This was a particularly difficult week week for me. There seemed to be fewer obvious choices. Then again, this might be a good thing. When forced to take a few more risks, the rewards might be much greater.
Without further ado, here’s my Hockey Night in Canada Fantasy Pool team for week 5:
| LW | Ilya Kovalchuk | Atl | $16.00 |
| LW | Alexander Ovechkin | Was | $18.00 |
| C | Eric Staal | Car | $16.00 |
| C | Rod Brind’Amour | Car | $17.00 |
| RW | Brian Rolston | Min | $15.00 |
| RW | Martin St. Louis | TB | $19.00 |
| D | Andrei Markov | Mon | $12.00 |
| D | Sergei Gonchar | Pit | $16.00 |
| D | Brent Burns | Min | $9.00 |
| G | Pascal Leclaire | Cls | $12.00 |
The difficulty started at centre. Crosby and Lecavalier looked like the go-to guys, and Jokinen or Malkin wouldn’t have been bad choices either. But, Carolina has four games coming up this week, two of them against Atlanta, and one each against Tampa and Florida. All four of those teams have over 50 goals against so far this season (Atlanta just short of 60), and Brind’Amour and Staal are quite reasonably priced. What to do, with six good choices available?
In the end, I had to take both Brind’Amour and Staal. If I’d picked only one, the other was surely going to perform better, and given the week I expect Carolina to have, that could hurt. Like Lecavalier and his little buddy, best to take them as a pair and not kick yourself later on. Also, I expect them to perform better than some combination of Crosby or Lecavalier and another skater, when price is factored in. We’ll see. It’ll be a gamble.
After that, things started to fall into place. I didn’t want to stack the team too heavily with Hurricanes, so Stillman, Williams, and Whitney were out. That left Ovechkin and Kovalchuk as the best choices on left wing (with Zetterberg only playing two games). Right wing was a little tougher, with Iginla and Alfredsson only playing two games each. I ended up taking St. Louis, just because he seems to be turning it on lately, and Rolston because he’s got four games coming up and he’s a good, cheap counterpart to St. Louis’ high salary.
I’d been getting pretty consistently screwed in net, so Leclaire seemed like a solid choice. He’s only $12, so I could put some money elsewhere, and he’s a shutout machine. Lots of potential for a big payoff, without risking much of the salary cap.
The savings went straight into Gonchar, who, while expensive, is kind of like having a seventh forward. Markov and Burns rounded things out, because they’re cheap and remarkably consistent.
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