Ramblings: Christmas Present for you – lots of thoughts, stats and Top 10 lists (Dec 26)

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You’ve bought everyone else a Christmas present, now it’s time to take care of YOU. The 10^th annual Midseason Guide! It’s up for presale and the release date is Friday, January 11. Pre-order it here and make sure it’s in your Downloads section waiting for you the instant I release it.

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Merry Christmas!

You’re bored right now, probably waiting for the fam to get their act together, finish getting ready, while you’re pretty much sitting in the car waiting. Thank goodness I’m here for you with some fantasy hockey tidbits…

(NOTE: This was posted briefly 24 hours earlier due to a miscommunication with Mike. Reposted now)

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Some interesting stats to mull over as teams have just two or three games left in the calendar year:

In 2018…

Alex Ovechkin has 54 regular season goals in 77 games. He has 69 regular season and playoff goals in 101 games.

Patrik Laine is second in the regular season with 49 in 78.

Four players have 100 points – Connor McDavid (115), Mikko Rantanen (110), Nathan MacKinnon and Nikita Kucherov.

Marc-Andre Fleury leads all goaltenders with 42 regular season wins. Fleury also had at least 40 wins in the year 2009 and the year 2013.

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Top 10 Hitters in 2018

1. Nikita Zadorov, 286

2. Milan Lucic, 273

3. Ryan Reaves, 270

4. William Carrier, 262

5. Mark Borowiecki, 253

6. Rasmus Ristolainen, 237

7. Nicolas Deslauriers, 233

8. Michael Del Zotto, 232

9. Chris Wagner, 228

10. Robert Hagg, 225

(run the report here)

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Top 10 Most Consistent in 2018 (percent of games played in which they picked up a point)

1. Taylor Hall, 79.5%

2. Connor McDavid, 78.2%

3. Nathan MacKinnon, 78.1%

4. Blake Wheeler, 76.6%

5. Claude Giroux, 73.4%

6. Mark Stone, 72.4%

7. Nikita Kucherov, 72.2%

8. Evgeny Kuznetsov, 72.1%

8. Cam Atkinson, 72.1%

10. Sidney Crosby, 72.0%

(run the report here)

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Top 10 Penalties Drawn in 2018

1. Aleksander Barkov, 40

2. Connor McDavid, 38

2. Johnny Gaudreau, 38

4. David Pastrnak, 37

4. Ryan Hartman, 37

4. Tom Wilson, 37

7. Matt Tkachuk, 36

8. Pierre-Luc Dubois, 35

8. Nico Hischier, 35

8. Mat Barzal, 35

(run the report here)

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Top 10 PP Assist setup men in 2018

1. Blake Wheeler, 37

2. John Carlson, 33

3. Torey Krug, 28

4. Keith Yandle, 27

4. Taylor Hall, 27

4. Mikko Rantanen, 27

4. Morgan Reilly, 27

8. Rasmus Ristolainen, 26

9. Claude Giroux, 25

9. Mathew Barzal, 25

(run this report here)

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Top 10 Players for Takeaways in 2018

1. McDavid, 119

2. Barkov, 103

3. Jaccob Slavin, 92

4. Mitch Marner, 90

5. Jeff Skinner, 88

6. Evgeni Malkin, 86

7. William Karlsson, 79

8. Stone, 78

9. Dylan Larkin, 77

10. Leon Draisaitl, Brent Burns, 76

(run this report here)

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You can really lose yourself in Frozen Pool, so if you’re still waiting on the gang to get ready – dive in and check out all the reports and player data. New this week: Goalie Reports now have a special teams section for SV% and shot data, as well as goalie offense (Andrei Vasilevskiy, FYI, is the only goalie in 2018 with three points). And minimum games played can now be set for each of the reports in the Report Generator. Eric Daoust is improving these tools every week. Every week there is something new or something improved, trust me. I just keep forgetting to pass it along in here.

Top 10 Average Shots-per-game Faced, minimum 15 GP, 2018

1. Craig Anderson, 33.92

2. Vasilevskiy, 33.38

3. Henrik Lundqvist, 33.18

4. Antti Niemi, 33.09

5. Frederick Andersen, 32.61

6. Jaroslav Halak, 32.32

7. Louis Domingue, 31.61

8. Alexandar Georgiev, 31.45

9. Thomas Greiss, 31.43

10. Corey Crawford, 31.39

(run this report here)

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The NHL actually played hockey on Christmas Day from 1920 through 1971. The leading scorer on Christmas Day games is Gordie Howe – 24 points in 21 games on December 25^th.

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I don’t pretend to know the complete background on this decision and perhaps it wasn’t driven by greed…but honestly, we’re talking about NHL owners here so of course it was driven by greed. But as I noted before, the expansion draft will not include Vegas players and Vegas will not get a piece of the Seattle expansion pie. This means that each of the other 30 owners get an addition couple million bucks. They saw that and eagerly accepted I’m sure (because, you know, greed). Pretty short-sighted. Vegas could pretty much get their own pre-expansion draft, grabbing the 11^th best player from every team on the cheap (draft pick or lesser player?). Seattle would then get the scraps that Vegas chooses to let slip by them. Of course, Seattle could be pro-active and try to outbid Vegas in pre-draft trading, but that just drives the price up, which means Seattle will not get the same savvy deals that Vegas had in 2017. So Vegas will make off like bandits, easily making the equivalent of expansion money via the added playoff revenue. Hell, they’d have that expansion money made back by the middle of May. Food for thought.

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I was asked in the comments yesterday for my thoughts on Dougie Hamilton and do I still feel that the cream will rise to the top. I still stand firm that Hamilton is far more talented than Justin Faulk and I honestly don’t understand how he hasn’t just powered his way to become the best on that team, but for one reason or another it’s not happening. Maybe he doesn’t work hard enough for Rod Brind’Amour’s liking. I don’t like the situation and I don’t see a quick or easy resolution. I’m ready to write off the year for Dougie but I’m still very high on him in keepers so rebuilding teams may want to kick tires.

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Merry Christmas/Boxing Day and be safe while enjoying the holiday!

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See you Monday.