Week Twenty-Seven Newsletter, Year-End Edition

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.



It was an outright win for Vladimir Tarasenko of the St. Louis Blues, who finished atop the weekly scoring ranks among all the players, finishing with 7 points in the final week of the season.  He helped guide the Blues back into the playoff picture after a dismal first half of the regular season and the Blues almost topped the Central Division in the end, falling just a couple of points short in the end.

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.

Well, even at the end of the regular season, the top two teams were still running away with the tallies and Stuart topped the ranks in the weekly standings again, finishing with 32 points, a strong finish to what was a pretty dominating season all the way around, but we'll have more on that a little bit later on in the Newsletter.

There was literally no worries, when Stuart saw three of his key players hit the news/injury page for being a healthy scratch, not only for the overall title, but his team was just that deep all season long, it didn't seem to matter if there were any players on a cold streak, his team just picked up those players in that week and it was very much the same in this last week of the season.

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. 

The Basement Dweller race was a bit of a tight one, coming right down to the wire on the final day of the season, but as apt as Stuart's team taking the Mover & Shaker in the final week of the season, it seems equally apt that Scott's team ended up in the Basement Dweller nod for the last week, finishing in last place in the overall standings, unable to climb out of the spot, thanks to a 12-point week.

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?



It was a record-setting season for Nikita Kucherov, as he set the all-time season scoring record for a Russian-born player, registering a goal and an assist against the Bruins on Sunday, bringing his overall total up to 128 points and he takes home the MVP nod for the hockey pool season, far and away the best player in the scoring ranks this season.  Connor McDavid of the Oilers was 2nd place in the list, finishing with 116 points, hardly causing any grief to the Lightning forward.

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.

Back-to-back titles... the sound of it is terrible at the very root of it all, but it's the sad truth.  Stuart will now his name on the trophy, coming this week, for a 3rd time, which is a hockey pool best and it has never happened in back-to-back seasons.  I hope that everyone has paid attention to his strategy or at the very least, found out which store he buys his horseshoes from.

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.

The mini-games were instituted to keep some of the teams out of the overall race still interested in the pool and the website and it worked pretty well with the rookie pool, as Derek B. took the rookies to the limit, making good use of the Waiver Draft, adding youthful bodies to his team and he ended up running away with the mini-game.  Surprisingly, he was the only one that took to the rookie pool in the Waiver Draft, no one else really did.  Nevertheless, his team finished with 131 points from the freshmen and has won the $60 entry fee back (or he could put it towards next year). 

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.

Mini-game #2 was the shootout goals game and I thought this one would have been a little bit more exciting in the season, but it was kind of a drag, as there wasn't a ton of excitement this season.  In the NHL, there were only 639 attempts in the shootout this season, where the pool collected 499 of them.  Out of those 639 attempts, only 188 goals were scored, 151 of them were collected by the pool, so we did really well in the overall sense, collecting 80% of the goals out of 78% of the shots.

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.

Maybe the game-winning goals had too much of a correlation with the overall standings, as a team that saw goals being scored was getting points in the overall standings and there was always a good chance that these goals could stand up to being winners on a nightly basis.  Mini-game #3 belonged to our overall leader, Stuart, who finished tops in the overall goal scoring with 269 goals this season, 50 of them ended up being game-winners to take an extra $60 out of the kitty.

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.

Moving on quickly to the mini-games that didn't make the cut from the wheel, Stuart would have won another one, if the PIM pool was still working and no one made any swaps for it in the Waiver Draft.  Stuart's team topped Scott's team, 522-507, thanks to a big final week for the point total winner.  Scott's team just couldn't catch a break in any of the statistics this season, I guess.

Troy's pairing of goalies, Marc-Andre Fleury of the Golden Knights and Aaron Dell of the Sharks, lasted 16 weeks with registering a win in each week, which would have been good enough for the goalie survivor pool, if there was money involved.  Troy later swapped Dell for Brian Elliott of the Flyers for the overall points race, but it didn't really pan out for his team in the end. 

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.

Neil's team was a dynamo in the plus/minus department, especially in the final third of the season, where it was a combined +69 in the last nine weeks, bringing his overall total up to a rating of +137.  That was 56 points better than Dale C.'s team, but it was really good for nothing in the end.  Neil's team did finish 7th overall in the standings, but there's no money in that.

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.

Clayton and Stuart would have split the money in the All-Star Game competition, if there was one, as they both collected 9 points each in the 3-on-3 tournament that they held in San Jose this past year.  That's all that Stuart needed, was another thing to win or at the very least, split.

There were only a couple of outdoor games this season, the Winter Classic in Notre Dame and the Stadium Series game in Philadelphia and if we collected the points from those two games to hand out some money, Troy's team would have taken this one as well, leading the pool with 7 points from those two games combined.  The Flyers were his key to victory in this one, having three of them with a couple of points each and walking away with 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?

2019 All-Star Mini Game

It was definitely another successful All-Star weekend, as the NHL and their best players really put on a good show, between the Skills Competition on Friday night and the 3-on-3 tournament on Saturday night.  It's certainly a showcase of skill and speed and there was more than enough for everyone in San Jose.

In the tournament, the Central Division finally got the best of the Pacific in the opener, stomping them 10-4.  The Colorado connection of Mikko Rantanen and Gabriel Landeskog were everywhere and putting numbers up in the first half, cruising to victory.

The Eastern Conference match-up was much better, as it was a close game for the better part of the time, but the Metropolitan Division really poured it on in the 2nd half, scoring four unanswered goals and taking the game 7-4 in the end.  Sidney Crosby of the Penguins and Seth Jones of the Blue Jackets were definite standouts in that game.

It all led up to the final, between the Central and Metropolitan Divisions and it was Crosby again, taking the lime light, as he led the Eastern squad to a 10-5 victory, thanks to 2 goals and 3 assists in the game, earning MVP honours at the tournament and taking top spot in the scoring ranks for the night as well, finishing with 4 goals and 4 assists in the two games.

Crosby's effort wasn't quite enough for the mini-game victory for Eric though.  The 8 points was good, but since Crosby was his only representation for the weekend, it fell short to both Clayton and Stuart, who each had five games played between the three games and they both came away with 5 goals and 9 points from their players.  If this was a paid mini-game, it would be considered a tie, since they were even on goals, no wins and points.

More importantly though, it was a good break, entertainment was had and now we can concentrate on the stretch run to the playoffs.

Week Seventeen Newsletter

It's a very early edition of the Newsletter this week, since we're heading into the All-Star break, we might as well get the job done right away and shoot right into the Week Eighteen Waiver Draft.  There's nothing finer than a solid head start, if one can get it.  First, we'll go over the short week that was, which probably won't make for a very long Newsletter.



5 points was the best total of the week and it was a 4-way tie for top spot, so we had to get deep into the tie-breaking process to get there. T.J. Oshie of the Capitals and Joe Pavelski had 1 goal, Eric Staal had 3 goals, but as you can see, it was Alex Ovechkin of the Capitals taking top spot, finishing with 4 goals out of his 5 points.

Ovechkin posted a hat-trick and an assist against the Sharks on Tuesday and then another goal against the Maple Leafs on Wednesday night, taking the tie-breaker without much fuss in the shortened week.

This week brings his totals up to 37 goals and 57 points in 50 games this season, which is good enough for 15th overall in the hockey pool scoring ranks.  Ovechkin was selected by the fans to be the captain of the Metropolitan Division, but has since backed out to rest and he will miss the team's next game after the break, Friday, February 1st against the Flames.

Jesse is getting a good return for the 19th overall selection in the draft this year, since Ovechkin is four spots ahead of his pick selection.

There was another tie-breaker to be had in the Newsletter in this shortened week, as the Mover & Shaker was a sprint to the finish and there were a number of teams that were vying for it and only two teams came in for the photo finish, both Dale C. and Neil each topped the pool with 14 points in Week Seventeen, but the results of the snap at the line showed Neil edging out Dale by a 4-3 margin in the goal scoring department, which means Neil is our Mover & Shaker of the week.

The Mover & Shaker nod didn't really hurt Neil's team when it comes to the Waiver Draft, his team didn't move up any in the standings, remaining at 19th position, but now his team is only 2 points back of 18th and is also poised to make up some ground, when he is able to drop some players in the next 11 days.

However, this week, it was led by Carolina's Teuvo Teravainen, who had 4 points in his pair of games this week, the young Finn is really coming along down there.  Also having a good week for Neil's team were Aleksander Barkov of the Panthers and Charlie Coyle of the Wild, each posting 3 points as well.

Neil's team has a couple of easy drops to make, one due to injury and the other in the minors, so his team will have some options out there, when it comes to his turn.  Being in 19th place, 65 points out of the money, it might be high time to do a little bit of research to see if there are any gains he can make in a mini-game to get his money back.  Can he somehow find 15 more game-winning goals in the available players that are left?

The light schedule was also going to wreak some havoc on the standings, because some pool teams were destined to be heavy on certain divisions or just have some horrible, horrible luck.  Chelsea's team felt that bad luck.  Her team did have a number of opportunities for points, two goalie starts, nine skater games, but only 1 point to show for it all.  Just a truly disappointing result.

Jeff Petry of the Canadiens was her only saving grace, saving her team from no points with a single assist in last night's game against the Coyotes.

On the plus side, her pick did improve by one slot for the Waiver Draft, as her team lost a spot in the standings.  Her team will now pick 4th and will possibly go fishing for some more game-winning goals as well.

Even though there wasn't a lot of action this week, there was some movement in the top three teams in Week Seventeen, as Grant's team leapfrogged over Stacey M. for 2nd place, giving up that crucial selection spot in the Waiver Draft, which I mock drafted him to pass on both picks anyways.  Grant's team now has a small 2-point buffer over Stacey's team, but more importantly, made up some ground on Stuart's team in the week, now back by 22 points.

Kristy & Don and Wes round out the top five, still within striking range of the top three, as we head into the break.  The duo are only 3 points back, while Wes is 6 points back of 3rd place.

Not a lot doing in the rookie pool this week, but Ryan's team found another 2 points from David Rittich of the Flames, picking up a win this week.  Clayton's team picked up the only other point this week, extending his lead to 11 points and he may be shopping for a little more help to defend against Ryan's team and Derek B.'s team this coming week.

The shootout was employed in this shortened week and the pool did collect a couple of goals once again, four straight weeks with 2 shootout goals.  Incredible.  Jesse's team moved up into a tie for 5th at 5 shootout goals, while Stuart's team only scored it's 2nd goal in the shootout this season this week, one stat his team isn't particularly strong in.

The lead remains at 6 goals, shared by the same four teams... Jeremy, Mike, Grant and John P..

The pool picked up 9 game-winners out of the 15 games that were on the schedule this week, which is a pretty nice return for us.  Grant's team was best in the limited schedule, picking up a pair of winners, bringing his total up to 18 on the season, good enough for a tie for 15th. 

Stuart continues to lead here by 10 winners, with 35 tallies, not picking up any this week, leading Dale C. by that large margin, while we're up to five teams that are at 24 winners, a couple new teams joining the fray there.

Clayton's team was the goon team of the week, somehow finding 20 minutes in penalties in only three days worth of action.  That brings his total up to  259 minutes this season, 12th in the pool in that regard.

Stuart's lead for goonmanship is now shrinking, as it is now down to only 14 minutes ahead of Ryan's team, which made up a little more ground in Week Seventeen.  If Ryan's team wasn't in 9th place, I'd probably say... goon it up!

The goalie survivor pool ended weeks ago, but I thought it was worth noting that the streak of wins in weeks has now stopped for Troy, as his team wasn't able to pick anything up in the All-Star shortened week, the streak finishing at 16 weeks.

The reason for the whole break is the All-Star game and we'll have plenty of coverage of the game this weekend.  The skills competition is now Friday night and the 3-on-3 tourney is on Saturday night, so grab your popcorn and get ready.  It should be a fun one once again.

There are still a couple of injury concerns, which may shift some of the rosters around a little bit more and we'll have more on that, as those news bytes develop.

STATISTICALLY SPEAKING

The rush to the break actually brought us some decent scoring numbers in Week Seventeen, as the pool averaged 13.7 points a game in the 15 games played in the week.  That was our best number since Week Eleven, when we saw 14.55 points per game.  Here's hoping that Week Nineteen will return to a form like that, when the Waiver Draft players becoming active.

Noon Player Notes (Jan 19)

On Saturday morning, the NHL announced that they have officially replaced Taylor Hall of the New Jersey Devils on the Metropolitan Division All-Star team with his teammate Kyle Palmieri, as Hall has been out since Christmas with a lower-body injury.  There has been no real indication of a return date for Hall, other than to say that he has been ruled out of this afternoon's game against Anaheim and then they start a CBA mandated bye week, ahead of the All-Star break.

Palmieri was a part of the vote for the Last Man Voted contest, but ended up losing out to Kris Letang of the Penguins, but with this injury replacement, he still makes it in.  In 47 games, he has 22 goals and 38 points, good enough for 78th overall in pool scoring.

The removal of Hall now takes Mike's only player out of the All-Star festivities and the addition of Palmieri is an add for Brenda & Seward's pool team, who now have two players going to next weekend's tourney.

The St. Louis Blues have announced from their morning skate that forward David Perron will sit out tonight for the game against the Ottawa Senators, due to an upper-body injury.  There was no more details given about the injury, so we will consider him day-to-day for now and with the All-Star break only a few days away, there may not be any rush to bring him back either.  On the plus side, it sounds like Alexander Steen is a game-time decision for the club, possibly taking Perron's spot.  Steen has been out for the last couple weeks with an upper-body injury as well.

So, it's a missed skater game coming up for Steve's team and the possibility of a return for Stacey C.'s pool team tonight.  Steve's team is close to the top of the weekly standings, heading into play today with 19 points, while Stacey's team is down at 13 points, 1 point clear of the bottom and could really use this return.

2019 All-Star Game Rosters Announced

Thanks to the Last Man Vote that the NHL held for the final spots on each of the All-Star Game rosters, I've held out posting the complete list of players going to San Jose for the All-Star festivities.  I was also away from the computer quite a bit already this weekend, missing out on the final announcement on Friday, so I'm finally sitting down to it right now.

Of course, the on-going conversation is about all the "snubs" and the players that should be there, but it's the All-Star festivities, it really doesn't make any difference.  Now, if the hockey pool had the All-Star festivities as a mini-game, then we could talk at length about those players who should and shouldn't be in San Jose, but for now, we'll not worry about it.

	Forwards	NHL	Pool
	Connor McDavid	EDM	Tony
	Johnny Gaudreau	CAL	Wilton
	Clayton Keller	ARI	Brian
	Joe Pavelski	SAN	Clayton
	Elias Pettersson	VAN	Clayton
	Leon Draisaitl	EDM	Stacey C.
	Defense	NHL	Pool
	Brent Burns	SAN	Brenda
	Erik Karlsson	SAN	Clayton
	Drew Doughty	LOS	Benson
	Goalies	NHL	Pool
	Marc-Andre Fleury	VGK	Troy
	John Gibson	ANA	Kristy & Don

The Pacific Division starts off with no real surprises.  Connor McDavid of the Oilers is the captain of the squad and since the game is being played in San Jose, the team is loaded up on Sharks.  Leon Draisaitl was the player voted in as the last man, rounding out a very fast, incredibly skilled team.

	Forwards	NHL	Pool
	Nathan MacKinnon	COL	Stacey M.
	Patrick Kane	CHI	Stuart
	Ryan O'Reilly	STL	Steve
	Mikko Rantanen	COL	Ryan
	Mark Scheifele	WPG	Brian
	Blake Wheeler	WPG	Wes
	Gabriel Landeskog	COL	Jesse
	Defense	NHL	Pool
	Miro Heiskanen	DAL	Jesse
	Roman Josi	NAS	Stacey M.
	Goalies	NHL	Pool
	Pekka Rinne	NAS	John P.
	Devan Dubnyk	MIN	Wes

Next up is the Central Division, which will be led by Nathan MacKinnon of the Avalanche.  The Central is probably one of the hardest divisions to play against in the league, so they found a group of players incredibly tough to play against.  Gabriel Landeskog, MacKinnon's teammate in Colorado, was the last man voted in for this division.

	Forwards	NHL	Pool
	Auston Matthews	TOR	Benson
	Jack Eichel	BUF	Grant
	Nikita Kucherov	TAM	Grant
	David Pastrnak	BOS	Stacey M.
	Steven Stamkos	TAM	Ryan
	John Tavares	TOR	Neil
	Jeff Skinner	BUF	Stuart
	Defense	NHL	Pool
	Thomas Chabot	OTT	Kristy & Don
	Keith Yandle	FLA	Grant
	Goalies	NHL	Pool
	Carey Price (x)	MTL	Stacey M.
	Jimmy Howard	DET	Tony
	Andrei Vasilevskiy	TAM	Dale C.

The Atlantic Division is not going to be full of slouches, by any means.  Auston Matthews of the Maple Leafs gets the captaincy of this squad, which has goal scoring written all over it, from every aspect.  Jeff Skinner of the Sabres, one of the league leaders in goals, was voted as the last man in for the division, while Andrei Vasilevskiy of the Lightning will replace Carey Price of the Canadiens, who has opted to rest during the break.

	Forwards	NHL	Pool
	Alex Ovechkin (x)	WAS	Jesse
	Claude Giroux	PHI	Troy
	Sebastian Aho	CAR	Wilton
	Cam Atkinson	CBJ	Clayton
	Mathew Barzal	NYI	Grant
	Sidney Crosby	PIT	Eric
	Taylor Hall	NJD	Mike
	Defense	NHL	Pool
	Seth Jones	CBJ	Stuart
	John Carlson	WAS	John P.
	Kris Letang	PIT	Jeremy
	Goalies	NHL	Pool
	Braden Holtby	WAS	Stacey C.
	Henrik Lundqvist	NYR	Scott

And finally, the Metropolitan Division, where it was supposed to be Alex Ovechkin of the Capitals to be captaining the team, but he too opted to rest during the break, so we're thinking that Claude Giroux will take the leadership reins for the team this year.  Kris Letang of the Penguins was the last man in voted to the team for this squad, which certainly isn't short of play-making ability.

In terms of active players selected to go to the All-Star Game this year, Clayton and Grant lead the way with four selections each, while Stacey M. and Stuart each have three selections to play in the 3-on-3 tournament.

23 of 25 teams in the hockey pool have been represented in the selections, only Chelsea and Derek B. are without at least one player going to the mid-season tourney.  That can change over the next couple of weeks, there are some injury concerns still out there and players could be added and removed, as we draw closer to the event.  For now, this is what it will look like.

Morning Player Notes (Jan 2)

It was announced on Wednesday morning, that Alex Ovechkin has informed the NHL that he will not be participating in this year's All-Star Game festivities, opting to take advantage of the time off to rest up for the unofficial second half of the season and prepare for the playoff push.  In doing so, Ovechkin will have to likely sit for a game, as per league rules, which would likely be the game on February 1st, home to the Flames.  I would imagine that the league will name his replacement fairly soon.

This news won't have an effect on the pool until the end of the month or the beginning of next month, but it's out there, so we might as well make note of it.  This means that Jesse will miss a skater game at some point near the end of the month, due to the league suspension and he won't have a player in the All-Star festivities that should likely be there.

Yesterday, the Arizona Coyotes announced that forward Nick Schmaltz was day-to-day with a lower-body injury, but didn't say much more than that. It kind of sounds like he was unable to practice on Tuesday, so this would be why they had mentioned something. I would say he's probably questionable for tonight's game, at home against the Oilers, but with an injury announcement, it may even lean more to doubtful.  It's tough to tell at the moment.

On Wednesday morning, the Calgary Flames announced that they had recalled Jon Gillies from the AHL and he'll fill David Rittich's spot for tonight in Detroit, as Rittich is reportedly dealing with a lower-body injury of his own and is now day-to-day.  It sounds like Rittich may have pulled something in the New Year's Eve game against the San Jose Sharks, but was able to finish the game, registering the win.  The Flames are now on the road for four games and Rittich is still traveling with the team, so he may not be out for very long.

Both Schmaltz and Rittich belong to Ryan's 8th place team in the standings and this isn't the way that Ryan wants to see his team start the New Year.  Fortunately, neither injury sounds like they are serious, but his team has been treading water in the top 10 and could still be for a while yet, but moving up seems somewhat unlikely over the next few days.

2019 All-Star Game Captains

It was somewhat a of a closed competition for this year's NHL All-Star Game captaincy, as the NHL didn't disclose up-to-date voting numbers, likely trying to not sway some of the voting one way or the other... or they hid any of those write-in votes from surfacing in the end.  Nevertheless, the result was really what it should be and we have four representatives from each division, each one of them are a symbol of what today's game is... offense, speed and more offense.

In order of scoring ranks in the hockey pool this season, our four captains are Nathan MacKinnon of the Avalanche for the Central Division, Connor McDavid of the Oilers for the Pacific Division, Alex Ovechkin of the Capitals for the Metropolitan Division and Auston Matthews of the Maple Leafs for the Atlantic Division.

As the fans get to vote in the captains for the four All-Star tournament teams, the hard part is then putting together the four teams and the task will be quite large this year, given the number of players that are putting up some exceptional numbers and the selection constraints of the All-Star selection.  Spoiler alert, not everyone is going to be happy with the teams.

So, if this were to be a mini-game in the hockey pool this year, Stacey M., Tony, Jesse and Benson would have head starts on the roster, each getting a captain from their side to go to San Jose in about a month's time.  The mini-game was a pretty good success last season, so it will be interesting to see what the scoring looks like again this year.

Week Twelve Newsletter

Well, it's time to take down that Festivus pole and resume normal life-living activities.  "Wait, how many more days off do we get?  What's this for again?  Christmas?  Okay, I guess."

The holiday season is upon us and with the NHL schedule finishing off yesterday until Thursday's restart, you can chew on this week's Newsletter a little longer.  Hopefully, it's not as dry as your turkey this week, but it very well could be.  I better add some gravy to it.



The Columbus Blue Jackets must have looked at this week in the schedule and said that they really needed some results, so they leaned on their number one goalie, Sergei Bobrovsky, and he gave them one hell of a week.  The Jackets played in four games, including a back-to-back, Saturday and Sunday, and he played them all... and won.

Bobrovsky set a new season-high in points this week, finishing with 12 points in four starts.  A shutout against the Golden Knights on Monday, followed by a win against the Devils on Thursday, a win against the Flyers on Saturday and then he capped it off with another shutout against the Devils on Sunday.  4 wins, 2 shutouts for 12 points.

This is the first 12-point week since Week Five of the 2017 season and the 13th week of its kind, since the hockey pool website was setup in the 2007 season.  In that 2007 season, back when it was only the selection sheet pool, was the only time we saw a 13-point week, which has been the recorded record.  We have never seen a 13-point week in the draft in that long.

For Kristy & Don, this big week has certainly kept their money hopes alive, as they made up some ground this week, thanks to Bobrovsky and company.  The duo have been getting some great performances, including the Columbus goalie, who is now up to 16 wins and 36 points in 27 appearances, good enough for 44th overall in hockey pool scoring, 3rd among all goalies.

For the second time this season, Stacey M. has seen her team rise to the occasion of the Mover & Shaker nod for the Newsletter and that was just in the last three weeks of the season.  Her team has really been fired up since the activation of our Waiver Draft picks and her only selection in the swap, Travis Zajac of the Devils, has only been a minor help.  A switch must have flipped for her side, because it's rolling along even better since we flipped over at the start of Week Ten.

With 38 points in Week Twelve, there was no tie-breakers necessary to figure out this one and if you have been watching the goalie posts through the week, her team practically went wire-to-wire on this week, really cruising along.

Boston goalie Jaroslav Halak has probably been the bargain pick of the year, again leading all players on her team this week with 9 points and has been just instrumental in her team's success, earning all kinds of minutes in the Bruins' crease.  Halak's teammate David Pastrnak has been no slouch either, finishing the week with 8 points, and Nashville's Roman Josi had a good week as well, finishing with 5 points.  Both Nathan MacKinnon of the Avalanche and Carey Price of the Canadiens each had 4 points, rounding out the top performers of her week.

Maybe the most notable statistic for Stacey's week was that her team had five active players on her roster without a point.  That's getting the top guys to really carry the load, when you're up in the Mover & Shaker with only nine players scoring for you.

We'll certainly have more on her team's climb in the standings shortly, but what I can say here is that things are going very well for her side the overall scheme of things.

How about a 'welcome to the hockey pool' moment for Jesse and his team in Week Twelve, as he gets initiated into the Hall of the Basement Dwellers.  It's certainly not a prestigious honour and an honour that not all teams have found their way to earning, remarkably, but one in your first year almost is expected with new teams joining every season and this is Jesse's moment, I guess.

Jesse's team finished with a weekly-low of 16 points in Week Twelve, no tie-breakers necessary this week.  It ties the season-high for points in the Basement Dweller nod and it's the highest ranked team at the end of a week with a nod at 13th place.  When you're in the top half of the standings, running into a dweller week is very disheartening, because it means you've likely dropped a lot of points between your team and the money sides.

Gabriel Landeskog of the Avalanche led the way for his team with 3 points, but five players didn't register a point in the week, same as our Mover & Shaker, but as you can see, his team leaders were not nearly as productive.

The gap to the money is now 49 points, which isn't at all impossible at this point of the year, especially with one more player swap to go.  With only one injury today and a day-to-day one at that, he may not be able to do a whole lot with his team when the next swap is to come around in January.

The top five of the standings really did some dancing around in Week Twelve, really livening up this hockey pool season.  Troy's team went from 1st to 5th, Stuart's team lifted back up into a tie for 1st place, but gets it on the tie-breakers, while the Mover & Shaker, Stacey M., entered that tie and take 2nd place and Grant stays steady in 3rd.  Kristy & Don, holder of our Player of the Week, moved up a spot to 4th and it's a tight-knit group in the top five, as there is now a 14-point gap to 6th place.

A team is going to need a solid Mover & Shaker week from the top 10 to crack into this group in the top five, especially since 10th place, Steve's team, is 34 points back of 5th.

Three teams were tops in the rookie scoring for Week Twelve, finishing with 4 points in the week.  Derek B., Steve and Wilton all led the way in the week, which isn't a record, by any means, but still isn't too bad.  Linus Ullmark of the Sabres for Steve's team and Andreas Johnsson of the Leafs for Wilton's team led the way, posting those 4 points that both teams needed.

Clayton's team finished with 3 points in the week, so Derek's team only made up 1 point on the mini-game race, so the lead now stands at 20 points, 53-33.

There were plenty of games that went to extra time in Week Twelve, but not as many of them reached the skills competition, leading to the collection of only 5 markers, so there wasn't a lot of movement in the standings.

Wes' team led the way in the week with 2 goals in the shootout this week, bringing his overall total up to 3 goals this week.  A 200% gain, which looks great on paper.  Jeremy, Grant, Mike and John P., our mini-game leaders, didn't score goals in the week, but they still lead with 6 goals each.

Benson's team had a monster week in the game-winning goals mini-game, tying a season-high for weekly goals with 5 clutch tallies in the week and his team moved into a tie for 2nd place with 21 game-winners this year.

Stuart's team posted 3 clutch tallies in Week Twelve, which brings his season total to 26 goals and has a 5-tally lead over both Benson and Clayton's team.  Mike's team is also still hanging around with 20 tallies and Tony is at 19, so there is still plenty of movement possible in this game.

There's nothing that reflects the holiday season more than the PIM pool, don't you think?  The goon team of Week Twelve belonged to John P., who finished with 31 minutes in the box.  John's team also leads the pool in penalty minutes in the second segment of the season, already posting 79 minutes in the first three weeks.  This brings his numbers up to 212 minutes, but it's only good for 6th in the overall standings.

Stuart's team still leads the pool in penalty minutes, with 257 minutes and that's to be expected.  Have you seen those Greenley boys over the holidays?  Absolute mayhem.

And then there were three!

Between Devan Dubnyk of the Wild and Carter Hutton of the Sabres, Wes could not seem to catch a break in Week Twelve and he saw his pair of goalies fail to win one game in Week Twelve and that means his team has been eliminated from the game.  On the plus side, it didn't really cost him any money back, but still, it would have been a good title to have.

We haven't seen an elimination since the Week Eight Newsletter, but with a holiday-shortened week ahead of us, there is a chance that Stacey M., Troy and/or Jeremy could also take a fall and the race could be shortened greatly, well before the All-Star break.

We haven't had a look at the plus/minus stats in a little while, so let's have a quick peek at this week.  We've got the time.

Both Neil and Stuart led the week with a combined +11 rating in the week and Neil's team has been fairly solid in this stat, leading the pool with a total rating of +60 this season.  Neil's team has only seen two weeks this season that had a combined rating of less than even.  That's a pretty solid effort through the year.

We should hear about who the All-Star captains are next week, they didn't post the voting results through the month of December, so it is anyone's guess who the captains of each division for the 3-on-3 tournament, but we'll probably find out when the holiday break is over.  Stay tuned!

STATISTICALLY SPEAKING

For a week that had 55 NHL games on the schedule, it was an exceptionally disappointing week for scoring.  In total, we only managed to collect 631 points, 111 points less than last week, which had four less games in the week.  It looks like a lot of players were already on holiday, as we got closer and closer to the break.

We had a pretty good participation rate for our skaters, 17.62 skater games in each of the 55 games this week, but with all the back-to-back games we saw, the pool goalies didn't get nearly all the minutes, which isn't a big surprise.

Next week, there is only 32 games next week, starting on Thursday.  The NHL will have to pack them all into four nights, so it will be busy and our goalies might have the same kind of participation.

NEWS AND NOTES

Well, in order to round out this blog post well and so I don't have to do too many posts today, I will include the suspension that Erik Karlsson had earned earlier in the week. It was a 2-game ban for his illegal hit to the head of Kings forward Austin Wagner. Karlsson has already missed Sunday night's game against the Coyotes and will miss Thursday's game against the Ducks for the hit.  The explanation video is down below for you, if you so choose to check it out.

For Clayton's team, Karlsson's lack of dominant offense has been a disappointment so far and tacking on this suspension certainly doesn't curry any favour.  Already having missed one game and missing one more isn't too bad, but it adds to a somewhat disappointing year, so far.