Andrew Santillo, author of Looking Ahead, analyzes the upcoming schedule every week and delivers the five best and worst teams for every seven-day period to help with starting lineup decisions. Andrew also gives insight into some of the top and bottom teams for the week as well as some savvy free agent pickups that are not owned in the majority of leagues.
The team I’m keeping a close eye on this week is Anaheim, in particular Ryan Getzlaf and Scott Niedermayer. Going into this season I expected them to start where they left off. The line of Getzlaf – Perry – Ryan has not established the chemistry to lead this team offensively. Getzlaf is still recovering from off-season surgery but is traditionally a slow starter and it was the end of October last season where he turned his year around. Niedermayer is the leader of this team and when he gets going the team will follow. The Ducks are not this bad and this may be the week they explode. Hiller has been the only positive and if he can earn a few more W’s his fantasy stock will rise.
The team I’m keeping a close eye on this week is Edmonton, in particular Dustin Penner and Patrick O’Sullivan. Penner had six points in three games last week and had five points tonight, playing with Ales Hemsky and Sam Gagner. O’Sullivan has three in his last two games and is a streaky player. Note that the flu is going through the dressing room but I expect to see a productive week from the Oilers potent offense.
Looking at the NHL schedule for week three...
The majority of league start on Monday’s so I’ll be focusing on Monday Oct 12 – Sunday Oct 18.
Same as what was posted here last week - but the chart has been fixed to better reflect what Tom Reeve was doing a year ago. If you are in a rotisserie league with weekly changes, this tool is priceless.
The number next to the team indicates the 'multiplier' to use on a player's point-per-game pace to give you an idea how many points to expect for that week. Example:
For the week starting on October 1st the Vancouver Canucks have a rating of 4.10. That means that if you think Ryan Kesler is a 0.70 point-per-game player then you should expect about 2.87 points from him (4.10 X 0.70).
Anaheim has a 1.69 rating over the same period. If you think Ryan Getzlaf is a 0.95 point-per-game player then you should expect about 1.61 points from him. So even though Ryan Getzlaf is a better player you may choose to go with Kesler over Getzlaf.
There is just over one week of regular season hockey left but that is still 6% of the season so lots of points to be had. If the NHL continues scoring at the same rate there should be over 400 more goals scored and over 700 more assists awarded.
Playoff races are all the talk across the NHL and things are winding down but don’t be fooled in to thinking the season is over. There is still 10% of the season remaining. Here is a look at the number of games remaining for all the NHL teams including games on March 27.
We are getting to that time in the season where the amount of games left to play is shrinking. Here is a list of the games remaining as of March 20:
If your playoff drive begins on Monday March 16 then here is a list of how many games are remaining for all NHL teams:
Starting March 6 the Carolina Hurricanes play five games in seven nights. The Hurricanes are old hands at this because although it only happens 12 times for all teams during the whole NHL season it happens to the Hurricanes three times. They play the Flames, Lightning, Rangers, Blackhawks and Stars with only two homes games so there is a lot of travel.
