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?

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.

Week Thirteen Newsletter

Despite the shortened schedule, the hockey pool had some pretty good performances in the week, as five players were tied at the end of the week with 6 points, so we had to go to the tie-breakers, which as you can see Patrick Kane of the Blackhawks won. First, we eliminated Robin Lehner of the Islanders, he's a goalie and didn't have any goals, then we took out both Nikita Kucherov of the Lightning and Phil Kessel of the Penguins, as they only scored two goals. Then it got tough.  I had to dig deep to break this one and separating Kane and Mathew Barzal of the Islanders was a matter of game-winning goals, 2-1, being the difference, since both players scored 5 goals, had a +3 rating between the two games.

Kane did his damage against the Minnesota Wild on Thursday, scoring his hat-trick there, and then on Saturday against the Colorado Avalanche, 2 goals and an assist.  Definitely a solid couple of outings for the Chicago sniper.

This brings his season total up to 22 goals and 50 points in 40 games this season, good enough for 8th overall in hockey pool scoring.  Stuart took him with the 14th overall pick this year, so he's definitely getting the value for his pick selection.

Grant's week finished early, not having any participation in the only game on Sunday between the Golden Knights and Coyotes, but he had more than enough points to worry about just one game, as he comfortably took the Mover & Shaker for the shortened week with 29 points.  His team was obviously visited by Santa Claus and given all the best stuff, like sick mitts and filthy moves, and they were all eager to show them off to their opponents.

Having two of the five players that were involved in this week's Player of the Week tie-breaker was certainly a huge help to his team.  Mathew Barzal of the Islanders and Nikita Kucherov of the Lightning made some waves with 6 points each to lead the way.

Anton Khudobin of the Stars got a shutout in his only start, collecting 4 points, while Brock Boeser of the Canucks and Tyler Johnson of the Lightning each had 3 points to help out.

In total, Grant's team scored 14 goals in the week, which was 5 goals better than his nearest competitor.  He can thank the 24 skater games he had for all those chances at points this week and even three appearances from his goalies were good enough for 6 points at the end of the week.

This is Grant's fourth Mover & Shaker of the week nod this season and his team has been on a bit of a mission since a bit of a slow start in the first couple of weeks.  This is now his third week in a row, where he has finished in the Newsletter in the money spots, now in 2nd place, tied for 1st with Stuart, but losing the tie-breaker in goals.

Can Grant's team be stopped?

A Reilly Smith goal for Stacey M.'s team in the Vegas/Arizona game last night tossed the Basement Dweller race into a tie-breakers with Derek B., as both teams finished Week Thirteen with 9 points, but was that goal enough to lift her team up and out of the Basement Dweller nod, adding to her tie-breaking total?  The answer is... yes.  Yes, it was.  The Smith goal gave Stacey's team a total of 3 goals in the week, while Derek's only had 2 goals, so by that 3-2 margin, Derek's loss gives him the Basement Dweller for Week Thirteen.

Eric Staal of the Wild, Colin White of the Senators and Jonathan Quick of the Kings all finished with 2 points each for Derek's team in the week, which would have been enough for the Player of the Week, if they were all combined and to think our Mover & Shaker had two of the 6-point players this week.  Eight of Derek's 14 players failed to register points in the week, one due to injury and another is at the World Juniors, so overall, it was a very pedestrian effort here.

This mention in the Newsletter shouldn't be too discouraging for Derek's team, since he opted to leave the overall race and just focus on the rookie points, which hasn't quite worked in his favour just yet and it hasn't helped his side in the overall standings, staying static in 23rd place since the end of Week Ten and ranks last in points in this second segment of the season with 71 points in the last four weeks.

It's back-to-back weeks for a tie at the top of the standings, but the only difference is, the team that is tied with Stuart's, losing out to his in the tie-breakers.

Stuart and our Mover & Shaker, Grant, sit atop the standings at 368 points, while Stacey M. had a horrible week, in the tie-breaker for the Basement Dweller, which dropped her team to 3rd at 357 points to round out the money spots.

Kristy & Don are 5 points back at 352, Troy's team fell off a bit, now down by 9 points, while Mike's team is still a couple arms lengths away at 17 points back of 3rd.

Week Fourteen ramps back up again and we'll have 53 games on the schedule, so a good Mover & Shaker week can really do wonders for the money race, maybe even bring another team into the mix.

There were a few points to be had among our league's freshmen, but the best contributions to the hockey pool teams was only 3 points and our two leading teams in the rookie pool collected those.  Both Clayton and Derek B. saw 3 points in Week Thirteen, extending their lead over everyone else competing for their money back here.  Clayton's team still holds a 20-point lead over Derek's team, 56-36, while John P.'s team, held pointless in the week, is back at 28 points.

Only six games went to extra time in the four days of action in Week Thirteen and none of those six games went to the shootout.  No dirty dangles.  No silky smooth mitts.  No big stops by the tendies.  So, the totals remained the same.  Jeremy, Grant, Mike and John P. all have 6 shootout markers and Brian's team has 5 of his own, all to lead the way in the mini-game here.  It was a bleak week to say the least, but again, a busy week coming up, so we're bound to see some skills competitions before too long.

Out of 32 games this past week, we collected 20 game-winners from the bunch, which has been close to the season average all year, so far.  Five teams each picked up a couple of winners to lead the way in the week, including our mini-game leader, Stuart, who now has 28 this season.  His team is 6 better than both Benson and Clayton's teams and 7 better than Mike and Tony's teams.

There have been a total of 561 game-winners scored in the NHL through 14 weeks and the pool has collected 395 of them for our own personal gains.  That is actually coming in at a rate of 70.4% of the goals actually scored, which is damn good.

19 minutes was tops in the week for the goon teams of the week.  Yes, that's right... teams.  Stuart, Grant and John P., all three are mini-game favourites in this edition of the Newsletter, all finished atop of the goon standings for Week Fourteen. 

Stuart's team is still the goon team to beat though, still racking up the PIMs with 276 in total, followed by John P. at 231 and Scott's team at 229.  It's not even a close race and Stuart's team is also leading in points.  Where does his team find the time to score?

The holiday shortened week was what the goalie survival game needed to finish up, as both Stacey M. and Jeremy were unable to see their goalies pick up wins in Week Thirteen, leaving Troy as the last team standing and taking the nod this season.

Marc-Andre Fleury of the Vegas Golden Knights has been nothing but consistent this season and playing a ton too.  Fleury got the qualifying win on Thursday against the Avalanche and then got a second start on Sunday night, which ended up as another win against the Coyotes.

Congrats Troy on the bragging rights for the rest of the season, it's too bad the mini-game wheel wasn't going to reward you for the win though.

STATISTICALLY SPEAKING

Scoring found a decent recovery after that embarrassing display we saw in Week Twelve, almost going back up by a whole point per NHL game this past week.  The pool collected 396 points in 32 games, which comes in at an average of 12.4 points per game, still well back of our season-high of 14.55 in Week Eleven.

Skater games held fairly steady, while goaltending numbers continue to dwindle and we're still four weeks away from even starting to think about drafting again, so the goaltending may still decline in those weeks.  Let's hope that the skaters can keep plugging those backup goalies and keep racking up the points.

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.