Week Two Recap:
CCF23
Puts Up A Dominant Week To Pull Ahead Of The Pack!
In a week of parity, CCF23 is
the lone team to show any form
of dominance, and as a result, he takes an early commanding lead in the
Premier
League. Team EV came into the week trying to build off a solid start
where he
won 6-4, but unfortunately, his offense was unable to pick up his team
when
CCF’s goaltenders dominated. Ryan Miller had two incredibly strong
games that
included a shutout and two wins to lead CCF to a goaltender sweep. The
lone
category that EV managed to steal was the assist category, thanks to a
solid
four assist effort by Brian Campbell.
When asked about the emphatic
statement that his players
made on the week, CCF was quoted as saying, “My scoring has arrived.”
When
attempting to reach EV for comment, his only reply was laced with
profanity
towards Ryan Miller, perhaps alluding to a bout of karma that might hit
the
Buffalo netminder down the road. A failure last year, Mike Green led
the way
for CCF this week offensively, providing two goals and two assists on
the week,
to go with a plus three rating.
****
In a very startling
development, the matchup between Liquid
Snake and Red Light Mosquito went in a completely different direction
after a
clerical error caused Liquid Snake to miss the required three
goaltender start
minimum. As a result, RLM stole five points from the matchup, and made
what
should’ve been a 7-2-1 victory into a 5-5 tie. Dwayne Roloson was
particularly
bad for RLM, but in the end it didn’t matter, as Liquid Snake’s Dale
Tallonesque mistake made any goaltending failure moot.
Liquid Snake did show to the
rest of the league that his
offense was a force to be reckoned with, with Phil Kessel dominating
yet
another week and the Sedins showing that their 100 point seasons were
not a
back to back fluke.
Surprisingly, Marc-Andre Bergeron helped prevent a
complete
offense sweep with a solid four assists on the week. Needless to say,
in this
matchup, the big point of discussion was the goalie mistake. We reached
out to
Liquid Snake and he pointed the blame on Yahoo, stating that, “Yahoo
showed
Kipper had a one save night on Thursday and then corrected it later on,
so I
assumed that I had made the criteria.” When asked why he would have not
followed up this decision with a second source, Snake glared at our
reporter
and we left it at that.
***
Luc Bourdon, coming off a
shutout in his debut week, faced
what was believed to be one of the top goaltender tandems in the league
when he
faced off against parabola. The matchup went basically the opposite of
what
most expected, with LB getting a remarkable THREE shutouts on the week,
two
from Jon Quick and one from Tomas Vokoun, both men putting up a perfect
1.0 SVP
and 0.00 GAA to ensure a sweep of the goalies. Ironically, parabola had
a great
set of starts from his goaltenders, but didn’t take a single category.
Henrik
Lundqvist put up 2 wins and a shutout in the loss.
Parabola’s Ottawa Senator
tandem ensured that his team
wouldn’t go home empty handed, with Spezza putting up a whopping 7
points and
Michalek put up 5 in a complimentary role. This allowed parabola to
take 5/6
forward categories, his lone loss in that regard being penalty minutes.
This
matchup ended up in a very anti-climactic tie, considering the smack
talk that
had been escalating prior to the matchup.
****
SelKesler and ubiquitous came
together in easily the most
feeble matchups of the week. They combined to put up a meager 39 points
and
both teams had goaltenders that were doing their best to throw the
goaltending
categories away. In the end, Tuukka Rask and Al Montoya were more
successful,
losing three of four categories for ubiquitous. The lone bright spot
for either
team was a four point week for Vincent Lecavalier. Every other player
only hit
three points or less. For ubiquitous, Pekka Rinne managed a shutout to
at least
steal away the shutout category tie and give his team an extra point.
*****
After a first week drubbing,
team BM was hopeful that he
could do some damage against one of the more potent teams in the
league. BM was
led by his Bruin players, with Milan Lucic putting up five points to go
with 12
penalty minutes, Nathan Horton putting up 16 penalty minutes and Zdeno
Chara
putting up an insane 23 penalty minutes, to own the penalty minute
category,
despite Brock putting up an impressive 49 PIMs of his own.
The problem was, this matchup
had four ties and as a result,
a 3-3-4 tie on the week was the best either team could muster.
Considering what
Mahoney went through last week, I’m sure he would take the tie instead
of the
potential flipping of some of those tie categories. From the horse’s
mouth, BM
stated, “I’ll take ten points from a team of Brock’s calibre any day of
the
week.” Brock was led offensively by Alex Ovechkin, a sign that
hopefully the
talented Russian winger was on the road back to dominant play.
***
A theme throughout the week was
matchups where one team
dominated the goaltending categories, where the other team dominates
the
offensive categories. Surprisingly, Tiranis, a guy who was listed as
having one
of the weaker goaltending groups out of the league, got two solid
starts from
Mathieu Garon and as a result, ended up with a shutout and two wins,
and a
sweep of the goaltending categories on that effort alone. Ilya
Bryzgalov did
CRD no favours by putting up a 4.59 GAA and .830 SVP.
On the other side of things,
rookie Matt Read had a strong
four point week with a plus three rating, leading the way for CRD to
take five
of six categories on the offensive side of things. Tiranis was only a
few
points off of making this matchup a drubbing, so CRD should consider
himself
lucky that Loui Eriksson and Patrick Sharp’s four point efforts on the
week
didn’t result in a larger swing of point distribution as there were
only one
goal separating them and two assists.
Standings:
Premier
League:
CCF23
16-3-1
33 Points
Tiranis
11-9-0
22 Points
CRDragon
10-10-0
20 Points
Liquid
Snake
10-10-0
20 Points
SelKesler
10-10-0
20 Points
Red
Light Mosquito
9-10-1
19 Points
Empire
League:
Luc
Bourdon
14-5-1
29 Points
BrockH
9-7-4
22 Points
Ubiquitous
8-12-0
16 Points
Parabola
7-12-1
15 Points
EV’s
Allstars
6-13-1
13 Points