Ramblings for Sunday Oct 26 2014

Dobber

2014-10-26

Thoughts on Saturday’s relatively injury-free slate of NHL action

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For the first time this season we won’t spend too much time breaking down the latest Saturday night injury news, which is always welcome.

Chicago Blackhawks winger Dan Carcillo left his game on Saturday night with an apparent knee injury, and Alex Ovechkin sustained some damage to his hand when he blocked a shot, but he stayed in the game and is a Russian Machine that Never Breaks so he’ll be okay we hope.

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We’ll start with the matinee game where the Buffalo Sabres beat the San Jose Sharks 2-1. The Sharks are reeling having lost four games in a row and are looking brutal frankly. This isn’t a streak of bad luck, this is just extraordinarily permissive defensive play…

You know what they could probably use – how about a stud first line power forward whose shot rates and corsi for percentage compare favorably with the likes of Max Pacioretty and Alex Ovechkin? Because they’ve got a player like that languishing on their second defense pair (though in fairness Burns did score a goal from the back-end today)…

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Zemgus Girgensons isn’t quite the multi-cat beast I’m convinced he will be, but he’s just 20-years-old so he’ll get there. Anyway he was on the ice to kill the last few minutes of Saturday afternoon’s game and finished with five hits, two shots on goal, an assist and a +1 rating.

Again he’s not quite there, but man, at some point in the not-too-distant future I’m convinced that this guy is going to be a David Backes/Ryan Kesler/Dustin Brown quality fantasy asset.

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I forgot to start Patrick Marleau (because I was drafting my NBA fantasy team) today and it didn’t matter. Like, his line in my league was 0 goals, 0 assists, 0 PPPs, 0 hits, 0 shots on goal and an even plus/minus rating. I was kicking myself all the way to the final buzzer, but it didn’t matter at all. Kind of funny when that happens.

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Sharks forward Tommy Wingels didn’t put up any points on Saturday night, but his peripherals remain slick: two PIMs, four shots on goal, three hits and a blocked shot.

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In Toronto, the Maple Leafs looked flat and were flattened in a 4-1 loss to the Boston Bruins. Dougie Hamilton came to play in a major way as he put together a three point night (a goal, two assists), including 1 PPP, four shots on goal, two PIMs, and three hits. Obviously he’s not going to make anyone forget about Zdeno Chara any time soon, but that’s something of a statement game for the young Bruins blue-liner.

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Speaking of good young Bruins blue-liners, Torey Krug had five shots on goal and while he didn’t put together any power play points, he did log over 20 minutes of time on ice. He’ll get more burn with Chara out of the lineup, it would seem.

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Interesting new tactical wrinkle and worth paying attention to in leagues that count face-off wins: the Bruins appear to be using Milan Lucic to take offensive zone draws on his strong side, particularly with the man-advantage. Lucic won all four draws he took on Saturday night and took all of them in the offensive end of the ice.

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The Stars are going to need to trade for a Jeff Zatkoff or something at some point this season, I suspect. Lindback just isn’t an NHL caliber puck stopper in my opinion, and it’s seriously in Dallas’ best interests to manage Kari Lehtonen‘s workload. In the loaded west I’m not sure they can afford 22 Lindback starts this season…

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Mike Smith finally found his form on Saturday, stopping 23 of 24 shots in a Phoenix Coyotes overtime victory over the Florida Panthers. Oliver Ekman-Larsson scored the game winner in overtime for the ‘Yotes, and peppered Roberto Luongo with eight shots on net in the contest (which is pretty valuable output from a defenders slot). Keith Yandle meanwhile had two points (both assists) and seven shots on net, but was a -1 and it was richly deserved as he gave the puck away to Jussi Jokinen on Brandon Pirri‘s goal…

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Luongo stopped 39 of 41 shots and had an excellent fantasy outing in a losing effort. Nick Bjugstad meanwhile managed five shots on goal, while Willie Mitchell blocked nine shots and threw three hits while logging 20 seconds shy of nine minutes of short-handed time on ice on Saturday. Now you know why the first iteration of the Alain Vigneault Vancouver Canucks – pre-Mike Gillis era – was so difficult to score on…

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Philadelphia Flyers forward Michael Raffl had a two goal, one assist, +2 evening which is pretty funny as he led the Flyers past the Detroit Red Wings in a 4-2 win. Meanwhile Michael Del Zotto had two assists and logged over 22 minutes of time on ice, which, yeah he’ll have to do often now that Braydon Coburn and Andrew MacDonald are both out long-term with injuries. Could be worth a desperation look on waivers, though with Visnovsky almost surely still available in your league, you better be real desperate.

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How about Claude Giroux with the assist, five shots on goal, 2 penalty minutes, two blocked shots, one hit and 19(!) face-off win performance? That’s just sick.

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Pavel Datsyuk scored his first of the season and remains a complete freak. Also Riley Sheahan capped off a lovely goal in which he combined impressively with line-mates Andrej Nestrasil and Tomas Jurco to open the scoring. All three of those guys look like serious players.

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This week we’re calling them the St. Louis Flues, but they got back to their usual winning ways by holding off the Chicago Blackhawks in a thrilling 3-2 victory on Saturday night. Jaden Schwartz scored his fifth of the season, while T.J. Oshie finally got on the board with his first point of the season, and Dmitrij Jaskin – who I think very highly of as a prospect – scored the game winner and added three hits and three shots on goal. Pietrangelo had a monster fantasy outing with two assists, a +2 rating, 2 PIM, three shots on goal and three hits.

For the Blackhawks Patrick Sharp had a multi-point game, but no one really had a particularly good fantasy night. Even Jonathan Toews – who managed four shots – didn’t do much else, and finished the game with a -2 rating.

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In the Pittsburgh Penguins’ 3-0 victory over the Nashville Predators Sidney Crosby had a three point evening (a goal and two assists) that is all too familiar for hockey fans and Crosby fantasy owners. He also threw three hits and took a couple of shots.

Meanwhile his line mate Patric Hornqvist has had a bit of a rough week in terms of generating shot volume. After regularly hitting 7+ shots in the first two weeks of the season, Hornqvist’s volume shooting game has fallen off a bit (which, fair enough). He only managed two shots though he did record an assist on Saturday night.

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Christian Ehrhoff has been awesome on a pairing with Paul Martin for the Penguins, but he’s been a huge fantasy bust in the early going. Obviously it doesn’t help that he’s not playing on the first power play unit, but he’s pretty regularly putting up lines like he did again on Saturday night: no goals, no points, one shot, no hits.

He’s playing well, but he’s an odd example of a guy whose hockey value is enormous, but it isn’t showing up in the boxscore. The Penguins will take it, but I’d imagine Ehrhoff owners are getting a wee bit frustrated.

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The Predators trailed the Penguins for nearly 54 minutes on Saturday night and still got outshot. This is why I’m skeptical about the Predators in general, and certainly don’t think they’re in the same class as the Dallas Stars or the Minnesota Wild.

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I’m starting to think that Predators defenseman Ryan Ellis might be worth owning in deeper leagues. He had another three shot outing on Saturday, the fourth game of the season in which he’s done that.

That’s worthwhile from a blue-line slot, and he has a goal and three assists just this week, which I don’t think is a completely unsustainable level of production. If you’re looking for a Chara replacement, I’d honestly go with him or Visnovsky (and then maybe, maybe Del Zotto).

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Evgeni Nabokov is, yeah.

The veterean netminder got chased after allowing four goals against on eight shots faced against the Wild on Saturday night, which enabled big fantasy nights for the likes of Zach Parise (a goal, an assist, five shots on goal), Marco Scandella (a goal, an assist, five PIM), Jason Zucker (2 goals, 2 shots, plus-2), and Ryan Suter (assist, plus-4).

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So Thomas Vanek still hasn’t scored a goal as a Minnesota Wild player yet, and hasn’t recorded a single shot on goal since he appeared to injure his thumb last weekend against the Los Angeles Kings. As a Vanek fantasy owner I’ll admit: I’m enormously worried. At least he had two assists on Saturday…

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Quiet night for Jonathan Drouin after his coming out party against the Winnipeg Jets on Friday night. He didn’t record a point, a shot, or a hit on Saturday in Tampa Bay’s loss to the Wild. Not uncommon for consistency to be the last thing a great young player learns at the NHL level. Perhaps Saturday’s performance from Drouin just emphasizes that (or maybe it’s nothing who knows, he’s had a pretty impressive first week in the NHL).

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Dennis Wideman crushed me in my fantasy matchup this week with three goals (including another one on Saturday night – he has five on the season now). Overall though the Flames began to regress in a 3-1 loss to the Washington Capitals in which they got rather thoroughly outclassed in my opinion.

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Brooks Orpik had a pretty amazing fantasy outing on Saturday night with 10 hits (only one of which was really cheap!), while Joel Ward scored two goals and managed four shots on goal. Alex Ovechkin went without a point, and only managed one shots which is pretty amazing. He now has a total of five shots in his past three games, which is less than the number he averaged in his first four games of the season.

Thomas Drance is a news editor at theScore.

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UPCOMING GAMES

Mar 28 - 19:03 OTT vs CHI
Mar 28 - 19:03 TOR vs WSH
Mar 28 - 19:03 MTL vs PHI
Mar 28 - 19:03 PIT vs CBJ
Mar 28 - 19:03 FLA vs NYI
Mar 28 - 19:03 CAR vs DET
Mar 28 - 20:03 MIN vs S.J
Mar 28 - 20:03 STL vs CGY
Mar 28 - 20:03 WPG vs VGK
Mar 28 - 21:03 EDM vs L.A
Mar 28 - 21:03 COL vs NYR
Mar 28 - 22:03 SEA vs ANA
Mar 28 - 22:03 VAN vs DAL
Mar 28 - 22:03 ARI vs NSH

Starting Goalies

Top Skater Views

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TAGE THOMPSON BUF
JJ PETERKA BUF
ANTHONY DUCLAIR T.B
JORDAN GREENWAY BUF
JURAJ SLAFKOVSKY MTL

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  Players Team
ALEKSEI KOLOSOV PHI
JOONAS KORPISALO OTT
KAREL VEJMELKA ARI
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LINE COMBOS

  Frequency NYR Players
23.1 VINCENT TROCHECK ARTEMI PANARIN ALEXIS LAFRENIERE
10.7 JIMMY VESEY MATT REMPE BARCLAY GOODROW
10.0 MIKA ZIBANEJAD ARTEMI PANARIN CHRIS KREIDER

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