
If you have been eyeing up the available players page off of the standings recently, you'll notice that there are a handful of rookies available for your picking pleasure, if you so choose. It may or may not get you into this race in a few weeks.
Four teams lead the pool in the game-winners category: Benson, John P., Kristy & Don and Stuart's team all have 9 winners, Chelsea and Jesse each have 8 winners, Brenda & Seward and Grant's team each have 7 winners and it goes down the line pretty quickly. The race is heating up here, which is good, since we need one of these mini-games to be interesting.
Goon team of the week belongs to Stacey C., who saw his team collect 28 minutes in penalties in Week Five, taking top spot in the PIM pool with 105 total minutes. Stuart's team, albeit on top of the standings, is also gooning it up well, sitting 2nd with 94 minutes and Jeremy's team is 3rd with 92 minutes.
STATISTICALLY SPEAKING
Well, the injuries and player demotions have been doing a number to our overall participation numbers of late. The pool saw a season-low in skater games played on average in each NHL game, but on the bright side, some of our goalies are finally starting to return from injury and we saw the second-best average of time spent in the crease for an NHL game this year. It didn't help the scoring though. It was a season low, as the pool only collected 12.69 points on average from the 45 games played last week.
We are going to see a busy week though! Week Six is our first week this season with 50 games, so get your points while they're hot!
NEWS AND NOTES
This injury did keep our pool leader, Stuart, from gaining any more in his overall lead, so I would have to think that most teams were pretty okay with this piece of news, if they were watching. No one wants to see Stuart run away with the standings again this year.
No comments:
Post a Comment