It wasn’t that long ago that Jeff Skinner scored 30 goals in a season. The 23 year old has already done it twice; in his rookie year and two seasons ago. Skinner was off to a dreadful start this year with 5 goals and 2 assists in his first 25 games. Now, Skinner is on fire, scoring a hat trick on Friday against the Ducks and dishing an assist on Saturday against the Coyotes. With 9 shots total in the two games, Skinner is almost up to 3 shots per game and has more goals in the last 5 games (6) than in the previous 25. He’s a must own right now given his history of goal scoring in bunches. Here’s what else I saw in a busy weekend:
Elias Lindholm – Goal and three assists with five total shots. That’s a four game point streak for the 21 year old. If he’s available in a dynasty league, I’d definitely grab him. In standard 12’ers, he’s best as a streamer for now.
Justin Faulk – Goal and three assists with four shots. So good, just needs to fix the plus-minus or at least limit the damage.
Victor Rask – Goal and two assists with six shots. Definitely must own right now.
Kyle Palmieri – Goal and an assist with five shots and two PIM in two games over the weekend. He’s up to 13 goals which is jaw dropping. He’s one goal off a career high already!
Gustav Nyqvist – Goal on two shots. His minutes are all over the place right now but he keeps producing.
Tanner Pearson – Goal and an assist with seven shots in two games. Firmly on the first line right now so the opportunity is there right now. He’s probably best left as a streamer since the shots aren’t great.
Jake Muzzin – Goal and an assist with four shots. Solid depth defenseman for fantasy; hits all the categories at an okay level but not great at anything.
Jonathan Quick – 40 saves on 42 shots in the win over Pittsburgh Friday. He’s on track to have his best fantasy season to date.
Evgeni Malkin – Goal on ten shots with two PIM. Almost at a point per game pace and the shots are finally over three per game. Good signs,
Corey Crawford – Back to back shutouts over the Jets and Canucks. His numbers are incredible down the line this year.
Patrick Kane – Goal on Friday, assist on Sunday to extend his point streak to 26 games. Ridiculous.
Shayne Gostisbehere – Goal on three shots. Still QB’ing the Flyers lethal power play so he’s must own, at least until Mark Streit returns from injury.
Jamie Benn – Goal on eleven shots and five PIM over the weekend. That’s 20 goals for Benn already. His shooting percentage should regress a bit but he’s still going to have a monster season.
Darcy Kuemper – 19 saves on 21 shots in the loss to Arizona, 25 save shutout against the Sharks. Devan Dubnyk should be back very soon so leave Kuemper on the waiver wire except in the deepest of leagues.
Zach Parise – Goal and two assists with ten shots and two PIM. Starting to round into form again after the injury layoff.
Mikkel Boedker – Two goals on six shots in two games over the weekend. The plus-minus is rough but he’s on pace for a career year nonetheless.
Anthony Duclair – Two goals and an assist with three shots in two games, all in the OT game against the Hurricanes. He has 10 goals but only has 36 SOG in 30 games which signifies a huge fluke. Duclair is a great talent but don’t expect him to keep this up without the shot rate increasing.
Max Domi – Two assists and three shots. Amazing rookie year so far for Domi. It’s amazing there’s that much offensive talent from Tie’s son!
Henrik Lundqvist – 28 saves on 33 shots against the Oilers getting pulled early in the third, then Antti Raanta got shelled on Saturday against the Flames. 12 goals against the Rangers in two games? What the hell is going on? Should be a blimp on the radar but the Rangers really need to tighten their game up.
Derick Brassard – Two goals and an assist with six shots in the two games. Starting to heat up getting back on a 60 point pace.
Chris Kreider – Goal and two assists with three shots and six PIM. I’m buying low on Kreider if I can. He’s far too talented to only score 13 goals (the current pace that he’s on).
Mats Zuccarello – Two goals and an assist with three shots and two PIM. I’d like to see the shot rate increase seeing as he has an unsustainable shooting percentage of 24.5% but the assists are going to be there regardless.
Rick Nash – Goal and two assists with nine shots. After three straight games with one shot each, Nash started to shoot more this weekend which he needs to do. He gets his goals from quantity of shots shooting from all over the zone so it’s a good sign he was more willing to pull the trigger.
Taylor Hall – Two goals and two assists with two shots. Not much else to say about Hall at this point. He has 8 points in his last 3 games.
Teddy Purcell – Goal and two assists with two shots and two PIM. The third wheel on the first line is still right on the fringe of 12’ers.
Leon Draisaitl – Four assists and three shots. Where would you rank Draisaitl for the rest of the season? For the 2016-17 season? Is it a top 50 ranking an overreaction based on 20 games or completely deserved with 26 points in his first 20 games? I’m thinking it’s completely deserved at this point.
Lauri Korpikoski – Hat trick on six shots. Korpedo revenge game! This game doubled Korpikoski’s goal total on the season so leave him on the waiver wire barring a bump to the top 6.
Ryan Spooner – Two goals on four shots. He’s starting to become fringe in 12’ers but he hasn’t played 14 minutes in any of the last five games so barring a playing time increase, I’m only streaming him.
Tuukka Rask – 26 saves on 27 shots in the 2-1 win over the Panthers. Rask is on quite the hot streak right now to get him to a 2.55 GAA and .912 sv%, still below average but nowhere near as bad as it was. I think I’d be selling high if I could. As good as Rask is, I don’t trust the team in front of him to play this well defensively for the rest of the year.
Aaron Ekblad – Assist with two shots and four PIM. He’s heating up and the minutes are getting back to the low to mid 20’s.
Ryan O’Reilly – Goal and an assist with three shots. RoR’s previous career high was 64 points; that’s getting beat this year barring an injury.
Rasmus Ristolainen – Assist and two shots. That’s 17 points in the last 17 games for Risto. I love it when I’m right!
Max Pacioretty – Goal on eight shots with two PIM. He had been pointless in four straight but counting Saturday’s game, Patches had 31 shots on goal in his last five. Goals are coming.
Dale Weise – Two assists and four shots. He’s on pace to shatter career highs across the board.
Braden Holtby – 35 saves on 36 shots in the 2-1 win over Tampa. With Lundqvist’s recent struggles, Holtby is the #1 fantasy goalie at this point.
Nikita Kucherov – Goal on four shots. Like most of Tampa, Kucherov has been disappointing but with 5 goals in his last 4 games, perhaps he’s starting to get rolling.
Kyle Okposo – Two goals and two assists with seven shots in two games over the weekend. The shots are down quite a bit which is unfortunate. If he can get them up, he can push his big season from 2013-14 where he had 69 points in 71 games.
Thomas Greiss – 27 save shutout on Sunday against the Devils. I’d definitely own Greiss if I owned Jaroslav Halak. If Greiss is available and you don’t have Halak, you can make the argument to own Greiss anyways at this point.
Jake Allen – 26 save shutout against the Stars, then 15 saves on 17 shots against the Avalanche on Sunday. Seems backwards getting a shutout against the high powered Stars and struggling against the Avs. Either way, Allen owners have to be happy. He has a firm grasp on the job.
Kevin Shattenkirk – Two assists and nine shots. He’s looking like the borderline top 5 defenseman from last season again.
David Backes – Goal and two assists with four shots and five PIM. That’s a four game point streak for the Blues captain. It’s shocking what he can do with some offensive talent on his wings #notshocking.
Semyon Varlamov – 34 saves on 36 shots against the Predators, then 42 saves on 43 shots against the Blues, both wins. Good lord, what a weekend. If there was ever a time to sell high, it’s right now with Varlamov. The fact that he faced 79 shots in 2 games just shows how poor the Avalanche are defensively. As good as he is, he’s not going to be able to overcome it long term.
Francois Beauchemin – Goal and an assist with three shots. The minutes are insane right now but he’s very generic. The shots are mediocre at best as are the PIM.
Ryan Ellis – Two assists and five shots. Opportunity is the only thing stopped Ellis from being a must own. He’s just fourth on the totem pole in Nashville right now.
Johnny Gaudreau – Two goals and an assist with six shots. Hereeeeee’s Johnny! Nine points in the last four games.
Monday Streamers: Monday is actually busy by normal Monday standards with five games on the docket. Here are my three best streaming options:
Tanner Pearson (5.1% owned) – See above. Great matchup against the Senators who allow the most shots per game in the league.
Brett Connolly (0.4%) – The minutes are up on the first line and gets a prime matchup against the Oilers.
Vladislav Namestnikov (0.1%) – Tyler Johnson is out again so Namestnikov moves back up to the second line against a Columbus team missing Sergei Bobrovsky.
That’s all for now guys. I’ll be back tomorrow recapping Monday night’s games. The next article in Matt’s series and another Marv and Pesos article will be out in the next couple days so be on the lookout for those as well. As always, feel free to ask any questions and post any comments below. Take care everyone!
