One of the most common and basic strategies for goalie starts, when it presents itself, is the guaranteed win strategy.
For those who are unfamiliar with it, it’s when you have two goalies on your fantasy team that are playing each other and you start them both to at least guarantee a win. It seems pretty simple and disaster-proof, but it doesn’t always go smoothly. I’ve seen situations where one goalie gets completely lit up and it really hurts your stats, or times where it’s like a 7-6 game, or even once where one goalie got pulled only to see that team make a massive comeback and the backup ended up getting the victory. There really is no such thing as a guarantee.
That said, when it works out and the stars align, it’s really an incredibly effective way to utilize your netminders. For instance, over the past week the schedule fortunately worked to my advantage and I’ve been able to capitalize on it three times. My goalies are Joey Daccord, Cam Talbot and Jacob Markstrom, with Daccord and Talbot each playing twice over the past week and both ended up in low-scoring games. That’s exactly what you want. Then I had Markstrom square off against Talbot on Saturday night, and I picked up another victory. It worked out to be three of the easiest wins I’ve ever had, and I was able to control the goalie categories over my last two matchups.
Now, the schedule isn’t always going to connect like that, but I had actually spotted it in advance and because I already had Talbot and Markstrom, it made the decision to pick up Daccord in the middle of last week a simple one. It’s another wrinkle to keep an eye out for when analyzing the schedule.
Let’s just hope I didn’t use up all my good fortune this season in one week.
1. If you stashed Brandon Montour hoping for a huge payoff, you’ve been sorely disappointed. Montour has just six points in 17 games after recording a 73-point campaign last year. That said, perhaps Montour is starting to turn a corner. He picked up two points Saturday and has finally regained his spot on the top power-play unit. I think time with the man advantage is going to be key for Montour to get himself going again.
2. The Nashville Predators are a different team this season with Andrew Brunette behind the bench. Typically, the Preds haven’t been a squad that’s known for lighting up the scoreboard, but Brunette has picked right up where he left off in Florida, bringing Nashville all the way up from 28th last year to just outside the top 10 in league scoring. More specifically, Filip Forsberg is on pace for a career-high 92 points, Ryan O’Reilly looks rejuvenated and is on pace for his best season in five years and even Colton Sissons has 11 goals already.
3. Daccord has been excellent since Philipp Grubauer went down, finally giving the Seattle Kraken net some consistency. He’s given up two goals or less in eight of his past nine games and owns a .936 save percentage this month. I’d grab him if you need help between the pipes.
4. Someone who hasn’t been consistent this season is Igor Shesterkin. His play has been wildly erratic, as he’s given up one goal or less six times this season and allowed four or more seven times. More recently, he’s allowed just six goals in his past three starts, all wins, but the three before that he gave up 15 and lost them all. Those are wild swings.
We aren’t used to this type of inconsistency from Shesterkin, but perhaps we crowned him as a super-elite goalie too quickly. He’s had one phenomenal season and two very good ones, but he still hasn’t even played 200 games yet. We know how difficult it can be to gauge goalies, so hopefully, this year is just an anomaly for Shesterkin and not the start of a trend.
5. Only eight goals for Cole Caufield so far and he’s pacing for just 20 in 2023-24. That’s not nearly enough. Caufield should be a 40-goal scorer all day. His shooting percentage is down, which will get better at some point, but I wonder if the Montreal Canadiens need to bring someone in to help spark Caufield. Nick Suzuki is a fine player, though Caufield would benefit from an elite set-up man whom he could build chemistry with for years to come. It would be a long-term investment to help ensure Montreal’s most valuable scorer remains at the top of his game.
6. James Reimer has stumbled into a starting job after injuries to Ville Husso and Alex Lyon. That said, I’m not sure Reimer is going to be a very fruitful pickup. The Detroit Red Wings have lost eight of their past 10 and don’t exactly have an easy schedule coming out of the holiday break. If you’re desperate for starts you could try Reimer, I’d just temper my expectations.
7. Word is Frederik Andersen has been cleared to resume skating. There’s still no timeline on his return or if that will even be this season, but it’s definitely a positive sign if you’re thinking of stashing him.
8. Brock Faber is getting a ton of minutes at the moment. Over 30 in four of his past six games and around 28 in the other two. All that playing time is starting to translate into some point production as well. We’ve seen what a surge in ice time has done for someone like Travis Sanheim.
9. Jack Quinn has returned from his ruptured Achilles and scored in two of his three games. He’s getting some good deployment to start, with top-six minutes and some decent power-play time. It will probably take Quinn some time to get back up to full speed and we know he has scoring ability, so he’s more of a long-term gamble I think for a team that has a firm place in their fantasy league standings.
10. What has gotten into Timo Meier? In somewhat of a Festivus miracle, he has three goals in two outings. Maybe Meier’s season isn’t lost yet.
11. As bad as it’s been for Pierre-Luc Dubois this season, Gabriel Vilardi’s play has made it even tougher to stomach. Vilardi, the centrepiece of the return in the deal that brought Dubois to Los Angeles, has six goals and 12 points in his past five games. He also has one more goal than Dubois this year, despite playing 16 fewer games because of injury.
12. Jake McCabe is on an uncharacteristically good offensive run. The Toronto Maple Leafs blueliner has nine points in 11 games now and it’s always great to take advantage of an offensive surge from someone that’s typically only valuable for hits and blocks.
13. Those who kept the faith in Johnny Gaudreau received an early holiday gift. Gaudreau has picked it up, recording seven points in his past five games. It’s interesting this run has come without Boone Jenner and Patrik Laine, as Gaudreau put up a pretty respectable campaign last year even though those two missed a bunch of time as well. Maybe some of the young talent on the Columbus Blue Jackets can help salvage this season for Gaudreau.
14. Logan Thompson is sidelined with an injury, putting a further damper on what I think has actually been a little bit of a disappointing campaign for the Vegas Golden Knights netminder. His win/loss record is great, but a .905 save percentage and 2.71 goals against average on a team as strong as Vegas and as defensively structured as Bruce Cassidy likes to play is underwhelming.
15. Jordan Kyrou is playing like a man on a mission after receiving a chorus of boos from the St. Louis Blues crowd recently. Kyrou has seven points and 22 shots in four games since and if he keeps this going, those rostering him will owe Blues fans a debt of gratitude.
16. We now have another elite fantasy defenceman on our hands with Noah Dobson. He’s on pace for more than 80 points and nearly 200 blocks. We always knew Dobson was good, but he’s taken his game to another level this season, as heading into the weekend, he was sitting third in scoring among blueliners. It will be interesting to see where Dobson is drafted next season. There might be five defencemen taken higher than Dobson if there was a redraft right now but not many more.
17. With there being no games Monday and Tuesday next week because of the holidays, the majority of teams play three times, with a handful playing twice and the Vancouver Canucks just once. That puts you in a bit of a conundrum if you’ve been hanging onto the frequently scratched Andrei Kuzmenko. It would be the ideal time to drop Kuzmenko, but he had a big game Saturday night. Do you believe he can build off that and keep it going?
The other thing to note is Thursday is the lightest night of the week with only four games, which is unusual. Be aware of that quirk when making any adds heading into the holidays that you’re hoping to squeeze into as many games as possible. The other four nights of the week are actually fairly heavy with games.
18. That’s now three starts in a row for Alex Nedeljkovic if you’re scoring at home. I’d be mildly concerned if I was rostering Tristan Jarry, as even though Jarry’s numbers have been solid, he’s not picking up enough wins, which the Pittsburgh Penguins desperately need. Nedeljkovic has been excellent for the most part this season, though we’ve seen him struggle to sustain this level of play before. We’ll see where this goes.
19. So far so good for Patrick Kane. He’s up to 10 points in 10 games thanks to an explosion of eight in his past four outings. His shot volume is strong, too. It’s always a big sigh of relief to see someone produce like this when you’ve been stashing a player coming off a major injury, especially related to the hips. We’ve seen plenty of examples of things not panning out.
20. Tough, tough times for Joonas Korpisalo and the Ottawa Senators right now. Even with Saturday’s win, the Sens are struggling mightily to say the least and their goaltending isn’t doing them any favours. Korpisalo has now been below .900 in seven of his past eight starts and has never really found his footing in Ottawa.
Korpisalo was always going to be a huge risk this season, both in fantasy and reality. Ottawa handed him $20 million over five years when Korpisalo had never even played 40 games in a season before. He’s been very inconsistent throughout his career and last year was a great example. Korpisalo when excellent in the regular season for 11 games when he joined the Kings and then fell apart in the playoffs to the tune of an .892 save percentage.
In order for a gamble on Korpisalo to work this season in fantasy, he was going to need a lot of help from the Sens. You could see the appeal of taking a chance on him if you believed Ottawa was ready to finally turn a corner, as we’ve seen what an emerging team can do for a goaltender’s value. Instead, the Senators continue to flounder near the conference basement and are stuck with a goalie contract that doesn’t appear likely to age well.
