I am coming off a huge week last column which saw me win close to $1300.00. I am pretty sure I was 9-2 on the week and hit a big parlay. I feel very confident in these weeks’ selections and even have a guaranteed pick. Not sure what I will do if I lose, but I won’t so I don’t even need to think about it.
Crazynuck delivers the goods for Week 9 of the NHL regular season!
Mike Fisher is in the midst of his tenth NHL season. This year he has delivered some unexpected lofty offensive numbers (22-10-11-21). He sits tied with Mike Richards and is ahead of both Vincent Lecavalier and Pavel Datsyuk in the scoring race, three centres who would have been drafted much, much higher than Fisher in your hockey pools this season. In his last year of major junior hockey, Fisher recorded 106 points in 68 games for Sudbury of the Ontario Hockey League. He’s really found his offensive groove under Cory Clouston. It appears that he will obliterate his career high of 48 points, but beware; Fisher has a history of missing the odd game or two (dozen) due to injury.
One of the more interesting fantasy situations heading in to this season was out West in Vancouver. Both Kevin Bieksa and Alex Edler were coming off of career seasons, and were the go-to guys on Vancouver’s power play in 2008-09. However, the Canucks traded for the speedy Christian Ehrhoff and signed veteran Mathieu Schneider, and both were expected to produce on the power play for the Canucks this season. How are things looking at the quarter-point of the season? Where do Vancouver's defensemen fit in best? I’ll do a player-by-player analysis and include my predictions for the rest of the season.
Real estate timeshares are questionable things. The concept was born in Europe many decades ago and it seemed to have its heyday in the United States during the 1980s. Then the idea got mired in shady marketing and the unscrupulous desire to make a quick buck, but at its heart, the concept was fairly sound. Can’t afford the whole thing? Just buy part of it.
Maybe this idea could work for you in your fantasy hockey league.
This week - the final instalment of the series which will deal with the Western Conference centermen. The fantasy value of pivots can be identified using the same two main stats as we used for the last couple of weeks for wingers and defenseman, which is PP ice-time and SOG. The reasoning behind it is the same. The amount of PP ice-time given usually separates players who are heavily relied upon to carry the team offensively than those who are role players. On a similar note, SOG usually maintains a similar line of thought, but it has more emphasis for a center than it does for a winger. Centers are generally considered to be “pass first” players, which is why you tend to see wingers with much higher SOG totals than centers, which makes owning a center who shoots that much more important to fantasy hockey than those that don’t. Now that we’ve established clear indicators on determining the fantasy value of centers, let’s take a closer look at a few of the them from the Western Conference.
Joe Sakic’s wrist shot could have put a hole through my body, but his words of wisdom never failed to fill my mind. I was so fortunate to cover his final season as a pro, so I always paid extremely close attention to all of his post-game quotes. One of these quips took place early last season before the back problems sidelined him for good. It has since resonated in my mind, as it is quickly becoming an important factor in the world of fantasy goaltending.
“Rest is a weapon...” he said. Although he meant that in a sort of joking, nonchalant manner, it was quite accurate.
It started out so promising. So how did things go south for Peter Mueller so quickly?
After averaging a point-and-a-half per game in the Western League and putting on WJC show overshadowed only by Jonathan Toews. He made the NHL as a 19 year old and potted 54 points, with the bulk of those coming in the second half. Then the bottom dropped out.
I’m on the road for work and this week’s picks are coming to you from Wawa, ON the home of legend Chris Simon … hahaha. They have a Chris Simon drive, which is of course the street the arena is on. Haven’t had as much time for the picks this week, as I’ve been busy travelling and working so I apologize for any lack of insight into the matchups. Thunder is at home so we won’t include her picks this week, but we’ve got 13 games on the schedule so enough dwelling on what could have been and here we go!
Crazynuck delivers the goods once again...
