Well, I'm not sure that everyone has sort of picked up on the idea of what the Waiver Draft is all about, since looking at the numbers, the bottom teams didn't get all that much better and the top team is now absolutely running away with everything. It's almost embarrassing, really.
Marchand and company played in four games in Week Nineteen and the "little ball of hate" had points in all four games, actually posting a pair of points in each game. A pair of assists against the Islanders on Tuesday, a pair of assists against the Rangers on Wednesday, a goal and an assist against the Kings on Saturday and then another goal and an assist against the Avalanche on Sunday. There was certainly a level of consistency in there.
The pest has now brought his overall totals up to 21 goals and 65 points in 55 games this season, which is now good enough for 14th in the overall hockey pool scoring ranks, well within the 1st round of selections, if we were to do the draft again today.
There's no question that Marchand has been one of Stuart's best picks this season, having taken him with his 2nd round pick, 37th overall, he's getting quite a bit of value out of this top pick in a season where goalies haven't been nearly as valuable as years previous.
Patrick Kane of the Blackhawks also had 5 points in the week, followed by Brayden Point of the Lightning and Thomas Greiss of the Islanders, each posting 4 points to round out his most notable players.
It's an embarrassment of riches on Stuart's team and now his team has almost put itself out of reach for anyone else to really catch it. The most remarkable statistic on his team, however, is that it isn't a plus team when it comes to the plus/minus stat, as a collective. His team is a combined -9 this season and was a -3 this past week, which suggests that his team does get most of its points on the power play or at the very least, doesn't play a lot of defense.
Five players on his team finished with 2 points to lead the way for his team, while three skaters and both of his goalies failed to register a point and now his team is 25 points behind 24th place, getting to the point where his team may not be able to get out of last place before the end of the year.
It isn't like Scott's team didn't have their chances this week either. They were able to play 40 skater games, which was tied for 12th, only six games behind the leader, and his goalies combined for 180 minutes or three starts. They just couldn't pull it off. It's just been an unfortunate combination of players and bad luck this year for Scott and not even the Waiver Drafts have been able to save his team.
Stacey M.'s team finished 2nd in the weekly scoring, which means that no one was making up any ground on her team either this week and the gap between 2nd and 3rd place, Grant's team, is now 15 points. That's not quite as daunting, but it's getting there.
After the money teams, it does stay relatively interesting. Kristy & Don now crept to within 1 point of Grant's team, while Wes' team also made up ground on Wes, now 10 points behind. Then there is a bit of a drop off to 6th place, where Steve lost ground and is now 17 points behind Wes' team. Minus a really big Mover & Shaker week, the top five look pretty solid for the rest of the way.
Toronto's Andreas Johnsson was the top rookie in the week, finishing with 6 points and adding a blip to the radar from Wilton's team in Week Nineteen. Wilton's team is now 7th in the mini-game, with 28 points.
Clayton's team was tops in the week, picking up 4 goals, but only made up a single goal on the overall lead, which also belongs to Stuart. Stuart's team sits at 38 game-winners, followed by Clayton's team at 29. There's still potential for this race to get interesting, then again, who really knows?
Stuart's team still leads the PIM pool as well, which doesn't pay, but his lead has been slowly shrinking through the last segment and a bit now, as his team concentrates on scoring, scoring and scoring some more. His team's lead here is now 18 minutes over Scott's team and 25 minutes over Ryan's team. There's room to shuffle some more teams in here somewhere before the end of the year.
STATISTICALLY SPEAKING
Thanks to the Waiver Draft, we got what we wanted! More participation and more points! We set new season highs in skater games played (995), goalie minutes played (5,669) and points scored (724) in the 55 NHL games this week, which was all really, really great! I don't know how long it's all going to last, but it's trending in the right direction.
NEWS AND NOTES
The loss of Palat was a skater game missed for Stacey M., who still finished 2nd in the weekly scoring this week and wasn't going to catch Stuart, so it wasn't a huge loss there. The return of Stralman was good news for Troy's team, but maybe too little, too late there.
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