Top of the Rock returned for their third season in The Price is Right fantasy hockey league. As back to back last place winners, we hope that it’s not a three-peat this year. After the opening two weeks, we just don’t know the true direction our team is headed.
We won our final matchup during the shortened 2019-20 season, so the franchise was on a one-game winning streak. Did the streak continue into the new season, or was it the same old story?
The Rock kicked off their season by losing 6-3-1 to Horcoff’s Manly Wife. Our three category wins were goals (18-15), plus/minus (-6 to -8) and goals-against average (2.78-2.84). The closest category loss was with wins, as they beat us 2-1. We lost power-play points by five and shots on goals by nine.
The other three category losses were all wider margins, which included assists (9), penalty minutes (15), and save percentage (0.20). Both teams tied with zero shutouts.
Things looked promising for The Rock as they clean swept the first week of the matchup going 5-0 and holding a 5-2-3 matchup lead for the final three days.
The score took a turn for the worse during the second week, where Horcoff reversed the score in their favour 6-2-2 after Monday. They never scored any less than six daily points the rest of the way, holding on to their lead until the end. Their best day was Saturday when the score was 7-2-1.
After the first two weeks of action, The Rock has scored the second-most goals in the league. That is the only bright spot in a rather miserable opening set.
Our goalies have the seventh-best goals against and save percentage and the twelfth worse wins and shutout numbers. Meanwhile, the forwards don’t have anything to brag about. Collectively they have the 11th best penalty minutes, the 10th most assists and shots, followed by the 9th best power-play points and plus/minus rating.
Unfortunately, we do not have any records from the 2018-19 season, but we know that we started the 2019-20 season with four straight wins. This current season won’t yield the same results, which explains why we open up the campaign in 10th place. The Rock is technically tied for ninth place and one win out of sixth place, the last spot for playoff contention.
If you’ve browsed the site before, you should be aware of the emphasis we place on bench numbers. Since our team is unable to alter its lineup during the week, the players who sit out of action manage to compile many points that could have drastically altered the matchup’s final outcome.
As you can see, the matchup would have had an alternate score if we could factor in an additional 57 shots and 11 power-play points. Based on those calculations, we would have won 5-4-1.
 32 points |
 1 point |
The Captain of the Colorado Avalanche, Gabriel Landeskog, secured the season’s first best player award. He notched three goals, two assists, four penalty minutes, and one power-play point to go along with 22 shots.
Pittsburgh Penguin defenceman Marcus Pettersson took home the worse player award because he played a handful of games before suffering an injury. He scored one goal and had three shots but was a -2 on the blue line.
Even though we have been in this league for two seasons now, it appears we really don’t comprehend the roster adjustments rules.
One of our players, Mika Zibanejad (New York), was out with COVID and wasn’t scheduled for opening night. We grabbed Rickard Rakell (Anaheim) to sub in his place. That roster move didn’t work out for us because we could never place Rakell into the lineup.
As mentioned in the previous paragraph, Pettersson went down with an injury, leaving us for only three defensemen in the lineup. Erik Gustafsson (Philadelphia) became available after week one, so we swapped the two d-man.
Goaltending was always going to be our Achilles heel, and it ruptured during the first week. We needed to make a move, and before we knew it, Alexander Georgiev (New York) was claimed off waivers, so we parted with one of our benches forwards, Victor Olofsson (Buffalo) make the deal happen.
Weekly Move Total: 2/4
Season Move Total: 2/50
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