It’s an odd week in the NHL as there were no games on Monday night, letting the players and their fans have the night off and enjoy Halloween. This leaves only six nights left in the fantasy hockey week, and that much more important each night is.
The only team to play two games this week is Minnesota; they have one game left remaining this week on Saturday versus Colorado.
The lesson to be learned today is patience.
I’m referring to players on your fantasy roster. Of course there will be some middle to late round players you picked who haven’t lived up to expectations, which happens yearly and is nothing to sweat about. Move those players in and out of your lineup accordingly and hope that you make the right choices.
By no means should you ever give up on any of your top players, even if they are coming out the gates ice cold and haven’t put up a single point yet. Krug on the other hand, yeah, that’s a tough one as he’s usually Boston’s go-to guy and puts up consistent points throughout the season. Right now, he has zero points, which is concerning and in head to head or rotisserie pools, I’d consider dropping him at this point. It may come back to bite you, but unless your league is very deep, I’d imagine there is a gem or two out there waiting for someone to pounce on them and scoop them up.
Now, a guy like Klingberg who only had three points before last night, never, ever drop a player of this caliber. We’re talking a legit 50-60 point defenseman here; there are not exactly a lot of these types of guys around. That’s why I’m somewhat hesistant to mention dropping Krug, he’s done nothing yet but you have to figure he’s bound to break out eventually…
Someone dropped Klingberg in our head to head pool last year around this time, he had very few points. I jumped on him, instantly, using a waiver claim. Well, it just so happened that someone else dropped him this year off the get go. I attempted to scoop him up with my waiver pickup, unfortunetly someone else had a higher position and beat me to the punch. Not a big deal, I have excellent defensemen, but it would have been a nice trading piece for free!
The bottom line here is this, if you are going to drop a player who’s as worth as Klingberg, do yourself a favor and at least try and trade the player before you drop them. Mind blowing!
These types of drops happen every year, so it’s in your best interest to keep an eye on the transactions that take place in your pool(s). You never know when the next quality player will be dropped because of a slow start, or a slump. Sometimes player X will perform worse if they have an injured line mate. A good example of that would be Barkov/Hubderdeau/Jagr, you just watch their line spike in points produced when Huberdeau returns from his injury.
Tonight there is a few quality matchups as the Habs continue to roll along in their winning ways. But tonight, for me it’s the Penguins versus the Ducks that I’m most interested in, unfortunately the game doesn’t start until 10:30pm ES. It will be Matt Murray’s first game back in between the pipes for Pittsburgh since hoisting the cup last season. What’s going to be interesting is if Murray stands on his head like he did all last season, especially in the playoffs and ends up making the Penguins make a big decision; keeping him and trading Fleury or not.
Murray had an unbelievable 9-2-1 last season with 2.0 GAA and .930 save percent.
If that doesn’t impress you, how about his playoff performance holding a 15-6-0 record as a rookie, sporting a 2.08 GAA and a .923 save percent. Winning the cup as a rookie is something special, look for Murray to shut the door on the Ducks who are coming off a big shutout win last night.
Starting Goalies:
Vancouver (Ryan Miller) vs Montreal (Carey Price) Detroit (Petr Mrazek) vs Philadelphia (Michal Neuvirth) Pittsburgh (Matt Murray) vs Anaheim (John Gibson)
I'm currently winning 122-107 in my HBSL matchup.
Thanks for reading, enjoy and best of luck in your fantasy this week!