Hi all, and welcome to week 12 of the NHL season. This is going to be a shorter article this week due to the awkward schedule created by the Christmas holiday.
Some points of note this week:
- There are no games scheduled on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. This basically means that all game nights this week (i.e. Mon, Fri, Sat, Sun) are in effect “busy nights” as I like to call them.
- Due to the above you will likely have very little roster room to work with because of the limited schedule. This makes streaming individual players on teams fairly ineffective this week.
- Additionally, no team plays more than 3 games and only two teams play just a single game – Colorado and Seattle – so avoid these two if possible. If you’re rostering players from either of these two teams that you deem droppable then this is the one situation where I think streaming skaters from another team makes sense this week.
In lieu of naming my usual skater streams this week I’m going to instead focus on a couple of goalie streams. Getting a single extra start out of a streaming forward o defenseman this week who plays 3 games vs. one who’s playing only 2 probably isn’t going to win you your week. However, a well chosen goalie stream just might (especially if you’re falling behind towards the end of the week and need to go for broke against your opponent).
- If Jordan Binnington is available then he’s my primary choice for a pickup this week. 51% rostered on ESPN, he currently has probable starts vs. Nashville on Friday and Buffalo on Sunday. These are two very plus matchups that we can be confident in to close out the week.
- Mackenzie Blackwood had been sharp for San Jose and has been looking even better for Colorado after the recent trade with stronger defense in front of him and goal support as well. He’s still under 40% rostered in most formats and draws Utah on Friday which is a matchup I don’t mind at all right now given how well he’s been playing with his new squad.
- One more lower rostered goaltender I’m interested in for a start is Yaroslav Askarov who has a probable start on Saturday vs. Calgary. If you haven’t heard of him yet I don’t blame you but this young Russian was a highly-touted prospect coming into the league (and the #11 first round pick in the 2020 draft). And though he’s only had three starts this season, which have all come over the past month, he’s been solid in all of them thus far. A .928 save percentage and 2.30 average goals against in starts vs St. Louis, LA, and Edmonton. He’s definitely worth a shot if you find yourself in a hole going into the weekend.
Good luck this week. Next week I’ll be back with a more typical weekly preview and streaming recommendations. And as always, feel free to leave comments and questions below!
