Transactions

A few roster changes yesterday and today (listed with effective dates - as a reminder, your add/drops take effect the next day, not the date the add/drop is made):

10/18/2013 Quebec Rordiques drop Charlie Coyle and add Chris Higgins

10/19/2013 Wilkes-Benham/Scranton Parkers drop Ben Jovejoy and add Marc-Edouard Vlasic

10/19/2013 Patrik Stefans drop Jiri Tlusty and add Mark Arcobello

The Rordiques make their very first free agent add/drop (super adorable, like watching a baby take its first steps), snapping up Chris Higgins. Higgins has looked quite good under Tortorella and is getting quite a bit of ice time in various situations. He isn't going to lead the Rordiques in scoring but should be an upgrade on Charlie Coyle. Reminder: Charlie Coyle is available for pickup notwithstanding his age (born in 1992) because he was dropped from a roster. 

Wilkes-Benham/Scranton Parkers GM, Romany Benham-Parker, has picked up the red-hot Marc-Edouard Vlasic. They have dropped Ben Lovejoy, who with only three syllables all season clearly does not fit into the team's long-term naming scheme. 

The Patrik Stefans have once again dipped into their inscrutable SYSTEM to pull up yet another player no one has ever heard of in Mark Arcobello. Jiri Tlusty (who the Stefans kept from last year) goes to the scrap heap. In fairness, Arcobello has 8 assists in 8 games playing with Eberle and Hall.

KL Week in Review: Week 2

So, we have completed the second full week of competition. Here's the standings:

Early surprises

Of course, we are still in the early days of the season and its hard to draw too many conclusions. However, subject to a couple surprises, generally speaking the teams are shaking themselves into their expected positions (I'm not sure this is a good thing - perhaps that is something the new Commissioner wants to address? Feel free to post ideas for increasing parity).

1) The Winter Claassics in 5th place (though my projection does suggest Claassen will finish in 6th). This may well be the first year in KL history that the Claassics GM does not advocate for dissolution of the league ("seriously guys, its not because my team is terrible.")

2) The Milan Micahleks and the Schizzarks in last place (aka the "expansion slots"). I projected them in 3rd and 4th respectively. Why? Well, injuries to Rick Nash, Vincent Lecavalier and James Neal certainly don't help, but a few extra points from those players wouldn't bump them out of the dregs. Slow starts to depth players is killing them. Note that the opposite is also true: hot starts for the top teams have artificially inflated point totals (The Fylanders will not get 223 points from M-A Fleury, nor will Mathieu Perreault score at a PPG pace for the Flyers this year).

3) The Los Samjawors Kings are somehow tied for 9th place despite being the only team remaining with zero point players on their roster (both Dmitry Kulikov and Erik Gudbranson play tonight, so c'mon Panthers!). Why are they not in last place? 10 points from Niemi, a little fella named Sidney Crosby and a PPG pace from Grabovski (fuck).

Projections

Its really early in the season, and already I can feel panic rising amongst bottom-feeders. I also hear that Fy (currently #1) has been seen already spending his expected 1st place winnings around Victoria.

Some of you may know that this year I decided to spring for Dobber's Guide as my primary source for projections. Time will tell whether that was a good move or not, but one of the benefits of the package is that you get the projections in a nicely organized, sortable, filterable spreadsheet. Taking a cue from the Patrick Stefans GM's playbook, I thought it might be interesting to create a spreadsheet that inserted the projected points of each of our players and count up the top 9/4/1 to see what the end of the season might look like. 

The results are interesting:

1	G-Phil's Flyers	931
2	Moilers	862
3	Milan Micahleks	852
4	Schizzarks	820
5	Dicklas Lidstroms	810
6	Winter Claassics	803
7	Powder Rangers	793
8	Joshfrey Krupuls	790
9	Fylanders	786
10	Mackhawks	778
11	Quebec Rordiques	778
12	Teeyotes	750
13	Patrik Stefans	743
14	W-Benham/Scranton Parkers	741
15	Los Samjawors Kings	734
16	Vanrooser Canicks	712

I don't think a top 5 finish like projected above would surprise anyone. Obviously the Flyers are the favourites to repeat. The Moilers have been very good recently and a good draft may help. The Micahleks may finally taste a money spot, and both the Schizzarks and Dicklas Lidstroms have been competitive.

But seriously, what the fuck are the Winter Claassics doing in 6th place?? 
Let's look a bit closer at the projections for their season:

D	P.K. Subban	62
D	Mike Green	59
D	Matthew Carle	41
D	Raphael Diaz	35

The top 4 projected D are where he makes up the bulk of his points, with a huge season for Subban, a rebound season for Green, and good performances from Carle and Diaz. The rest of his forward group are all good (not great) fantasy performers - what the Claassics lack in top end talent they make up for a group of bottom forwards that will be above average across the board. I think this reinforces the general consensus that the Claassics GM did a fine job at the draft this year (Erat aside, but who saw that coming?)

Also, the Fylanders in 9th? 
Dobber predicts declines across the board from the Fylander's aging forward group, with no single player scoring at > PPG. That said, the Fylander's roster rarely looks the same at the end of the season as it did at the start, so who knows what might happen here.

WTF happened to the Vanrooser Canicks? 
This, folks, is what happens when you lose your franchise forward to the KHL. I am told that Canicks GM Nick Roos and NJ Devils GM Lou Lamoriello have been seen together poking pins into dolls and filling Matryoshka dolls with their tears. 

General observations 
Top 4 Total Defence Points

League Average: 164.625 points
Best: G-Phil's Flyers at 203. Second, Claassics at 197 (Subban and a bounce-back from Green). Third, Moilers at 195.

Worst: Los Samjawors Kings, with 134. Rordiques, Teeyotes, and Canicks all with less than 150 points on the back end.

Top 9 Total Offence Points

League Average: 542.93 points

Best: G-Phil's Flyers, by a wide margin - 630. Shizzarks in the 570 range. Moilers and the Joshfrey Krupuls in the 560s.

Worst: Canicks, by a mile, with 480. Wilkes-Benham/Scranton Parkers with 507, the Patrick Stefans with 508. 

Questions? Comments? Want to see the spreadsheet? Let me know.

Transactions

In the first transaction of the year, the Winter Claassics drop Martin Erat and add Mason Raymond. (edit: the answer to my rhetorical question from earlier is "almost exactly 1.5 hours" - G.)

Not much to say here. Erat is averaging like 7 minutes per night. Raymond has 4 points and looks rejuvenated and sort of pissed off. Even if MayRay fails to keep up his torrid pace.... he was going to outscore Erat.

Fun fact: On January 5, 2012, the Mackhawks traded Teemu Selanne to the Dicklas Lidstroms for Martin Erat and the Keeper League almost imploded.

Between January 6, 2012 and the end of the regular season, Erat actually outscored Selanne, 36 points to 30, meaning that Dickie came out the loser on that trade that year, and we lost our collective shit over nothing. 

Last year they both had 24 points each, in 45 games (Erat) and 46 games (Selanne).

KL Week in Review: Week 1 (also, waking the blog)

Welcome to the first full week of the Keeper League.

Last year was a weird, short, scary one, and things didn't really ever feel normal. To celebrate turning the corner on a new CBA, I've decided to resurrect this blog for announcements, commentary, etc.

If you have a google account, you can create your own posts, comment, etc. I encourage you to do so as it was a lot of fun like 2.5-3 years ago (holy fuck time flies).

Who's numbers are overinflated?

In short, damn near everybody has one or two guys on pace for ridiculous point totals. That is not surprising given the sample size. 

That said, a few teams stick out:

The Winter Claassics. Despite a fairly good draft and a suprisingly well-rounded team, the Claassics are the beneficiaries of some early-season scoring bumps from Lars Eller (currently on pace for 205 points), Mike Green (on pace for 109), Brian Gionta (on pace for 82), among others. Simply put, this is a pretty good team, but it is not THAT good. 

Who's numbers are underinflated?

The Milan Micahleks. This team is not a 15th place team. Looking at the projected point totals, the Micahleks have very few outliers (Vrbata is NOT getting 123 points this year) but the rest are at least plausible (St. Louis could well get 82 this year, Legwand is good for 41.) Not having any points from two D spots hurts.

Who's numbers are where they should be?
 

Stay tuned for my projections. Suprisingly, many of the teams are within a position or two of where I expect them to be in the end. 

Commissioners thoughts

How long before someone picks up Mason Raymond?

Mid-Season Trade Frenzy?

Two rather significant trades occurred in the early morning hours today...

The St. Jewish Blues trade Henrik Sedin to the Dicklas Lidstroms for Jonathan Toews and a 2012 2nd round pick.

Analysis: Rumour has it there were at least four GMs bidding for Henrik Sedin, at least three of which are die-hard Canucks fans. But Mr. Dickie’s trade philosphy is “not to fuck around. Offer fair value and get it done or why bother.” According to Mr. K-blat, he “really stepped up to the plate.” That’ll teach those Canucks fans. Henrik joins fellow Swedes Lundqvist and Alfredsson on an already dominant first place roster. This is not an injury replacement, it’s just a straight upgrade. But it’s not a huge upgrade. Both these guys are models of consistency - Toews at a point per game, Sedin at slightly better. The difference is Toews is eight years younger.


The Milan Micahleks trade Matt Duchene to the Joshfrey Krupuls for Marty St. Louis and a conditional pick: If St. Louis retires before the 2012 KL draft, the Krupuls give their 2012 2nd rounder; otherwise the Krupuls give their 2012 5th rounder.

Analysis:
Duchene is out for “minimum four weeks” and the Micahleks need to fill that roster slot to remain competitive. St. Louis is 36 years old but still producing incredible numbers. Neither party expect St. Louis to retire after this season, but the clause is there just in case. Duchene has had a disappointing season (as have most of the Avalanche not named Landeskog or O'Reilly), but he was projected at 68-75 points this year will get another shot at those numbers next year. He is just 21 and scored one of the goals of 2011. (Having watched that clip many times, I can tell you the best part is how Brooks Orpik tries to defend it.)

Zajac to the Powder Rangers

December 18, 2011

The Preydators averted a bidding war on Travis Zajac by quickly dealing him to the Powder Rangers for injured Ville Leino and Christian "On pace for 38 without the Sedins" Ehrhoff. The Preydators also threw in defenceman Alex "Blue chip 21 year-old 4th overall pick in 2008 on an up-and-coming team" Pietrangelo.

Analysis:

Read between the lines.

Witless Protection, Part I

You let that guy go? What were you thinking?

Before you read this post, take off your corrective lenses - hindsight is 20/20. Now let’s take a look back at the top five - wait, six - players that should have been kept back in September when we submitted our protected rosters, but instead were cut like Ryan Murphy from the World Junior roster (huge mistake).

To be fair, most of these guys are putting up unprecedented career numbers, and you would have been mercilessly mocked for keeping them. Now you’re getting mercilessly mocked for dropping them, as if you didn’t feel bad enough already for missing out on the points. 

6. Joffrey Lupul - Teeyotes
Lupul had flashes of brilliance in 07-08 with 46 points in 56 games for the Flyers, but he appeared to be trending in the opposite direction. With 34 points this year he has already surpassed the level many projected for him, and sits 3rd overall in scoring. I don’t want to belabour the point because everyone knows it, but still, 3rd overall in scoring! AT let this home team gem slip through the cracks, opting instead for the promise of Patrice Bergeron, who currently has the same amount of points as Marc-Andre Bergeron. To be fair, nobody saw this coming, not even Fy who waited until the 101st pick to select Lupul.

5. Brian Campbell - Moilers
Second among defencemen with 24 points in 31 games, Campbell has been reborn in Florida. But you can’t fault the Moilers for keeping John Carlson and Kris Letang, tenth and first in points per game among defencemen. You could argue she should have him over forward Bryan Little, but even he has 20 points in 30 games. The Dicklas Lidstroms took Campbell in the first round.

4. Dmitry Kulikov - Joshfrey Krupuls
With 20 points in 30 games, Kulikov is good for 7th among defencemen. I’m actually going to pull a quote from JK here, from back in September: “Kulikov may, and I say that strongly, have some upside to his 26 points last year, but it is completely an unknown at this point -- and it is still a long way to go to get into the 38+ that either Pitkanen or Wideman can be expected to grab.” Kulikov is tied with Wideman and beating Pitkanen. Most importantly, the 21 year-old former first round draft pick looks to be a franchise cornerstone for the Patrik Stefans, who somehow stole him in the 7th round, 72nd overall.

 3. Stephen Weiss - Joshfrey Krupuls
Stephen Weiss has 31 points in 31 games. Another Joshfrey Krupuls reject, Weiss was jettisoned after a disappointing 49-point performance last year. However, he had 60 and 61 in the two years prior, and everyone in the world except JK knew Florida was going to be awesome this year and a line of middling players would turn into stars. Regardless, Weiss probably should have been kept over Jordan Staal, who has never cracked 50 points (30 in 42 last year was good, but there were unusual circumstances in Pittsburgh last year with Crosby and Malkin also missing most of the season). The Preydators selected Weiss in the 3rd round this year.

2. Jason Pominville - Teeyotes
Jason Pominville sits just behind Joffrey Lupul with 32 points in 30 games. How good could the Teeyotes be right now?! This is worse than Lupul because it was more foreseeable: the Dicklas Lidstroms eagerly snatched Pominville up in the first round, 7th overall. Pominville is just three years removed from an 80 point season, although his point totals have been shrinking since and I don’t think he will maintain this pace. Still, come on AT.

1. Johan Franzen - Patrik Stefans
The Mule is right on a point per game pace through 29 games. Granted, Franzen has never been a point per game player before, but his last two seasons saw him score 55 and 59 points, so he was a safe bet to at least repeat those numbers. The Mackhawks smartly selected him in the first round this year. What makes SW's choice, in my opinion, the worst, is not Johan the Barbarian’s greatness so much as it is the terribleness of the player SW thought would be better than Franzen: Ville Leino. That is not a typo. Leino has ten points this season. Time to recalibrate the projection machine.

Honourable mention: Kris Versteeg - Preydators
Versteeg is another Florida Panther that continues to shock. With 33 points in 30 games, he is one of about 20 players above a point per game pace this year. The Preydators let Versteeg go, pretending not to know how awesome he was, even fake shit-talking him. Then LP drafted him with the 121st pick. This may be the smartest move in the history of the KL. Hence, Versteeg does not make the list.

Any glaring omissions?

Next post: The top five players that should have been chucked but weren’t, other than Ville Leino and Joni Pitkanen. This is where it gets mean.

Another Trade

November 20, 2011

This morning, the Milan Micahleks traded Gabriel Landeskog, Cam Fowler and a 2012 3rd round pick to the Winter Claassics for Patrick Marleau and Kyle Quincey.

Analysis: According to the Milan Michalek's GM, "this trade was a difficult decision for our organization, but we knew we had to give value to get value." He denied allegations that the Fowler trade was intended as a wake-up call for teammate Ryan Getzlaf. Coming over in Landeskog's slot is Marleau, "a keeper without hesitation." Marleau went in the 3rd round of the inaugural KL draft last year. He's been over a point-per-game in three of his last five seasons, and he's the model of reliability, missing, on average, just two games a year over his 13-year career. At 32, he still has a few good seasons left on a top team. Quincey is not a keeper on this roster but he's having a great season and should fill the 4th d-man slot nicely.

The Winter Claassics get younger, faster, and sexier. The jury is still out on whether 2nd overall pick Landeskog is "elite" enough to be a superstar. Fowler is either experiencing a sophomore slump or it looks like he is because his whole team is in a protracted slump. But both players have lots of upside: Landeskog is 4th in the league in shots, for example. We will re-examine this trade in a few years and there will be a clear winner - and that winner will likely be Claassen.

Breaking: Blockbuster Trade

Our first in-season trade just transpired. It took nearly a week of protracted negotiations, some name-calling and some blackmailing with compromising photos, but finally the GMs of the Powder Rangers and Patrik Stefans reached a blockbuster deal.

To the Powder Rangers: Niemi, Leino, Gudbranson, the Patrik Stefans' 3rd rounder in 2012

To the Patrik Stefans: Mason, Couture, Ekman-Larsson, the Rangers' 6th rounder in 2012

Analysis:

The fifth place Powder Rangers are led by two top-ten (I’ll admit it now) franchise players in Kopitar and Stamkos, but plagued but underwhelming early performances from a number of should-be scoring roster forwards (Okposo, Grabner, Cole and Havlat all sit below eight points). So newly acquired disappointment Ville Leino should fit right in. Gudbranson, despite Wittman’s attempt to sell his fantasy potential, is a slot filler in this trade and Regehr is well aware of that. This is a bit of a gamble as the P-Rangers are only carrying five defencemen this year – a serious injury to the top four would spell trouble. The real driver for this trade was the P-Rangers’ issues in the crease – Hiller is not cutting it as a starter and Mason isn’t playing well enough to be a fantasy backup keeper, never mind an NHL starter. Niemi shores up the P-Rangers’ goaltending for the foreseeable future. However, as he slots into Mason’s roster spot, his impact will not be felt until he overtakes Hiller as the scoring goalie – eight points to make up.

The 12^th place (but only 12 points behind fifth) Patrik Stefans have handed the starting goaltender duties to a young Corey Crawford. He’s played well enough to earn it, but Wittman acknowledges the serious risk he is now exposed to should an injury occur. When you think about it though, very few teams in the KL have two legitimate goaltenders that keep pace with each other for the whole season such that one could replace the other if injured. It’s a risk we all take and one history has shown we are prepared to deal with when it arises. Mason provides some diamond-in-the-rough potential, but probably less than the Stefans gave up in Leino. Ekman-Larsson solidifies a strong core of young and old on defence (Kulikov, Wisniewski, Gonchar, Pronger). He’s potentially ripe enough to keep next year (or at least have trade value) and provides injury insurance this year. Couture will start two points back of the scoring roster in Leino’s spot and should be contributing within a week or two. Long-term, we all know Couture is good, but the jury is still out on whether he’s actually good or just or Setoguchi-good. Or worse, Cheechoo-good.

Recognizing a slight imbalance, the GMs agreed to swap 3^rd and 6^th round draft picks next year. That makes things pretty close in my mind. But it’s more fun if we pick a winner and loser. I have to give less value to any draft picks Regehr acquires because this year he took Chris Kunitz in the first round – so I’m declaring Stefan the winner, but by decision, not knockout. 

Unrelated news - a summary of free agent acquisitions to date:

date             team                     drop             add

10/17/2011 Dicklas Lidstroms D Girardi  MA Bergeron
10/23/2011 Schizzarks M Sheifele  M Michalek
10/23/2011 Patrik Stefans J Caron  M Read
10/26/2011 Joshfrey Krupuls M Zibanejad  J Lindstrom
10/28/2011 Powder Rangers A Stewart  C Higgins
10/29/2011 Moilers A McDonald  M Hanzal
10/31/2011 Winter Claassics J Leopold  K Quincey
11/2/2011 Milan Micahleks J Hudler  D Desharnais
11/7/2011 GPhil's Flyers S Elliot  C Potter 

The Perfect Night and Other Musings

The Perfect Night

It's too early in our league's history to tell, but the Teeyotes' 22-point performance last night may go down in history with Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point game or any of the all-too-common perfect games in baseball. In one night of incredible fantasy hockey, the Teeyotes earned more points than the Moilers, St. Jewish Blues and Winter Claassics did all week. The Bruins' 7-0 rout of the Leafs played a big role, as Teeyotes Thomas, Lucic and Bergeron combined for 11 points.

Schizz asked if this might be a record. I could only scan the previous blog posts, which went up Sundays and thus show the "points last night" from all the Saturdays last year. Saturdays almost always have the most games scheduled, so while it's possible but unlikely that someone would have earned more points on a different day, we can safely assume that 22 points is a new record. The previous best was 20 points from the Mackhawks last November; there were also a couple of 17 point nights. Of course, those scores a from a different era - one where shutout wins were worth 7.

Fy also had a pretty big week.

At This Time Last Year

• 51 points separated 1st from 15th, compared to 59 at present. 
• The Krupuls, Schizzarks and Teeyotes, who finished 1st, 2nd and 3rd, respectively, were in 11th, 10th and 14th. 
• G-Phil had just written a post, noting, "this has been a weird year with obscenely hot starts from okay players, and no production at all from previously consistent stars." 

Other Musings


On that note (this being a "weird year"), I thought it was worth sharing some excerpts from a sort-of impromptu fantasy hockey support group of five people that are GMs in the KL and members of a few other fantasy hockey leagues / gambling websites. I've left the names out, but you can probably figure it out. Warning, NSFW language:

I'm disgusted by how the first month of the season has played out.  

The Avs, Oil, Panthers, Stars, Coyotes, Leafs, Wild -- ranked 30th, 28th, 27th, 26th, 25th, 23rd, and 21st respectively by one of my power ranking sources pre-season -- have combined to go 50-22-10 to start the season.  That's the record of a potential President's Cup winning team.  The Sens have a better winning percentage than the Canucks.  Boston is the second worst team in hockey.  It's all absurd.

And don't get me started on individual players.  I guess we see it every year, with the Kessels and sorts who set out to more than triple their pre-season projections.  But even so, we're not just a week in right now, but about 15% of the way through the season, and some players who got out to hot starts have stayed on form.  While we all know about Kessel, who the fuck saw Lupul and Michalek on pace for 100?  Sure, that's not actually ever going to happen and I say neither breaks 60, but they're both already more than halfway to where I had them finishing originally.  And at the other end of the spectrum, while Pominville and Vanek are surging, Derek Roy has 4 points in 11 games, Ville Leino has 2 (FML - fuck my leino).  And that's not just a sobering sabering phenomenon.  Henrik needs to be Betterberg than 4 points, Eric's Stalled on 5, and Matt's Douching it up with 6.  On the blue-line, Marc-Andre Bergeron is on pace for more points than either Sedin, and even Buttfuck-Who-Corey-Potter has 8 points [Micah: I would have went with Corey Potter and the Deathly Hall-Nuge-Eberle Powerplay He Piggybacks On].  Also, who is Jason Garrison and what the fuck is he doing playing 25 mins per night in Florida and quarterbacking their PP?  Sure, regression to the mean will exert its force sooner or later, but you can't help but shake your head with some of this stuff from October.

I said I wouldn't do this, but I have to air my grievances about my shit luck with some players. I've already alluded to the horrid start of one Ville Leino, and I know you guys would say you're not all that surprised by the sluggishness of Iginla and Heatley, but I'm understandably disappointed that NOT ONE of my gambles are panning out.  Loktionov, Butler, Zuccarello, Caron, and Gudbranson... there's a good reason you still haven't heard of them, and won't until at least next season.  At least I flipped one for Matt Read who is due for another 4 point night, right?  And at the back, though my top 4 are in the overall top 20 for PPG for defensemen, off course Chris Pronger's dream start was too good to be true (I'm sure he's texting Bryan Berard on their brail-equipped Androids) and Wisnieski's anticipated start was truly just a dream.  

And a reply:

Thesis: Nikolai Khabibulin is #1 on the TSN NHL player rankings right now.  Enough said.

But not really enough said, because my fantasy hockey existence right now is much like a linesmen trying to hold Cal Clutterbuck back - I worked hard, put my time in, and got punched in the face anyway, twice.

Keepers: I think my D are probably exactly where everyone would have expected, my forwards are starting to finally show some life, but my goalie situation right now is embarassing with Optimus Reim injured by Decepticons and Carey Price looking like a young Roberto Luongo in October.  I'm fairly convinced the ship will right itself some, but I don't like being in the basement.

What the H?: I'm with you on this year.  I like the leafs and the oilers, but if you would have told me they were the two top teams in the NHL even 12 games into the season, I would have taken a dump on your living room carpet.

Individuals: Have I mentioned how ugly Phil Kessel is yet today? And i'm pretty sure Erik Karlsson hangs out behind KFC's banging everyone's sisters.  Eric Staal is a shocking -12 in addition to his abysmal play.  Derek Roy seems to not even be able to get a shot on net most nights (and playing on a line with Drew Stafford who is starting to look like he was a flash in the bed pan). Anaheim should sign Selanne to a 10 year contract right now, kidnap his children if they have to - he is involved on every goal that team has put up this year.  Kris Versteeg is on pace for 80+ pts which I think we all saw coming frankly.  Oh and Luke Adam has more points than Steven Stamkos and Ovechkin if anyone was wondering, as does Brian Campbell.

A final thought: Toronto players are #1 and #3 in points right now.  Ottawa players 5th, 13th, and 17th.  This shit just ain't right I tells yeah, it ain't right.  Except for Josh Harding, aren't we all glad to see him turn his career around?

There you have it. It's been a strange year so far, but maybe every year seems like a strange year, at least in November. If everything was predictable, fantasy hockey (and regular hockey, for those who care) wouldn't be as captivating. Leafs fans start talking about making the playoffs and Kessel for the Hart. Then they lose 7-0 to the Bruins. Canucks fans panic after a mediocre start. Then they beat the Blackhawks 6-0 (prediction).