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 Twenty-Six Newsletter

It's the second-to-last Newsletter of the regular season and I think it's fair to think that there won't be any playoff pool this year, I've added another ball team to my summer, so I will likely be too busy and not in front of the computer a whole lot to do all the updating, so yeah... there's that!  I will be looking forward to a summer outside and not stuck in front of the TV.  Maybe when the Canucks return to the playoffs next year, I'll be excited again.



I would sure like to say, since Sergei Bobrovsky of the Columbus Blue Jackets had already won a Player of the Week nod this season, that I can turn around and offer it to someone new, like Tyler Bertuzzi of the Red Wings, who finished with 10 points.  Since Bob had himself a 12-point week again, I can't really do that, it just doesn't feel quite right.  Player of the Week has got to be the best player and that certainly was Bob.  I was looking forward to writing that post about Bertuzzi, until I saw Bob's numbers though.

The Blue Jackets are fighting for their playoff lives and coming up trumps with their number one goalie, who has now won five games in a row, including going 4-0-0 with a pair of shutouts in Week Twenty-Six and now the Jackets are holding the first wild card spot in the Eastern Conference, but are still far from safe at the moment, now with only three games left this season.

Bobrovsky shutout the Islanders on Tuesday, beat the Canadiens on Thursday, 23 saves against the Predators on Saturday and then finished the week off with a 38-save shutout against the Sabres on back-to-back nights on Sunday.  He has really dialed himself in over the last week and a bit and the Jackets are on their way to riding a hot goalie into the playoffs.

With this stupendous run of wins, Bobrovsky has now taken over top spot among all goalies in hockey pool scoring with 36 wins and 90 points in 60 appearances this season, only 1 point better than Andrei Vasilevskiy of the Lightning and 2 points better than the injured Marc-Andre Fleury of the Golden Knights.  All three rank in the top 25 overall in pool scoring and would be considered the only goalies suitable for the 1st round of the draft this year.

Well, who knew it would be a season-high week so close to the end of the year?  I was ready to punch in Stacey M.'s e-mail address into that 2nd place e-mail money transfer on Sunday last week, but oh no, here comes Kristy & Don to make things "interesting."  Just on Tuesday, Don was worried about finishing 5th in the standings, looking at the other two teams that were charging and didn't think his team had the legs for it, but here they are, ruining the last week of the season... in one way, but making it kind of interesting in a different way.

On top of having the Player of the Week, the duo were also collecting on the red hot Red Wings, who had another player in the double digits as well, Anthony Mantha, also finishing with 10 points, so 22 points between a couple of players was the same amount of points as the two teams that were vying for the Basement Dweller nod, but I will get to that in a little bit.

The drop-off from the top two players was pretty good, as Ryan Pulock of the Islanders and John Gibson of the Ducks finished the week with 4 points and they also had four more players with 3 points each, so they did have some consistency through their lineup, even one active player that didn't register a single point and they still put up the best week of the season.

If there is one thing that the duo has done this season, it has defied some of the new conventions that we've been seeing among the money winners or some of the drafting strategies among them of late, as they have continued on the tradition of big goalies and big defense and mediocre forwards to get the job done, as their forwards rank tied for 15th in the pool, while their defense is 4th and they have the best two goalies.  The debate will rage on in regards to what the best strategy is in the long run.

After all of that, we did have ourselves a tie for the Basement Dweller again this week, as both Troy and Scott finished with 11 points each in Week Twenty-Six, so we had to break it down to the tie-breakers to get this one all worked out.  First up, goals scored and by a fairly wide margin of 5-2, Troy's team kept him out of the basement by lighting the lamp a few more times, leaving it all to Scott's team for another week.

A couple of injuries and some healthy scratches were not helpful for Scott's team this week and his team fell back down into 25th place, as even the tanking effort of Derek B.'s team was able to put up a few more points and jump back into 24th.  Matt Murray of the Penguins was Scott's only saving grace, registering 4 points in the week, as there were eight players on his team that failed to pick up a point in the week.

This was Scott's 4th Basement Dweller nod of the season and it has just been a horrible year for his luck, as there were a number of duds on his team that came out flat out of the gate and the Waiver Draft, no matter how good his picks were, were just no help to him this year.  Talk about a long year.  At least his team is only 3 points out of 24th, so there is a chance it won't finish last this year, but he'll need some help in the final week of the season.

Well, I think about this time last week, I was writing cheques or doing up transfers for 1st place and 2nd place and that was very premature of me.  Sure, Stuart still won't be caught for 1st place, but I certainly didn't see a season-high point total from any team coming this late in the season, but there were Kristy & Don, collecting massive amounts of points from a couple of players and they zoomed up to catch Stacey M.'s team, which was caught resting on their laurels.

Now, the duo and Stacey's team will start the week tied, with the duo leading in goals for the tie-breaker, both teams 39 points behind the leader, 21 points up on 4th place.  I guess I shouldn't say that it is all locked up for 2nd and 3rd and that we just have to decide the order, this last week taught me that lesson in a hurry.  Still, will Grant or even Jesse (23 points back) be able to put that kind of week together?  I suppose we shall see.

Nothing premature about calling the rookie race... a few weeks back!  Derek B.'s team continues to roll, posting another 10 points and bringing his overall total to 120 points from freshmen this year.  No other team has even sniffed triple digits yet.  This one has been over for a long, long time.

The shootout has been somewhat a dud for the better part of the season, so it does look like Grant will come away with some money, if his team doesn't miraculously find a massive scoring streak in the final week of the regular season.  Grant's team has a 3-goal lead in the shootout and Mike's team sits in-behind, 13-10, but with the shootout being fairly scarce for the better part of the season, it seems fair to call it... again, barring a miracle week of non-stop shootouts.

Stuart's team extended its lead over Clayton's team in the game-winning goals department, now sitting at 47-40 with a week to go and Clayton's team didn't post a single winner in the week, thanks in large part to his long list of injuries to key goal scorers on his team.  Looks like Stuart's team will take home some extra cash on the year with a mini-game as well.

Scott's team still holds a narrow lead over Stuart's in the overall race for goon team of the season, 493-492, which still doesn't pay, but is still fun to have a look at.  It's no wonder Stacey M.'s team was caught napping, it was the goon team of the week, 28 minutes, and was too busy resting its eyes in the penalty box and not picking up points to keep the duo away.

Well, if the plus/minus statistic was a payable one, Neil's team would have run away with it a long time ago as well, as his team has been very responsible in their own end and at the same time, put up enough points in key situations to make a difference in the year.  His team has a combined rating of +121 this season, 42 points better than his nearest competitor.  That's fairly remarkable, to be honest.

STATISTICALLY SPEAKING

The pool did bounce back from some lowly scoring weeks, picking up its best weekly total of points in a month, with 646 points.  It was our best per game average in five weeks at 12.4 points per NHL game in the week, which was quite something as well.  Participation didn't go up any, as injuries and scratches continue to mount and there should be a significant downturn in participation in the final week of the season, as some players will be rested ahead of the playoffs, while very few will be making that push to the playoffs.

One more week, 51 one games to go.  Let's have it!

Week Twenty-One Newsletter

Well, I better hurry today... it's trade deadline day and there is already move in the books from the overnight chatting sessions.  It sounds like it could be a busy day, so let's hop to what last week looked like.



It was a big goalie battle for the Player of the Week, as all the major skaters finished with 7 points, instead of the 8 points required to earn the honour.  It came down to the tie-breaking process and by a 3-2 margin in the win column, Semyon Varlamov of the Avalanche topped Sergei Bobrovsky of the Blue Jackets to take home the crown this week.

Varlamov did register 1 shutout, a 40-save effort against Vegas on Monday, which he followed up by winning against Winnipeg on Wednesday and Chicago on Friday.  He's starting to turn the Avalanche back around, but is it too little, too late?  No, it's coming at the perfect time, the Avalanche are now only 1 point out of the last wild card spot in the west.

It hasn't been a great year for the Russian number one in Colorado, as the whole team fell into a major slide after such a good start and it really brought down his overall numbers.  After this really good week, the 30-year old still ranks 144th overall in hockey pool scoring, 23rd among all goalies, with 38 points in 41 appearances.  Certainly, you'd prefer to have your goalie well above the point-per-game mark.

Wilton, however, has had an okay return, not picking up Varlamov until the 3rd round, 75th overall, a ranking that the keeper could still reach, if the Avalanche continue on this hot streak of theirs, but it would have to be white-hot!

His first season in the pool already has a Basement Dweller nod, but now he can add a Mover & Shaker to the list, as Jesse's team has really been stepping it up of late and it swooped in on Sunday and snatched the title away from Stacey M., who almost ran a wire-to-wire campaign on it.  Jesse's team finished at the 40-point mark and shook his way up to 6th place in the process.

Jesse's team added a little bit of separation from itself to move closer to the aspirations of money group, now 3 points back of Wes for 5th place, but still 31 points back of the money, 12 points up on 7th.

Jonathan Toews of the Blackhawks and Gabriel Landeskog of the Avalanche led the way for his side this week, each picking up 6 points, Alex Ovechkin of the Capitals had 5 points, while Matt Duchene picked up 4 points between Ottawa and Columbus and Philipp Grubauer had a shutout for the Avalanche this week.  Only one player on his active roster failed to pick up points, but not for a lack of trying.

In terms of goal scoring, Jesse's team has been among the top three all season long, currently ranking 2nd in the pool with 201 goals, but still ranks 3rd in forward scoring with 373 points, 16th among defense at 89 points and 14th in goalie points with 67.  Having a top 10 defense and keeper combo would have probably seen him lift up to the money teams and it was something he couldn't quite fix at the Waiver Draft.

31 points is still quite a bit to make up, but we still have six more full weeks of action left and if his team gets hot right now, it might just work.

It wasn't Mike's week to shine in Week Twenty-One, as he couldn't quite find any traction in the final week before the NHL trade deadline, but he has seen one of his players move teams, so maybe that will kick the rest of his team in butt (as if they would know that it really mattered in this little ol' hockey pool).

Mike's team could only muster up 15 points and fell from 18th to 20th in the overall standings, 29 points away from the equator of 13th place, which does feel like a little bit of a stretch, but it's a good goal to try to attain.

Sam Reinhart of the Sabres was his best player in the week, finishing with 4 points, but seven of his players were not able to pick up points, only one of them due to injury, which is a bad sign.  Injuries, everyone can feel for, just plain ice cold though, that's a tough pill to swallow.  Mike's team was tied for 9th in skater games played this past week with 36 and had 164 minutes of playing time from his goalies to his name, so he certainly had his chances.

Mike's team is still in the running for his money back or at least some of it in the mini-games, but we'll save that for later!

We had lots of positive movement in the money/trophy race in Week Twenty-One, as the teams just below Stuart's all made up some ground on his team with big weeks.  Stacey M. and the duo of Kristy & Don each had 37 points to Stuart's 29 and even Grant's team came up with 33 points to shave off some.  Unfortunately for Grant, his team lost out on their spot in 3rd, giving it up to the duo.  The gap between 2nd and 3rd now just slightly increased to 11 points, which still makes it interesting.

Wes lost a bunch more ground on the money group, now 28 points back, but here comes our Mover & Shaker from the week, Jesse, who is 31 points back and coming like a bat out of Hell.

Derek B.'s stable of rookies are still putting up the numbers for his side, posting another 8 points and increasing the overall lead in the rookie pool to 15 points this week and there appears to be no stopping this group.  Oskar Lindblom of the Flyers and Rasmus Dahlin of the Sabres each posting 2 points led the way for his team this week.

Grant's team was among seven teams to register a shootout goal this week and his team moved up into a tie for the lead with Mike at 8 shootout goals this season.  Mike does have the tie-breaker of doing it in less shots, a better success ratio, 8-for-19, instead of Grant's 8-for-26.  Ryan, Wes and Clayton each had a goal to move up to 5 shootout markers this season, looking at outside shots for the money, but there is a pretty good logjam of teams there.

Stacey M. not only had a good week overall, but her team led the pool in game-winners this week, notching 5 of them, which is tied for the 3rd-best week in the pool this season.  That only brings her total up to 25 however, still 14 back of the lead.

Stuart still holds a 6-goal lead over Clayton's team, both teams posting a winner in the week, but no real movement up at the top this week.

The goon team of the week belonged to Steve's team, but only by a couple of minors, as his team finished with 30 minutes in penalties to lift his overall total up to 379, which ranks him 4th.

Stuart's team still leads all teams with 412 minutes, still followed closely by Scott's team, which is at 405 minutes.  Only a fighting major and roughing penalty away, that's pretty close.

Scott's team now also holds the dubious record of the worst week, plus/minus-wise, as his team was a combined -28 in Week Twenty-One, there was no attention to detail during 5-on-5 play for his side at all.  That means his team sunk like a stone to the bottom of the standings here, now a combined -60 this season, where our leader, Neil, picked up a few more positive points and now sits at +84.

Well, just in case you missed it on Sunday morning, Troy ended up taking this mini-game with a huge haul of points from the Flyers and Penguins at the Stadium Series game, the clear winner with 7 points between the two outdoor games this year, although he only had participation in one.

STATISTICALLY SPEAKING

It was not a good week in the scoring department, as the pool dropped a whole point per NHL game in the scoring average, only taking 656 points from 52 games in Week Twenty-One, where last week, in 50 games, we saw 683 points.  Skater games were down, but goalie minutes were up slightly, there is just no consistency here.  What should we expect though?  The NHL schedule is all over the place at the best of times.

NEWS AND NOTES

The Detroit Red Wings were without Thomas Vanek for their Sunday afternoon tilt against the San Jose Sharks, as the flu bug that has/had Jimmy Howard in its grips got to him as well. Both players actually were out of the lineup for the game against the Sharks, but there was a feeling about Howard, as mentioned in yesterday's goalie post. Both Vanek and Howard are candidates for trades out of Detroit today, so keep an eye out for that too.

That's a missed skater game for Stacey C. and another missed start for Tony yesterday, but the Red Wings are sellers today, so I don't think they are worried about that too much now.

Well, the day was looking promising for the Dallas Stars, they welcomed Mats Zuccarello into their lineup, Alex Radulov came back from illness, their new acquisition picked up a goal and an assist, but then the wheels came off a bit. First, Jamie Benn left the game with an upper-body injury, not to return. No update right after the game. Then, Zuccarello ended up blocking a shot in the 2nd period, also suffering a lower-body injury, not to return, no update. The good news, however, they still managed to pull out a 4-3 win over the Blackhawks, but it could be a costly one.

Radulov's return was good for Benson, Benn's injury now puts a hole in Chelsea's team and the same goes for John P., when it comes to Zuccarello.  John's team is the only one with any hope of hitting the top half of the standings, so he'll have the most to lose with this injury.

The Ottawa Senators are probably not done dealing yet, as they are still protecting assets or at least they were last night, when they took on the Calgary Flames.  Mark Stone was joined by both Mikkel Boedker and Cody Ceci, both have been rumoured to be on the market.  Today will be the last day that the Senators will have any interest in doing this, they'll have to move these guys or play them down the stretch.

Stone has already cost Wes a few games, waiting on a deal, while Boedker is Chelsea's and Ceci belongs to Ryan in this final segment.  The waiting game is never fun and Wes is having the worst time, since he still has his eyes on the money and he needs that deal done right away.

Week Twenty Newsletter

Well, I've taken my sweet time today to produce the Newsletter... it's a holiday in Alberta, so what's the rush?  I just wish there was some good news to report is all, it may have been out a little bit earlier, but we all know how the pool is going these days.  Gross.



It was an unprecedented start to the Newsletter this week, as we had ourselves a 4-way tie for the top of the individual scoring standings with 10 points each!  Two of them were on the same pool team as well!  That is absolutely mad!  Nikita Kucherov and Andrei Vasilevskiy of the Lightning and Sidney Crosby of the Penguins all fell to the tie-breakers in the decision process, giving Vladimir Tarasenko of the Blues his first Player of the Week this season, as he finished with 4 goals and 6 assists in four games this week.

3 assists on Tuesday against the Devils, 2 goals against the Coyotes on Thursday, a goal and an assist against the Avalanche on Saturday and finally, a goal and 2 assists against the Wild on Sunday afternoon, that rounded out his week.

Overall, it hasn't been one of the more dominating seasons from Tarasenko, but as we've seen in the last few weeks, he and his teammates in St. Louis are really starting to turn things up.  Currently, he ranks 65th in hockey pool scoring with 26 goals and 51 points in 57 games this season, so it's really coming along now.

Eric picked up the Russian sniper in the 2nd round of the draft, 41st overall, so the return hasn't quite been there, but a Player of the Week nod is showing that there is still some fight left in the winger.  There's still plenty of time to move up those spots.  Eric also has Sidney Crosby on his team, which gave him two options for this paragraph, which is almost unheard of, especially at 10 points.

Well, it's now just getting to be a bit ridiculous, as Stuart continues to just run away with the lead after the start of the third segment, as he now has both Mover & Shakers in the final portion of the season and all hope is really fading away.

With a 41-point week in Week Twenty, Stuart's team now holds a 46-point lead in the overall standings, taking his third Mover & Shaker, which have all happened in the last five weeks.  It's been a disgusting amount of domination, which is leading to calls for an investigation into Russian tampering in the hockey pool standings.

Brayden Point of the Lightning and Patrick Kane of the Blackhawks led the way for Stuart's team in the week, both finishing with 6 points, while Brad Marchand of the Bruins and Thomas Greiss of the Islanders each finished with 5 points.

Every player on Stuart's active roster was able to post at least a point in the week, which has trumped a few teams that had 10-point players on their roster, because they weren't quite as consistent up and down the roster as Stuart's has been.

Currently, Stuart has three players above 70 points, which would all be taken in the 1st round of the draft, if we were to redo it today and that has been the leading reason for all of his success this season.  Picking up some found money in Anders Nilsson in Ottawa has certainly helped too, already posting 3 wins and a shutout in the last two weeks.

There's no investigation necessary for the tank job that Derek B. has been pulling off, he wanted those rookie points and those are pretty much all he has been getting in recent weeks.  His team finished with a pool-low 11 points in Week Twenty, 7 of those points coming from his freshmen players.  Flyers forwards Jakub Voracek and Oscar Lindblom led the way for his team, each picking up 3 points.

Derek's team is on the verge of taking over last place in the standings, as Scott's team has been coming up quick in the past week, making up 17 points on him.  His team only has 99 goals scored between all of his skaters this season, the only team not to hit triple-digits in the statistic and the team ahead of him, the last one to clip over the 100-goal mark, did it three weeks ago.

Will all this tanking pay off for Derek?  We'll see in a couple spots on this Newsletter.

Okay, so the lead is safe, much safer than ever before this season, Stuart appears to be cruising to his back-to-back titles, now with a 46-point lead over Stacey M., so we'll leave it at  that.

Stacey's team gave up some ground to the teams chasing hers, as Grant's team now sits 8 points back and Kristy & Don are 11 points back.  Wes' team fell off the pace in Week Twenty, now falling back to 31 points back of 2nd, but there's still time for a hot streak there.  If Steve can have another strong week, he might find himself with some more mentions here, as his team is now 29 points out of the money after a 29-point week.

There's still a little bit of intrigue left in this season yet.

Yes, Derek's 7 points from his rookies were more than anyone else in the week, as his lead has now improved to 7 points over Clayton's team, who could only round up 4 points from his one active rookie on his roster.  It's not over here quite yet, but it's getting close.

The pool is seeing a few more shootouts in recent weeks and it was able to collect 5 more goals in total in Week Twenty, but it was all single goals for five teams.  Grant's team was the most notable of the five teams, as it grabbed a piece of the tie for 2nd place with 7 shootout goals, joining Jeremy and John P., now just a goal behind Mike's team, which carries the lead for a second week.

It was a good week for game-winners, as Eric's team tied a season-high for a week this season, picking up 6 winners and his team shot up the mini-game standings, now in 3rd place, 3 goals behind Clayton in 2nd and 9 goals behind Stuart's team, who remains at 38 game-winners after not posting any this week.  This mini-game may still have some life left in it still.

The goon team of the week belonged to Stacey C., finishing with a pool-high of 40 minutes in penalties this week and I believe it was Darnell Nurse of the Oilers leading the way for his team this week, who had 19 minutes in one game by himself.

Stuart's grip on the overall lead in the goon pool is also slipping, as Scott's team is now only 7 minutes behind, making up 9 minutes in the week.  Scott's team has been in the box the most since the start of the third segment, so he may come away with some kind of mention before the end of the year.

There hasn't been anything terribly remarkable in the plus/minus department in recent weeks.  No records being set, good or bad, but Neil has since taken over the lead in the statistic, now with a combined +80 on the season, overtaking Wes' team in this third segment and now has a 10-point lead in the category.  Ryan's team has been on the other end of the spectrum, now a combined -68, 13 points worse than Stacey C. and 24 points worse than Jeremy's team.

STATISTICALLY SPEAKING

Scoring took another up-tick in Week Twenty, improving to 13.67 points per NHL game, up from 13.16 the week before and 12.24 in the last week of the second segment.  The pool collected a total of 683 points in the week, coming from 50 games on the NHL schedule and of course, those four players tied with 10 points each certainly helped.

I was going to mention the team's save percentages as an interesting number in this season's pool, but Stuart leads that too.  Maybe I'll take a pass on it then.

NEWS AND NOTES

An undisclosed injury had hampered Columbus forward Boone Jenner on Saturday night, when they took on the Blackhawks, but reports on Monday morning are showing that he will be dressing for this evening's game against the Lightning. The team did not issue any medical info on Jenner in this case, but according to some other reports, the flu bug may have been hanging around, so it could have been that, if one was to speculate. He'll be back, not much to see here.

Just one skater game missed for Steve's team last week, which still had a pretty good week.  His season has been pretty good and it still has an outside shot at some money, if everyone stays healthy.

The flu bug is running rampant on the Detroit Red Wings' locker room, as it kept Frans Nielsen out of Saturday's game, but he returned for Sunday's contest, while Gustav Nyquist was a body that had to come out for recovery.  It just looks like it's a simple case of the flu, down for a day and coming back.  I would imagine that Nyquist will be ready to go for the team's next game, Wednesday night, at home to the Blackhawks.

That's a skater game lost for both Scott's team and Kristy & Don's team, not much to see here and not much to panic about.  Kristy & Don may have missed that game a little bit more, since they are chasing the money, but Scott wants to be out of last place badly and he could have missed his game a bunch too.

The Florida Panthers have given permission to Roberto Luongo to take some time on bereavement leave from the team this weekend, as there was a death in his family.  The team expects the veteran goalie to be back with the team on Tuesday, missing out on a weekend contest against the Canadiens on Sunday.

Luongo should probably get the team's next start, Tuesday night against the Sabres, which is good news for John P..  It is likely a missed start for John's team, which finished the week in 14th place.  His team is 12 points out of the top 10, as a point to look for before the end of the season.

The Los Angeles Kings are in selling mode, as we head to the trade deadline, which is only a week away, and injuries to their blueline are only speeding up the process.  Alec Martinez was hurt last week and he is now expected to miss the next couple of weeks with an upper-body injury.  Martinez isn't exactly one of the players on the board for trading, but he would be useful in keeping the games exciting for the Kings, so it's a decent loss there.

Wilton's team took the hit on this piece of injury news, as his team now sits in the top 10, in the tightly-knit group between 7th and 13th.  Wilton's team had a good week, despite this injury news and looks to keep it going, as there is certainly wiggle room to get higher in the standings.

Another lower-body injury, confirmed not to be an aggravation of a previous injury, kept Dustin Byfuglien out of the Winnipeg Jets' lineup on Saturday evening, but the coaching staff believes that this new ailment isn't all that serious and he could be good to go for the team's next game on Wednesday night.  He's listed as day-to-day, not likely all that serious.

Dale C.'s team is also caught up in that tight-knit group in the middle of the standings, just ahead of  Wilton's team in 9th, 4 points clear of Wilton's team and only 3 points back of 7th place.  Anyone in this pack could have a Mover & Shaker week and really get back into the money race, but it would have to be a damn good week... or two.