After a minor lull, the fantasy action continues as the National Hockey League continues forward and the increased goal scoring trend will likely dissipate. My guess would be mid-December when the games begin to be somewhat more structured and the veteran players begin to up their game.
That’s not always the case as sometimes a veteran player like Marian Hossa will get off to an incredible start, and a someone like Hossa, well, he may not slow down and be in for a sizzling season.
The rookies in specific will still be effective for a couple more months but may slow down in the second half of the season. Many of them have not played versus such big, strong and of quality in terms of competition. But at the same time, it seems as if the kids coming up these days are so much more trained and prepared than those of the past.
Just keep an eye on your rookies and or sophomore players, if you see them slowing down and have an eye on a free agent who is surging; it may be time to pull the trigger. Nothing worse than having your eye on a player you want to pick-up and then poof, someone else beats you to the punch.
How many games each team has this week:
4 games: Boston, Calgary, Carolina, Chicago, Columbus, Edmonton, Minnesota, Nashville, New Jersey New York Rangers, Ottawa, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, San Jose, Tampa Bay
3 games: Anaheim, Arizona, Buffalo, Colorado, Dallas, Detroit, Florida, Montreal, New York Islanders, St Louis, Toronto, Vancouver, Washington, Winnipeg
2 games: Los Angeles
As you can see it’s a very busy week in the NHL, look at possible back to back options for opportunity to use a backup tender in a game versus a weaker team for a spot win.
Speaking of goalies…
Murray vs Fleury: When the season begun, Murray was hurt with a broken hand and this gave plenty of time for Penguins long time starter Marc-Andre Fleury to settle in and get established back in his number one role.
Things started well for the Flower but eventually he was having some struggles (as most goalies do at some point). It just so happened to be exactly when Matt Murray was returning from his injury. Murray was in net for the Penguins last year as we all know when they won the cup; he was insanely good throughout the entire playoffs and a big reason why the Penguins won the Stanley Cup.
Now that Murray is back and playing excellent, just as he did last year, where does this leave Fleury? Is he now going to be on the outside looking in? Or will the Penguins go with a 1A and 1B setup where both goalies play it out until further notice? What about when the playoffs come, then what? Would it be beneficial for the Penguins to trade Fleury now, and use that cap space for another player in the top nine to round out there team?
It’s not all that complicated until you toss the expansion team of Las Vegas into the mix. That’s when things really get hairy.
Vasilevskiy vs Bishop: Tampa Bay seems to be a very similar situation as Pittsburgh, but perhaps not so spotlighted because Vasilevskiy didn’t just win the Stanley Cup. He’s coming off back to back shutouts going into this week, but Bishop is still their go-to tender and will be getting 2/3 starts all season long. The game plan was to have Vasilevskiy play around 30 games or so and they will get a better idea of what they have from their A-grade goalie prospect. So far so good for the Russian tender, mind you Tampa Bay is still a powerhouse and it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see them ride both goalies into the playoffs and make a run at the cup. As Pittsburgh showed last season, it’s very important to have another option in net when going on a legit run.
Starting goalies:
Calgary (Brian Elliott) vs Buffalo (Robin Lehner) New York (Antti Raanta) vs Pittsburgh (Marc-Andre Fleury) Colorado (Semyon Varlamov) vs Columbus (Sergei Bobrovsky) Tampa Bay (Ben Bishop) vs Nashville (Pekka Rinne) Minnesota (Darcy Kuemper) vs Dallas (Antti Niemi) Chicago (Corey Crawford) vs Edmonton (Cam Talbot) New Jersey (Keith Kinkaid) vs San Jose (Martin Jones)
Good luck in your fantasy week, thanks for reading!