Two teams that have had massive up and downs clinched a playoff berth on Tuesday. The Jets did it by themselves, beating the Wild 3-1 on the back of Connor Hellebuyck. The Panthers clinched because the Penguins had the worst loss of my time at Razzball, losing to the tanking Chicago Blackhawks. Petr Mrazek made 38 saves in a game that made the fans of both teams furious, and a bunch of other fans happy. Now, the Penguins need the Islanders to lose to Montreal tomorrow to make the playoffs. It would be crazy for Washington and Pittsburgh's playoff streaks to end in the same year. Here's a quick rundown of what happened over the last two nights:
We found a new level of ridiculousness on Thursday night. The Canadiens were in Florida and they managed to tie the record for the most goals in a first period in modern NHL history, and they did it in barely over 13 minutes! Both Montreal goalies allowed 3+ goals in the first 13 minutes, and Sergei Bobrovsky allowed goals on the first three shots he faced. My god. The Panthers ended up winning 9-5 to keep pace in the Eastern playoff race. The only player who made more than two points was Matthew Tkachuk, who had a goal and three assists to keep up his torrid pace. Thanks Aleksander Barkov for not getting three points when I pick him in the three point challenge! Anyways, Florida is battling hard for a Wild Card spot, so expect their studs to get all of the minutes they can handle. For playing all games against Eastern teams the rest of the way, Florida's schedule is fairly soft, so expect it to come down to the wire. Let's take a look at what else happened over the last two nights:
There used to be a time where players received a massive fantasy boost playing with Tyler Seguin. That time has now passed, but right now, he's getting the boost playing with Robertson. With Hintz injured, Seguin has moved onto the first line centering Robertson and Pavelski, and he's blown up. On Thursday against the Kings, Seguin had two goals and an assist with five shots and two PIM. In the six games since Hintz was out of the lineup, Seguin has five goals and three assists with 22 shots on goal. It's unclear when Hintz will be back, but until he does, Seguin is an automatic hold in all fantasy formats. Let's take a look at what else happened over the last two nights:
This Nashville Predators team plays nothing like the style we've come to expect from them over the years. They're hemorrhaging chances left and right, especially against top competition. So needless to say, it was always going to be difficult for them to get a result in Carolina. Luckily for them, they have Juuse Saros. Saros had the second most saves in a non-OT game in NHL history on Thursday saving 64(!) shots in the 5-3 win over the Hurricanes. I bet over 30.5 saves for Saros, can I get paid double for him going over twice? Ha! It's going to be hard for Saros to improve in GAA considering the team in front of him, but he's been playing much better lately to the point where the save percentage should be an elite asset once again. Saros is still a #1 fantasy goalie, both for this season and in dynasties. Amazingly, despite making his debut seven seasons ago, he's still only 27 years old. Let's take a look at what else happened the last two nights:
Tage Thompson's nickname, as given to him by Sabres announcer Dan Dunleavy, is TNT. Safe to say that everyone who watched Wednesday's game on TNT learned the nickname. Thompson had the game of the season, scoring five times, five times, five times, five times! He scored four in the first period, becoming the 18th player to ever score four in a period, and the fourth to do it in the first period. He put nine shots on goal in total and added an assist despite playing only 13:56 in the game. Here's the list of players who have multiple 3+ goals, 6+ point games in the last 30 seasons: Thompson, Zibanejad, Lemieux, and Gretzky. And Thompson is only 1/3 of the way through the season! He now has 21+19 in 26 games with over five shots per game. Honestly, it doesn't look like a fluke at all. Sure, his shooting percentage is a little high, but marginally so. If he can maintain his shot rate, that's over 400 shots in a season, making him close to a lock for 50 goals. As far as going forward, Thompson has played his way into the top 10 discussion. His minutes could even end up increasing towards 20 per game from the 18:31 he's at now. Thompson has already turned his contract extension into a massive steal for the Sabres. Let's take a look at what else happened the last two nights:
To say the injuries are piling up on Washington is an understatement. They have six players on IR plus Orlov missed Monday's game. The salaries of these players combines to over $40 million. Washington pulled off the upset over the Oilers on Monday on the back of their power play. Four of the five Capital goals came on the power play, with Evgeny Kuznetsov leading the charge with two goals, two assists, four shots and two PIM playing over 20 minutes. It hasn't been the best start to the season for Kuz, but this will certainly help. It's also encouraging that he has 3+ shots in five of his last seven games. If I owned Kuz in fantasy, I would be patient. With the lack of depth Washington is dealing with, the minutes should get back up towards the 20:17 he averaged last season. Let's take a look at what else happened over the last two nights:
The Coyotes are stuck in a continual rebuild, but acquiring Shayne Gostisbehere has been one of the bright spots. Inexplicably, the Flyers gave a second round pick for Arizona to take Ghost Bear, only to give up a first and other assets to get Risto from the Sabres. Woof. Now, the Desert Dogs have rebuilt Gostisbehere's value. He scored two goals and an assist with four shots in the 6-3 win over the Blue Jackets on Tuesday. that gives him 4+4 in six games this season. In five of those games, he has at least four shots on goal. Yes, the plus-minus is bad, but those PPP are excellent. Even if Chychrun returns and play games, I can't imagine Gostisbehere losing his PP1 spot. Unless your league puts a big priority on plus-minus, he needs to be held everywhere. Let's take a look at what else happened over the last two nights:
Vancouver has managed to blow multi-goal leads in each of their first four games. Pretty remarkable stuff that already has Boudreau on the hot seat. The good news is that there's still been some offensive bright spots for the Canucks, and Elias Pettersson is leading the way. Pettersson had five points over the last two nights, totaling two goals, three assists, and six shots in the two games. That brings Pettersson to 3+3 in four games, along with 3.5 shots per game. That's a good start to one of my bold predictions of the season, which is that Pettersson will score 45+ goals this year. Time will tell if that pans out, but I have no doubt that Pettersson can be a top 25 player despite the low penalty minutes. Let's take a look at what else happened over the last two nights:
We're finally at opening night for the NHL season after two day games in Europe at the end of last week. I'll be back on Thursday doing my usual daily notes for the first two nights, but today, I want to hit on a few topics quickly. I want to discuss both games in Europe and what I took away from the Predators and Sharks. Then, I want to do a quick preview of Tuesday's and Wednesday's games highlighting some stuff that I'll hit on in Thursday's post. Then, I want to mention a few teams I'm higher and lower on than consensus when it comes to this season's expectations. Let's get to it!
I hope all you loyal Razzballers are doing well! We're just over a month away from the NHL season starting, and with football starting tonight (Go Bills!), it's time for people to transition to fantasy hockey drafts. I'm going to start my rankings next week, but for today, I'm going to look at every team's offseason. Some teams made massive changes and will have a longer write up e.g. Calgary, and others who did minimal will have a short blurb e.g. the Islanders. Let's get to it!
We've reached the final week of the season with every team having 2-3 games left. Hopefully you're all still in contention in your leagues so these games matter to you. In this post, I'm going to take a look at each day to see how you can plan accordingly to maximize starts and stream the best players possible. Let's get to it!
It's that time of the year again. For those of you who haven't seen this post in the past, I will break down every team's schedule for fantasy hockey playoffs i.e. starting on this coming Monday, 4/4. I will note when a team has a back to back or a light day. A light day is a day where there are four or less games on the schedule, with the exception of Wednesday, 4/27. I am including that day where there are five games because it's the last day of the season where you'll need streaming, as the last two days both have a lot of games. I will do the teams in alphabetical order so it's easy to find everyone, and next to each team, there will be (A,B,C,D). Those numbers will be how many games the team has in each of the four weeks left in the season. For example, (4,2,3,3) means they have four games from 4/4 - 4/10, two games from 4/11 -4/17, etc. This post is going to be extremely long, so it will be broken into two parts, with part two coming on Monday. If you have a specific question about a team next week that will be in part two and you need it answered immediately, please let it be known in the comments section and I'll answer it for you. And away we go!
