’19 Top of the Rock Week 14

Top of the Rock pulled out a rare tie in their week 14 matchup. In a rematch with their week three opponent Cyberbullying HWAG, both teams duked it out to a 5-5 tie.

The league awarded all four goalie categories to our opponent because we did not meet the minimum three games started. It really wouldn’t have mattered, because our numbers were disgraceful.

MATCHUP AND SCORES

If we had played our cards right, we could have won this matchup 5-4-1, but based on a technicality, we ended up in the 5-5 tie.

For the second time in a matter of weeks, we collected a season-high (5) offensive category wins. We ended up eight points away from our first clean sweep of the season in the six categories. So far this season, we have struggled to be a positive team in terms of plus/minus, so it was no surprise we lost in that category.

Our goalies continue to amaze us, and not in good ways either. In Week 14, our two starters went on to post a season worse 5.00 GAA and decided to stop saving the puck, which resulted in a season worse 0.828 save percentage. Clearly, the gamble didn’t pay off, since those numbers are based on just TWO games.

We were just surprised as you are when you look at the daily scores. We started behind for the first three days, only to notch a tie after Thursday’s action. In a rare move, we took the lead on Friday and held it for two days, until we allowed our opponent to come back for the tie on Sunday.

STANDINGS & TEAM STATS

After 14 weeks of competition, we remain 13 points out of the last playoff spot and 64 points out of first place.

After collecting double-digit goals for the fifth time this season, we jumped up another spot on the overall leader board. After that, we stayed in the same places as the previous week in the five other categories.

Thanks to some lousy goaltending during the matchup, we dropped a few spots in wins and goals-against average, while standing the course in terms of save percentage and shutouts.

It is rather peculiar that we rank among the best in the league in terms of goalie stats, but when you look at our matchup records in those same categories, we are one of the worse. Those double-digit places on the scoresheet help explain why we remain the worse team in the league.

BENCH PLAYERS

Our offensive stars on the bench would have had no impact on our matchup tie. However, if you factor in Thomas Greiss (New York) and Marc-Andre Fleury (Las Vegas) numbers, we could have broken the 5-5 deadlock.

Their one win would have given us a tie in that category, while their 3.32 GAA and 0.843 save percentage could have gone a long way in terms of lowering our extremely high numbers. A combination of our bench players and starters could have really altered the final outcome of the matchup.