As the season winds down, Top of Rock secured the second tie of the season in it’s Week 18 matchup against Gloveside, 5-5.
If you have been following our team all season, you are probably just as surprised as we were with the final score.
With nothing left to play for, and Gloveside sitting leaps and bounds ahead of us in the standings, we can play the role of spoiler these days.
MATCHUP AND SCORES
Thanks to the Yahoo Fantasy goalie rule (goalies must make at least three appearances every week), we were able to secure a tie in the matchup. (To be honest, there’s no telling how bad the train could have gone off the tracks had Gloveside put up a defence in between the pipes.)
For the second consecutive week, we were smoked in several offensive categories, which lead to another low scoring affair.
The boys were outscored in the following categories, goals (six), assists (five), plus-minus (+13), power-play points (two), and shots on goals (eight). Thanks to our rough and tumble style of play, we secured the penalty minutes category by 13.
Despite our best attempts to play the hot goalie tandem every week, sometimes the bounces just don’t go out our way. Two victories may have won us that category, but 3.46 goals-against average and a 0.868 save percentage wouldn’t win a pee wee hockey game.
Amazingly though, we secured our second shut out category win of the season.
It has been a really long time since Top of the Rock led a matchup from the opening puck drop to the final buzzer. Thankfully this series didn’t go into overtime because there is no telling how it could have gone.
It would be safe to say, this matchup was anyone’s to lose. The only time both teams were separated by more than a point was on Saturday, but even that margin was short-lived.
STANDINGS & TEAM STATS
Instead of talking about our basement team, we wanted to point out that Cyberbullying HWAG has only made one single roster transaction this season. Clearly, that strategy hasn’t worked wonders since they sit 12 points ahead of us.
After that, Donkey Kong Country has made five moves, Gloveside follows with seven, Hanz&Franz with 11, and then us with 16.
As a friendly reminder to those of you who didn’t read our draft recap or didn’t fully understand our team goals at the beginning of the season, we wanted to collect the most penalty minutes.
We have been at the top of that particular category for the majority of the season. Shots on goals weren’t something we were aiming for, yet we have gone above and beyond when it comes to firing pucks at the net.
No one could have predicted we’d be so bad at playmaking, while the same could have been said about power-play points.
Right after the draft, we thought that we had the best goalie tandem in the league. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case, and we split them up to mixed results.
The season went spiralling out of control extremely fast, so to end up with respectable numbers turned into the mission as the weeks went by.
BENCH PLAYERS
As we dissect the numbers from the week, we can see that we left a golden opportunity on the bench. If you manage to look past the two extra power-play points, you will notice we left a staggering 41 shots on the court.
Those two categories would have secured us a win, 6-3-1, instead of the 5-5 tie we had to settle for.
STUDS & DUDS
Best Player – Ryan Strome – New York Rangers – 24 points
Worse Player: Jeff Petry – Montreal Canadiens – 5 points
TRANSACTIONS
February 14, 2020
Ten days after our last roster move, we made two more. Despite holding onto him longer than we expected, we cut ties with Detroit Red Wings centre Dylan Larkin.
We used that space to make a goalie swap. Rookie sensation Igor Shesterkin returned from injury with the New York Rangers this week, and we scooped him up off the free-agent market. Since we already like the other goalies in the lineup, we cut his Ranger teammate Alexander Georgiev.
Weekly Move Total: 1/4
Season Move Total: 15/40
Stay tuned for next’s week recap of the Top of the Rock 2019-20 fantasy hockey season.
Keeping the Stats 