For the past week plus, every time that the Blues played I bring up a solid performance from Colton Parayko. His role was increased with the injury to Kevin Shattenkirk and he’s run with it ever since. Yesterday, he scored another goal getting an absurd 10 shots on goal with 2 blocked shots. Shattenkirk is going to be back soon but Parayko has solidified himself as a top 4 option on the blueline with power play skills. Again, go grab him where you can.
Here’s what else happened the last two nights:
Jonas Hiller – gave up 4 goals on 18 shots, then left the game injured against Ottawa. I still expect the Flames to turn it around but man, it’s ugly right now defensively. If you need a goalie in the short term, Joni Ortio should get the start in the next couple Calgary games.
Sam Bennett – Goal and assist with three shots. Finally! He’s the one aggressive preseason ranking that has looked absolutely horrible by me so far but hopefully this is the start of the turn around. He’s too talented to struggle all season.
Dougie Hamilton – Goal with 7 shots on goal, +17 Corsi. This is the Hamilton I expected this year. Buy low if you can or if somebody got impatient with him, grab him off the waiver wire.
Jiri Hudler – Two assists with a shot. Very solid start for Hudler to this season; last year doesn’t appear to have been a fluke.
Kyle Turris – Goal and assist with three shots. Hasn’t been impacted by the short term injury of Mike Hoffman. Turris has been showing why he went second in the draft years ago.
Bobby Ryan – Goal on two shots and two PIM. Six points in 9 games is about the pace you expect from Ryan at this point in a good year. Like I said in the preseason, don’t expect Ducks Bobby Ryan to suddenly reappear.
Evgeny Kuznetsov – Goal on five shots. Hot schomato alert!
Pekka Rinne – 20 saves on 21 shots in the win over San Jose Wednesday night. Good times keep rolling for Rinne owners.
Joe Pavelski – Goal on 3 shots. The Big Pavelski just keeps chugging along doing what he does.
Jordan Staal – Two assists and five shots. First two points of the season for Jordan. Yikes.
Nick Leddy – Two assists with a shot. After his breakout last year, Leddy’s offense has seemingly disappeared this year. He has taken only 7 shots in 10 games which is a disaster. He’s safe to drop in 12’ers and probably 14’ers too.
Cory Schneider – 27 saves on 28 shots in the 4-1 win over Philly. His numbers are always solid and now he’s actually getting some goal support. If the wins are there, a top 10 season should be too.
Kyle Palmieri – Goal and two assists with four shots. He’s an interesting streamer in the right matchup but shouldn’t be owned except in the deepest of leagues.
Travis Zajac – Two goals and three shots playing almost 21 minutes. I’m still only using Zajac as a streamer in 12’ers unless my league counts faceoff wins; then I would own him.
Jeff Zatkoff – 50 saves on 53 shots in the 4-3 win over Buffalo. Zatkoff absolutely stole the game last night. The total shot attempts in the game were 83-44 Buffalo which is insane. Every skater for the Pens were outshot when they were on the ice. It was his first start of the season for Zatkoff and he won’t get many but he’s a good streamer in the right matchup going forward.
Evgeni Malkin – Goal and two assists with 3 shots in 2 games. The Penguins offense is finally starting to click so expect the studs to get rolling.
Sidney Crosby – Two assists with 7 shots. Can I repeat the exact thing for the next two guys as well? Pens offensive breakout is coming.
Patric Hornqvist – Goal and assist with six shots. He’s moved up to Crosby’s line now and it seems to have jumpstarted them both.
Phil Kessel – Goal and assist with five shots. He’s moved to Malkin’s line and it seems to have jumpstarted them both. And that’s me almost copying me! Or something…
Ryan O’Reilly – Two assists and four shots, +16 Corsi. Up to 10 points in 10 games for Buffalo. Absolute beast and worth every penny of his contract.
Rasmus Ristolainen – Two assists and five shots. I love it when I’m right! I had Risto in the top 200 when nobody else had him in the top 300. He looks absolutely incredible right now and I can already see him being somebody I want on all of my teams in 2016-17.
Semyon Varlamov – 34 saves on 35 shots in the 2-1 win over Tampa. The Avalanche were outplayed badly again with a Corsi of 65-43. Varlamov needs to play great to give the Avs a shot on a regular basis.
Jarome Iginla – Two assists on six shots. Coach Patrick Roy switched up the lines tonight and it sparked Iginla playing with Nathan MacKinnon (goal and assist on 5 shots). If you are in a league where you can’t stream much, I’d own Iginla in a 12 teamer. In standard leagues, I’m holding off until I see if he sticks with MacKinnon.
Alex Tanguay – Goal and assist with one shot. Even if he’s on the top line, he’s not ownable in 12’ers. He simply doesn’t shoot the puck enough to be fantasy relevant.
Victor Hedman – Assist with seven shots and 2 PIM. If you had Victor Hedman tied for the league lead in assists 10 games in, raise your hand. Liar! He looks closer to the top 5 defenseman at this point than the 10-13 range.
Fredrik Andersen – 32 saves on 34 shots in the 2-1 loss to St. Louis. The Ducks have now scored 5 goals in Andersen’s 8 starts this year. That’s just sad.
Corey Perry – Assist with two shots and 7 PIM. He’s starting to pick up the pace a bit. Once Ryan Getzlaf gets back next week, I expect them both to take off.
Vladimir Tarasenko – Goal with four shots. Looks like a good bet to top even last year’s career season.
Patrick Kane – Goal on three shots. Seems hellbent on winning the Art Ross after he narrowly missed last year.
Michael Hutchinson – 45 saves on 46 shots in the 3-1 win. He may work himself into a full split with Ondrej Pavelec with his current play.
Nikolaj Ehlers – Assist and four shots. Kid is legit.
Bryan Little – Two assists (one to each linemate) and two shots. Andrew Ladd had 5 shots and Blake Wheeler scored on his only shot. The most underrated line in hockey is really starting to get going. Again, how the hell did ESPN have Wheeler ranked so low in preseason? He’s an absolute no brainer top 50 player (I had him top 40) and they had him down in the 70s. So dumb.
Daniel Sedin – Two assists and a shot. The Cyborgs just keep scoring; these guys do not age.
Radim Vrbata – Goal on four shots. Hopefully you grab him if someone got impatient. He’s a great target as sell.
Yannick Weber – Assist with two shots and two blocks. This is for deep leagues but I’d think about grabbing him in 14’ers and would definitely add him in anything deeper if possible. He’s playing in the top four with Dan Hamhuis injured and on the first power play unit.
Jamie Benn – Goal and assist with 2 shots. 17 points in 10 games? Seriously? In his last 22 games going back to last season, he has 40 points. To quote Rex Ryan when he was talking about Darrelle Revis, “God damn, he’s pretty f****** good.”
John Klingberg – Assist and a shot. That’s a six game point streak for Klingberg. Things are looking great for 55+ points.
Patrick Sharp – Two goals on six shots. Finally that big game that I’ve been saying is coming from Sharp. He’s firmly over three shots per game and hasn’t got the power play points that will inevitably come yet.
Tyler Seguin – Assist with four shots. In a few weeks to a month, I will put together a re-ranking of the top 200 players and I have no idea how I’d do the top 5 at this point. One thing is for certain; Benn and Seguin are both in it.
Carey Price – 23 saves on 27 shots in the 4-3 loss to Edmonton. You don’t see Montreal blow a 3-0 lead too often. Regression, meet the Canadiens!
Leon Draisaitl – Two goals on 5 shots. It was the German’s first game of the year and he was immediately put on the first line with Taylor Hall and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (assist and 3 shots each). In dynasty leagues, he’s a must own. In standard leagues, I’d be tempted to pick him up now and hope he sticks with the other Oilers big guns. Otherwise, it might be too late.
Connor McDavid – Two assist and two shots. This is just getting ridiculous.
Streamers for Friday: Since this is the last article until Monday morning, I will post streamers for Saturday and Sunday in the comments of this article on those days. Here are three for Friday:
Nicolas Deslauriers (0.0% owned) – This is digging really deep but he’s playing on the first line with an on-fire Ryan O’Reilly. The Flyers aren’t the greatest team by any stretch. He’s an outstanding stream in leagues that count hits.
Alex Burrows (2.2% owned) – He’s getting solid minutes, he has as good of a matchup you can get in Arizona and he occasionally chips in good penalty minutes.
J.T Miller (3.5% owned) – Getting power play time now and getting a ton of offensive zone starts.
That’s all for now guys. I’ll be back Monday with a wrapup of the weekend. We’ll also have another article from Marv next week Tuesday and we also will have a new contributor starting very soon! Things are starting to pick up on the hockey side of things at Razzball. As always, feel free to post any questions and comments below. Have a great weekend everyone!
