Where did that season go? That was 27 weeks done in a huge hurry, wasn't it?
The 2019 regular season is now in the books and we turn the page towards the playoffs and just to reiterate, there won't be any playoff pool this year. Lack of time and a lack of interest added up to the decision not to put the sheet together. That's not to say the blog won't be active in this off-season, things will still be going on here, but it will be more for the preparation for the 2020 regular season.
So, we'll go through the Week Twenty-Seven honours and then we'll move right into the annual nods, including our prize winners and such.
Tarasenko and the Blues played in four games in the final week of the season and the Russian winger was able to post points in each of them. He kicked off his week on Monday with a goal against the Avalanche, followed by a goal and an assist against the Blackhawks on Wednesday, a pair of assists against the Flyers on Thursday and then a goal and an assist against the Canucks in the Saturday matinee. With 3 goals and 4 assists, he edged four other players for the top spot in the weekly scoring ranks and the Blues will now open the playoffs in Winnipeg in the middle of the week.
Overall, the Blues forward, with his 2nd Player of the Week nod of the season, finished 67th overall in hockey pool scoring, tallying 33 goals and 68 points in 76 games with the Blues. Eric took him with the 41st pick in the draft this year, so it turned out that he was a bit of a disappointment in that regard, falling 26 spots below his draft position, a whole round worse, which is a tough pill to swallow.
My overall projection for Tarasenko at the beginning of the season was 70 points and in my 5-point segments, that's pretty much a win. I probably wouldn't have taken him as high as Eric did, but it wasn't a terrible bet at the same time.
Stuart's team, despite the scratches, only had two players to fail to pick up points in the week and his team was led by Dylan Strome of the Blackhawks, who didn't have anything to play for in the regular season standings in the last week, but still posted 6 points. Strome was one of the best pickups in the Waiver Draft this season, posting 48 points since being picked up in the Week Nine swap, 2nd to teammate Erik Gustafsson, who was taken by Tony.
Stuart's other strong performers in the week were Patrick Kane of the Blackhawks, who had 5 points, and then Jeff Skinner of the Sabres, Brady Tkachuk of the Senators and Mikhail Sergachev of the Lightning, each posting 3 points.
In total, Stuart finished with four Mover & Shakers this season and he didn't post his first one until Week Sixteen, so it was just a massive push at the end of the season.
Scott's team finished the regular season with back-to-back Basement Dweller nods, only posting 23 points in those two weeks and it was just bad luck, right from the get-go this season. In the last week of the season, Jake Guentzel of the Penguins tried to rally his troops, finishing with 4 points to lead the way, but the rest of the bodies were not listening, as six of his active players were not posting any points, thanks mostly to injury and healthy scratches, but just ice-cold play was to blame for the better part of the weeks and the season.
In total this season, Scott's team finished with six Basement Dweller nods and finished 16 out of 27 weeks in the 25th position in the standings. His team was out of the basement for Weeks Twenty-Four and Twenty-Five, but fell back in, thanks to these weekly nods and that was about it for his team. It had to be a long year for his team, but next year will be a different story, right Scott?
Kucherov was only a mild bargain pick, as Grant took him with the 5th overall selection at the draft, a good heads up pick at the time. The Lightning forward really came up trumps this season and dominated for the better part of the year, earning the nod by a fair margin.
Top spot among all goaltenders was Andrei Vasilevskiy of the Lightning, he finished with 93 points and was ranked 12th among all players in the hockey pool this year. Dale C. took him with the 2nd overall pick in the draft this year and didn't quite get the return he was probably hoping for, but he was still ranked among 1st round picks, which isn't too bad.
The top defenseman in scoring was Brent Burns of the Sharks, he was the clear winner of this mention, finishing with 83 points in all 82 games this season, good enough for 25th overall in pool scoring, which would equate to the last pick in the 1st round in the draft. Brenda & Seward took a shot with him in the 2nd round, 36th overall and it turned out in their favour, for sure. It's a shame their team couldn't pick it up around him though.
The final tally sees Stuart's team finishing with 783 points, which was 40 points better than Stacey M., who finished in 2nd place and 44 points better than Kristy & Don, who finished in 3rd place. These are your three money winners for the overall standings, Stuart's team wins $700 for top spot in the pool, while Stacey will take home $300 and the duo will win twice their money back, $120.
Rasmus Dahlin of the Sabres led the way for his team in the rookie pool, finishing with 44 points in all 82 games this season, followed by Week Nine pickup Dominik Kahun of the Blackhawks, who collected 26 points in 54 games after being activated. A pretty good pickup in the end, indeed.
In the end, Grant's team won his money back in the draft, collecting 13 goals through the season, Jack Eichel of the Sabres and Nikita Kucherov of the Lightning each posted 4 shootout goals this season to lead the way. It's a small consolation for a team, however, which was in the running for the top three spots in the overall standings, as Grant's team was in a money spot at the end of 14 weeks this season, only to drop down to 5th in the last couple of weeks.
Brad Marchand of the Bruins led the way for Stuart's team this season, posting 9 winners this season, followed by three others with 7 winners as well. Having clutch players is pretty key to the hockey pool in the overall sense, but it paid off in a mini-game as well this season.
In the grand scheme of things, there were 1,185 game-winning goals posted this season in the NHL and the hockey pool collected on 825 of them, reeling in 69.6% of them, which isn't a bad total.
At the end of the year, Troy's goalies ranked 6th in scoring overall, finishing with 114 points, 34 points back of Kristy & Don, who won the category and some money overall.
Teuvo Teravainen of the Hurricanes and Ron Hainsey of the Maple Leafs were each a +30 this season, helping to guide the way for Neil's team to the title.
STATISTICALLY SPEAKING
Looking at last year's Newsletter for the end of the season, the pool collected a total of 15,985 points from the 22,893 points that were registered from 985 players that touched the ice in the season. That's a collection rate of 69.8% of points, which isn't too bad.
This season, the pool collected 16,089 points, up 104 points from last season, and the league posted a total of 23,216 points, up 323 points from last season. This gives us a collection rate of 69.3% of the total points, which obviously is slightly down, but only slightly. We're taking a good cut out of those points and that's pretty impressive. In total, 999 players took to the ice this season, which is also up and we certainly were not going to get to them all, even with Waiver Drafts and such.
Two years ago, we had a collection rate of 70.9%... so are we collectively getting worse? Let's do better next year, yeah?
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