Hi all, and welcome to the first edition of the weekly Monday fantasy hockey “Cheat Sheet” where each week I’ll be giving you a quick rundown of schedules to targets, priority waiver adds, trade for and/or trade away candidates, and more!
To kick things off let’s take a look at this week’s schedule: The teams who play four games this week include: Colorado, Pittsburgh, LA, San Jose, Florida (the Panthers), and New Jersey. Out of those teams both Colorado and Pittsburgh play all four of their games on off-nights and are thus our priority waiver targets for this coming week. However, I do recommend checking your roster schedule before making any changes to ensure you’re not giving up a Monday/Tuesday back to back start for a Monday/Wednesday start before dropping anyone and picking up an Av’s or Penguins player for the week (the Panthers and the Devils are our two Monday/Tuesday start teams this week).
As far as waiver adds go I have a few players that I’ve already grabbed in my own league based on the above scheduling:
- Casey Mittelstadt (F-C) is centering the Avs 2nd line and is seeing time on the first powerplay unit with Jonathon Drouin out for “the next few games” at least. Mittelstadt has a goal in each of Colorado’s first two games and is a great waiver add for this week and possibly even a hold at least until the return of Drouin.
- Marcus Pettersson (D) and/or Anthony Beauvillier (F-LW) are your two best and widely available options on the Penguins depending on your positional needs. Pettersson is on the second defensive pairing at full strength, the 1st PK unit, and is seeing an even 21 minutes average time on ice through three games. Meanwhile, Beauvillier is seeing time at left wing on the first line with Sidney Crosby and Bryan Rust which is highly valuable in and of itself. His only drawback is that he’s not seeing any PP time currently but for a one week waiver add you could do a lot worse than a guy averaging over 14 minutes a night on the ice with one of the greatest players of this generation.
- Johnathan Kovacevic (D) is a bit of a deeper add and is currently less than 10% rostered on espn but he’s on the second defensive pairing with Jonas Siegenthaler (who is also playing quite well to start the season off). I’d recommend adding either of the two but mainly Kovacevic if possible for the Monday/Tuesday starts and then making a switch to a Colorado, Pittsburgh, or Anaheim player for the remainder of the week to get a total of 5 starts in.
For this week I’m going to hold off on giving any must trade for advice until we’ve seen things shake out for another week. That being said I am highly excited for how things are looking at the newly christened “Utah Hockey Club” and once again Vancouver is looking dangerous on offense so far this season. If I had to throw a few names out to keep an eye on for both clubs I’d say:
- Run to your waiver wire NOW and make sure that Dylan Guenther isn’t available and if he is make it so that he’s immediately unavailable. He already looked great in Mullet Arena last year but he’s off to a scorching hot start in Utah with 5 goals in 3 games thus far. Pick him up before someone else does. I’d also take a look for Barrett Hayton while you’re at it who is for some reason slightly more available than Guenther but is centering not only the top line but top PP unit as well and is nearly as hot as Guenther with 3 goals and 2 assists to start the season.
- As far as trade for candidates, I’d also say that I’m loving what I’m seeing from Mikhail Sergachev. Now in Utah and on the top defensive pairing and PP1, I’d recommend holding off for now but if he continues to get the ice time and deployment that he is thus far then he’s a must trade-for target for me in all formats. My second trade-for candidate is more of a no-brainer but I’d be willing to go for broke for J.T. Miller centering Vancouver’s top line and PP1. For this one it might make sense to strike early instead of waiting. He has a goal and an assist in the Canuck’s first two games and any fantasy player worth their salt knows what he’s capable of but I imagine his price will only increase in the coming weeks. If you’re interested, buy now!
That’s all for this week. If you have any questions about particular teams, players, etc that I didn’t cover this week feel free to leave a comment below and I’ll do my best to respond as quickly as I can! Good luck with your lineups this week!
