The Washington Capitals have begun to spread away from the pack in the Eastern Conference winning their last five games and are quickly picking up momentum with a bolstering offense. Kuznetsov has been dynamic, Oshie has begun to heat up as he continues to bring an element to the top line they havn’t had in the past. Carlson has continued to be a dominant force on the blue line and of course Holtby has been remarkable in the first thirty games or so of the season. Combine all of these individual performances with Ovechkin and Backstrom getting the job done and the Capitals look to be in the best shape yet in the overall picture.
In the West Dallas continues their dominance as they pounded the Canadiens 6-2 on Saturday evening. Dallas leads the NHL in scoring with 114 goals for and 85 against. If you have Benn or Seguin in your pool you must be quite happy with their production as they are both at 44 points and are the closest in points to Patrick Kane who leads the league with 50. Jamie Benn has a league leading 22 goals and continues to be an all-round monster on the ice, competing hard and contributing in every category; there is nobody I want more on my roster than Jamie Benn. Lehtonen and Niemi have been bouncing back and forth with cold and hot streaks as they split starts and both have excellent win/loss records.
Be sure to take a look at schedule for the week, there are a number of games on Monday and Tuesday, then three full days of no hockey for Christmas followed by a busy Saturday and Sunday. There will only be hockey four nights this week so be sure you meet any criteria for games played with goaltenders. Adjust those rosters accordingly and be sure to load up on teams who play more than two games. Only Dallas and St. Louis have four games this week; so that’s a good place to start if you are looking to get your bang for buck with a free agent move.
I’m going to break up the games a bit differently this week since it’s an odd week.
Teams playing Monday and Tuesday: Anaheim – Dallas – Minnesota – Montreal – St. Louis – Toronto – Winnipeg
Teams playing Saturday and Sunday: Arizona – Boston – Carolina – Columbus – Dallas – Edmonton – Pittsburgh – St. Louis
Teams playing 1 game: Buffalo – New York Rangers – San Jose
Hopefully that helps with your decision making process with free agent add-ons. Personally, I plan to use two moves today and two moves on Wednesday in preparation for the Friday-Saturday games. Since I have Ristolainen from Buffalo and Nash from the Rangers I want to get as many games in as I can with my rotator slot(s). If you are wondering what I’m talking about, a rotator slot is best used when you have an injury or two, or a slot where you are not thrilled with a player and you use that slot to rotate in a number of games for the week, maximizing potential output.
For example, today I picked up Komarov and Pominville as they are both free agents and both play today and tomorrow.
When searching for what player to pick-up off the free agency, be sure to not only look at overall points, but who’s hot over the last month, or couple of weeks. Sometimes you could see a player, who has 5 more points than another potential player you like, but those points were all gathered 7 weeks ago and the player has been ice cold since. Go with the hot hand, I assure you it will pay off to do that little bit more research.
Starting Goalies:
(ANA) Andersen/Gibson VS (NYI) Halak (STL) Allen VS (PHI) Mason (CLB) Korpisalo VS (PIT) Murray (WSH) Holtby VS (CAR) Ward (MTL) Tokarski VS (NSH) Rinne (DAL) Lehtonen VS (MIN) Dubnyk (TOR) Bernier VS (COL) Varlamov (WPG) Hellebuyuck VS (EDM) Talbot
Thanks for reading, good luck and be sure to set your lines for the HBSL.