Happy Wednesday, Razzball faithful!
Apparently, all we needed to do to wake up the sleeping Panther kitties was to reunite the Tkachuk brothers in the Sunshine state (even if one was only visiting) and to tell Linus Ullmark that he was back with the 2020 Buffalo Sabres.
Our favorite Swedish goalie, whose name rhymes with a giggle-worthy body part, had one of the roughest starts of his career in Florida on Tuesday night.
Florida struck with pointed claws just 63 seconds into the game, and Mr. Ullmark was yanked after allowing 5 goals on just 16 shots. Oh, Linus.
It was a kick in the stomach for a surging Sens squad, who found themselves out of a wild-card spot by just two points when they started the day. By the end of the night, Ullmark and the rest of his Senators brethren were on the wrong side of a 6-3 loss to the back-to-back Stanley Cup champs.
There are a couple teams making surprising runs to get back into the playoff race. The most surprising to me, by far, is the Flyers. In a huge showdown with Detroit on Saturday, the Flyers stomped them early and held on for the win. Owen Tippett stole the show with a hat trick and an assist with seven shots. He had two shots in the 2-1 OT win over the Stars, putting Philly two points out of the playoffs, albeit losing the tiebreaker to every team in front of them. Philly has a bunch of games this week against their direct competition, so expect Tocchet to lean on their studs. There are only two games on Friday, so Tippett has a real case to be held. Let's take a look at what else happened over the weekend:
Happy Wednesday, Razzball faithful!
Matthew Knies (2 G, +1, 2 PIM, 4 SOG, 2 H) is one of the only bright spots shining on the sinking ship that is the Toronto Maple Leafs’ season. His second-period shorthanded goal was a thing of beauty. Knies intercepted a weak Bruins pass, pushed aside Mason Lohrei, who looked a lot less powerful than his 6’5” frame would suggest, like an empty paper plate, and threw a nifty head fake on Jeremy Swayman before roofing a nice lickety-split wrister over the netminder’s glove.
As much as this was a nice opportunity for the Bruins to pad their lead over Columbus, Montreal, and Detroit in the extremely tight playoff race, this tiny snapshot in time was an equally important reminder for Leaf fans that the team needs to do a lot of other “retooling or rebuilding” that DOES NOT involve trading their 23-year-old sniper.
It's no surprise that Nazem Kadri is the big winner of the trade deadline. The surprise is how big of a winner that he is. Kadri has played on the wing with MacKinnon and Necas instead of centering his own line, and it doesn't get better than that. Kadri had a goalon two shots on Thursday in the win over the Kraken. His 19:26 in a blowout win is the lowest TOI he's played so far. There's a real chance that Kadri will be a top 50 player for the rest of the season if he stays in this spot, despite being available in 15% of leagues. I assume your league's trade deadline has passed, but if it hasn't and you're making a push, Kadri is a top target.
Happy Wednesday, Razzball faithful!
Well, fantasy baseball drafts are in full swing (pun relatively unintended), and I’m knee deep in preparations and writing for those.
And I’ve been sick for three days.
But…HOCKEY IS BACK! And I’m pretty excited to have an 11-game schedule of matchups to run down for y’all on the last Tuesday night of games before the Friday afternoon trade deadline.
As for more names on the trade block? Well, I can guarantee this guy isn't going anywhere.
Happy Wednesday, Razzball faithful!
The Olympics are finally done. And I guess nothing too exciting happened, so let’s not waste any time digging into that stuff…
Oops. Wrong image.
Ok. I didn’t think we’d be able to get around that one.
Before we get into names to consider for the final 25 games and the race to the playoffs, a quick recap of Olympic play is in order.
First, congratulations to Team Canada for their clean sweep of SILVER in Italy!
Happy Wednesday, Razzball faithful!
We’re smack-dab in the middle of Olympic chaos, and Wednesday’s playoff round looks like a doozy.
I’m not even sure which game I’m looking forward to watching more: David Pastrnak vs Team Canada or the Swedish berries/fish/meatballs vs Team USA.
Luckily, we don’t have to look into too much of that for right now, because it’s time to pair up last week’s trade deadline preview with the other side of the league. If you missed it last week, you can click the link here…
"Boldy is the type of player that I love to have on my team. Boldy’s extremely safe across the board with plenty of upside." And that's me quoting me from my preseason rankings copying what Grey does! Nothing like a career high in goals for Boldy before the Olympic break. Boldy was outstanding on Wednesday, scoring a hat trick in the first period against the Predators, later adding an assist in the victory. While the shots are slightly down, Boldy is still over three per game, and already has 32+30 in 54 games. That's a borderline top 10 forward. I had Boldy in my top 25 overall going into the season, slightly ahead of his ADP. Granted, when it's this early in drafts, slightly ahead put him on a bunch of my teams. He should only continue to get better going forward and has the chance to be reach superstardom during the Olympics. Let's take a look at what else happened over the last two nights:
The first Winter Classic between the Sabres and Penguins in 2008 will always be the top outdoor game for me. Everything about the game was perfection. Sunday's Stadium Series game in Tampa moved to #2 on my list. After Hagel scored 11 seconds into the game, Boston scored five in a row before Tampa mounted a huge comeback, winning 6-5 in a shootout. There was even a goalie fight! Boston's problem was that they couldn't stay out of the penalty box, and that's a death sentence against Tampa. Unsurprisingly, it started with Nikita Kucherov, who had a goal and three assists with eight shots in the victory. It might sound blasphemous, but Kucherov has a real chance to be the best European forward ever. He'll certainly be in the discussion. He's currently the #3 overall forward for fantasy behind MacKinnon and McDavid. I had him ranked 4th going into the season in a tier with Draisaitl, who is currently 4th overall. Very chalky season at the top besides the Celebrini big breakout. Anyways, Kucherov is a top 5 player until further notice. He's showing no signs of slowing down at 32. Let's take a look at what else happened over the weekend:
It hasn't been a good year for Columbus, but they seem to have solved their goaltending issue going forward. Jet Greaves stole the show on Thursday night, shutting out the juggernaut Stars in the 1-0 win, making 28 saves. After that performance, Greaves is the #11 goalie for the season. One of my ten bold predictions from the preseason was that Greaves would finish as a top 12 goalie. There's no guarantee it holds, and some of my predictions were truly awful (I'll take a look at them during the break), but this one has a good chance of hitting. Hopefully you all drafted Greaves as your third goalie and you're reaping the benefits. Let's take a look at what else happened over the last two nights:
We're very accustomed to Vegas making a big trade every season at this point. Surprisingly, we got their big move on Sunday already. Since they were willing to acquire Rasmus Andersson without a contract extension, the Flames sent him to the desert, acquiring Zach Whitecloud, a first round pick, a second round pick (turns to another first if Vegas wins the Cup), and a prospect that projects to be an AHL'er. It's a good return for Calgary, taking advantage of Andersson bouncing back from a dreadful 24-25 season. For Vegas, the fit is kind of weird to me. It's a team that doesn't even play a forward on their top power play unit, so are they really going to jam Andersson with Theodore on the second unit? Probably to make him happy, at least with their current injuries, but I don't see a lot of gain there. Scoring goals hasn't been a problem, and Andersson has still been bad defensively. He should play with Hanifin which maybe helps a bit? Overall, I think this is a net negative for Andersson's fantasy value, but I'm still holding him for the time being to see how it looks for the next couple weeks. For Calgary, Weegar takes over the top power play unit by default. He's on the fringe. Whitecloud could gain some deep league value. My assumption is he gets a top four role, and with that, some quality hits and blocks. Let's take a look at what else happened over the weekend:
It's not that often that you see a team score 10 goals in a game. In fact, it didn't happen all of last season. It did on Saturday, with the Bruins smashing the Rangers 10-2 in the afternoon. It's no surprise that the two highest game scores of the season were Bruins in this game. It's definitely not a surprise that one was David Pastrnak, who dished a whopping six assists in the game, adding five shots on goal. The huge surprise was Marat Khusnutdinov, who scored four goals and an assist, finishing +6. While he didn't record any stats in Boston's game on Sunday, Khusnutdinov did have three assists in his previous four games. He's currently on the first line with Pasta, so he's worth bumping into the middling streamer range. There's some upside here, but he only had seven shots in his previous eight games combined, so that will need to drastically change for anything more. Let's take a look at what else happened over the weekend: