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The night before Halloween

October 30, 2014, 2:01 PM ET [62 Comments]
Lucas Neilson
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*Evander Kane will be in the Jets lineup tonight*

Here we are on ‘devils night’, the night before Halloween. When I was a kid this was a night to go out and get into some trouble, nothing too serious. My favorite memory of this night was back in high school when two of my friends and I got my parents car and we decided we would ‘borrow’ 60 pumpkins or so from our neighbourhood. Yeah, I know…it was wrong…anyhow. We loaded up 15 pumpkins into the car and drove them to one of our buddy’s houses and started a pumpkin patch on his front lawn. After about 4 or 5 loads of pumpkins, we stumbled across ‘the mother pumpkin’. This bad boy was huge! My buddy ran up and grabbed it, and as he got back to the car we noticed a man running out of his garage to get back his pumpkin. I reversed out of there and ripped on the emergency brake and spun that car around and we were out of there; as was the man as he got in his car and chased us around a couple blocks!

We got away and decided that would be the last of the ‘borrowed’ pumpkins and returned to our buddy’s house to drop off the last of the pumpkins. Let’s just say there was a nice little pumpkin patch on his lawn for him to wake up to in the morning! So I wake up at 7:55am the next morning to my mother yelling that someone is at the door for me. Yep, the police…I had to go with the officer and return each and every pumpkin to its owner…serves me right! On the other hand, the officer did have a good laugh when we got to my friend’s house and saw the pumpkin patch on his lawn. There may or may not have been a couple scarecrows getting friendly with each other upon our arrival which we didn’t take part in setting up.

Trade Ideas:

Remember the old “sell high, buy low” method discussed in previous blogs when referring to making a trade? Yesterday my first fantasy hockey trade of the year went down, it wasn’t a blockbuster by any means; but I think it will bode well for my current roster. I scooped up Sami Vatanen at the start of the season for the Anaheim Ducks as I knew he would have a shot at playing on the second or third pairing; but is pegged to be quarterbacking the Ducks number one power play. He’s off to a great start to the season with 3 goals and 4 assists; which have all come off the power play. I’ve been hunting for a center in my fantasy pool and it just so happen that one of the people in my pool was looking to move Ryan O’Reilly. He offered me O’Reilly for Vatanen – done and done. After making the trade, I was left with an extra forward and shy one defenseman. I dropped Brendan Gallagher (he was being used until E. Kane is back). After that I picked up Alexander Edler off the free agency list. All in all I am happy with this trade as I feel Edler’s point total will not be that far off from Vatanen’s, and O’Reilly has the potential to get 60+ points; even with his slow start.

Look around, see who may need an upgrade of some sort and try to use that to your advantage when making a trade. Don’t be scared to take a risk and move a player who you feel is performing above where they should be in exchange for a player who is not living up to expectations…some people have little patience when it comes to holding onto a player that is holding them back. As always, feel free to ask in the comments section any questions you may have.

Starting goalies:

(BOS) Svedberg VS (BUF) Enroth
(WPG) Pavelec VS (NJ) Schneider
(LA) Jones VS (PIT) Fleury
(ARI) Smith VS (FLA) Luongo
(PHI) Emery VS (TBL) Bishop
(CHI) Darling VS (OTT) Anderson
(ANA) Gibson VS (STL) Allen
(SJ) Niemi VS (MIN) Kuemper
(NYI) Johnson VS (COL) Varlamov
(MTL) Price VS (VAN) Miller

With ten games in action tonight I like two match ups if you need to put in a backup goaltender off the free agency list. Both Svedberg and Darling will match up vs teams I feel they will beat. If you feel you need a goalie game in; I’d give one of these tenders a whirl.

Best of luck in your fantasy!

Thank you again for reading.
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