WE HAVE A NEW LEADER

Standings, 2019-01-14

Congratulations to Gregg Cockrill’s Moose, who did what they said couldn’t be done and knocked House of Seven Gabels off the top spot. Moose’s trick seems to have been to believe me when I said that Natalie Snodgrass’s shooting percentage was unsustainably low, and not to believe me when I said that Claire Thompson’s shooting percentage was unsustainably high. House of Seven Gabels came in second in points scored this week, so it’s not like the pack as a whole is catching up. Moose was first in points this week and is first in points scored in the second half. All details are available on the Summary tab of the spreadsheet, from which you can click through to see everyone’s rosters.

Although Moose did well, to my mind the most spectacular trade was by Team Bewareful: they dropped Penn State’s Rene Gangarosa for $13.3 and hired Yale’s Emma Seitz for $11. Seitz had scored 3.3 points through the whole season to date, and of course this weekend she erupted for 3.9, more than doubling her total. So it looks like instead of taking trade tips from me it looks like you should take them from (checks notes) anonymous.

What happened this weekend?

• Cornell probably don’t have any dirty clothes: because Princeton absolutely took them to the cleaners. In our NCAA Matchup of the Week, Princeton dominated, scoring two goals in the first and three in the third for a 5-0 final total. Princeton followed up with a 4-4 tie with Colgate where Princeton went 4-3 ahead with a minute left only for Colgate, without even being able to pull their goalie, to level with ten seconds left. Still, that’s now eighteen undefeated games for Princeton. They now have four players on 1.0 or more fantasy points a game, level with Northeastern and Cornell and behind only Minnesota (5) and Clarkson (6). Freshman Maggie Connors (Princeton, $31.6, 22.2 SP, 6 WP, 0 picks) had the best fantasy weekend with usual suspects Sarah Fillier (Princeton, $39, 29.6 SP, 5.8 WP, 3 picks) and Claire Thompson (Princeton, $36.8, 26.9 SP, 4.1 WP, 4 picks) close behind.
  I watched the Princeton-Cornell game and Princeton are a very, very good team, who specialize in poking the puck off the opposing forward at the Princeton blueline and turning it over to the Princeton forwards for a rush and a shot before the other team can collect themselves. That move is quarterbacked by Claire Thompson. I’ve been cautious about Thompson as a fantasy investment because she gets a lot of her points from goal scoring and has a very high shot percentage for a defender. I stand by that caution, but at the same time, if she isn’t on Hockey Canada’s radar they should probably just close Canada down and go home, because if Canada can’t tell good hockey then honestly what is it for.
• St. Lawrence’s weird weekend aka It’s Libel If It’s Written Down, It’s Selander If You Say It: St. Lawrence lost their last four games before Christmas, albeit all to ranked teams, and must have been looking forward to games against Union and RPI to right the ship. [TROMBONE SOUND].
  
  The game against Union started straightforwardly enough, with the Saints up 3-0 eleven minutes into the third. With the game as good as won, coach Chris Wells sent out fourth(!) goalie (out of five!) Allison Compeau to finish out the game. At the next stoppage in play, the official scorer called the referee over and after some discussion St. Lawrence were given a bench penalty for “illegal lineup”, i.e. playing a player who wasn’t on the starting roster, i.e. poor Allison Compeau. This is such a rare penalty that I can find only one other case of it happening in D1 women’s hockey, which was bizarrely also in a St. Lawrence game in 2015. (Here’s the only case I could find in the NHL, and even this case is an example of the penalty not being called — in this case, on the Flyers). Of course, Compeau let in a goal on the resulting power play (not her fault, nice deflection in front) and then let in another goal with the Union goalie pulled and twenty-odd seconds left to make it 3-2, only for St. Lawrence to finally score a nice normal empty net goal with ten seconds left to win 4-2.
  
  The next day, St. Lawrence went to RPI and got not libeled but Selandered. Justine Reyes (SLU, $33.2, 18 SP, 2.6 WP, 1 pick) scored her hundredth collegiate point, but then took a penalty at the end of the third period, which carried over to overtime, which let RPI score the game-winner eleven seconds in. To make things even more bizarre, on the winning goal the puck got stuck between the central post of the goal and the waterbottle holder on the back, leading to a wonderful 2.5 second pause between Blake Orosz (RPI, $17.9, 14.8 SP, 2 WP, 0 picks) scoring the winning goal and her realizing that she had. It was only RPI’s second victory ever over St. Lawrence. As you might expect, goalie Lovisa Selander (RPI, $43.6, 29.55 SP, 3.05 WP, 0 picks) was the highest scorer for RPI over the weekend; Reyes was the highest for St. Lawrence.
• Elsewhere in the ECAC: Colgate prefigured their four goals against Princeton by scoring five against Quinnipiac to win 5-2. Good weekend for Tanner Gates (Colgate, $22.8, 15.8 SP, 3.5 WP, 0 picks) and Olivia Zafuto (Colgate, $38.3, 18.7 SP, 3.3 WP, 2 picks). Harvard won their single game against Dartmouth 1-0. Clarkson bounced back from their loss to Northeastern in Belfast to win 5-1 at RPI and 6-0 at Union. Outside the top line, Clarkson got big contributions from Emma Keenan (Clarkson, $22.5, 18.6 SP, 6.1 WP, 0 picks) and Josiane Pozzebon (Clarkson, $32.9, 18.6 SP, 3.7 WP, 0 picks). Yale’s home-and-home with Brown continued the recent story of Yale sometimes having surprisingly good offense, and sadly didn’t continue Brown’s fairytale story: Yale won 5-2 and 4-1 with Rebecca Vanstone (Yale, $20.9, 14.1 SP, 6 WP, 0 picks) in the top five scorers of the week. (Another good Yale scorer: Emma Seitz, already mentioned).
  The overall results leave Princeton ten points clear of Cornell and eleven clear of Clarkson and Colgate at the top of the ECAC. The other three schools have four games in hand on Princeton, but right now Princeton controls their own destiny.
• In the WCHA: Ohio State beat Wisconsin 1-0 in Columbus, even though the Ohio State players were wearing their home jerseys and so Wisconsin could tell them apart. Wisconsin responded like the powerhouse they are with a 5-2 win the next night. Britta Curl (Wisconsin, $26.9, 16.4 SP, 3.1 WP, 0 picks) was the only Wisconsin player with more than three points; OSU goalie Andrea Brändli (OSU, $33.6, 27.05 SP, 3.85 WP, 0 picks) picked up bonus points for the first night shutout and was OSU’s highest scorer.
  Minnesota did some damage to Minnesota State and star goalie Abigail Levy (Minnesota State, $39.3, 34 SP, 1.7 WP, 8 picks), winning 5-1 and 6-3. In line with Minnesota’s motto, “You know we’re going to score, but you don’t know who’s going to do it! Also, lakes”, the best scorers were Patti Marshall (Minnesota, $32.9, 23.4 SP, 3.4 WP, 1 pick) and Taylor Heise (Minnesota, $33.5, 24.3 SP, 3.3 WP, 9 picks). Freshman Heise has picked up 8.3 points over the last two weekends and is looking like she’s making a strong finish to the season. Levy started the weekend sixth in Goals Against Average (GAA) and third in save percentage, and ended twentieth in GAA and ninth in save percentage. Maybe Minnesota are good.
  
  Minnesota Duluth and Bemidji split two very lopsided games, with Bemidji winning the first 4-1 and Minnesota Duluth winning the second 5-2. The biggest scorers were Lydia Passolt (Bemidji, $8.1, 7.3 SP, 3 WP, 0 picks) and Anneke Linser (Minnesota-Duluth, $26, 15.3 SP, 3 WP, 1 pick), with former U18 Clair DeGeorge (Bemidji, $22, 12.8 SP, 2.9 WP, 1 pick) just behind. Minnesota Duluth and Bemidji are locked in a tussle for fourth place in the WCHA standings, with the reward being home ice when they play each other yet again in the conference tournament.
• In the CHA: Syracuse’s run of losses extended to 10 as they went down 4-1 to RIT. Everyone else in the CHA had the weekend off.
• There is a queen sleeping, and if her people need her she will awake, and her name is ... Boston College: Northeastern came back from Belfast to split a series with BC that was even more tumultuous than the UMD/Bemidji series. In the first, Northeastern went out to a 3-0 lead in the second, let BC claw it back to 3-1, but basically stayed in control. In the second, BC’s offense finally showed up; BC led 3-1 after one and 5-2 after two and held on for a wild 7-5 victory. The highest-scoring BC players were all nominally defensive ones: Megan Keller (BC, $55.1, 37.3 SP, 6 WP, 11 picks), Kali Flanagan (BC, $34.6, 16.8 SP, 4.6 WP, 1 pick), Maddy McArthur (BC, $34.4, 24.55 SP, 4.05 WP, 6 picks). Delaney Belinskas (BC, $8.5, 4.5 SP, 3.2 WP, 0 picks), who had an astonishing freshman year but seemed to have gone off the boil, got two goal and two assists and tripled her season’s fantasy points. On the Northeastern side, Maddie Hartman (Northeastern, $16.4, 12.8 SP, 3.8 WP, 0 picks), Andrea Renner (Northeastern, $15.6, 10.2 SP, 3.1 WP, 0 picks) and Kasidy Anderson (Northeastern, $30.9, 20 SP, 3.1 WP, 0 picks) scored heavily. Anderson has scored three points each weekend since the New Year. Aerin Frankel (Northeastern, $34.7, 22.1 SP, 2.15 WP, 9 picks) started both games but was chased in the second, for the first time this season. Frankel is still, however, second in the country in both GAA and save percentage.
• Elsewhere in Hockey East: Maine beat Holy Cross 8-0 earlier this season, but this weekend could manage only a 2-2 tie (with the tying goal coming with .1 seconds left) and a 3-0 win over the Crusaders. This was partly because Tereza Vanišsová (Maine, $24.4, 12.3 SP, 0 WP, 5 picks) was suspended for both games, though this suspension will be over before next weekend.
  
  BU continued to be better than they looked like they’d be, with 5-3 and 4-2 victories over a sinking Providence.
  
  Vermont continued to get one good result a weekend against a better-on-paper team, following up their OT 5-4 win over Providence last weekend with a regulation 5-4 win over (and a 4-1 loss to) Merrimack. It was a bad weekend for star goalies: in Vermont’s win, the usually unflappable Samantha Ridgewell (Merrimack, $38.4, 28.4 SP, 1.9 WP, 0 picks) let in five goals on fifteen shots, though she’s still fourth in national save percentage.
  
  New Hampshire’s run of decent results came to an end at the University of SNODGRASS, with UConn taking the games 2-0 and 4-2. In the second, Natalie SNODGRASS (UConn, $36.5, 22.3 SP, 1.8 WP, 5 picks) scored two goals on four shots. Her season shot percentage is now up from 0.03 three weeks ago to 0.094, and she’s clearly trying to get it to .5./

Housekeeping

New or changed name

• Madlynne Mills -> Maddie Mills. She’s been on and off different fantasy teams during the course of the season but I don’t think this affects anyone./

Changed team

Goalie Allison Small transferred from Quinnipiac to Syracuse, apparently over the Christmas break. I had never heard of this happening before in my six seasons following D1, but apparently women’s hockey is one of the sports that you can do this in. But because I hadn’t realized mid-season transfers were possible, the sheet wasn’t designed to handle them. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO BUY ALLISON SMALL OR THE SHEET WILL BREAK. Also, she didn’t have a great game against RIT.

Goalies who only play a tiny amount of time

There are 102 goalies who’ve played any minutes at in D1 this season, but the sheet only pulls in 100 of them (everyone who’s played more than 33% of their team’s minutes, and then the rest sorted by save percentage). So let’s acknowledge the other two, who don’t for now appear on the sheet, meaning that if you try to buy them the entire fantasy league will disappear through an extradimensional space-time wormhole:

• Allison Compeau — Motto: Hi, I’m Allison Compeau. You may remember me from such paragraphs as “St. Lawrence’s Weird Weekend”. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO BUY ALLISON COMPEAU OR YOU WILL ALSO HAVE A WEIRD WEEKEND.
• Nicole McGuigan — played 9:11 at the end of BU’s 8-0 demolition of RIT on December 8th. Saw zero shots and so has a save percentage HIGHER THAN YOU CAN POSSIBLY IMAGINE. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO BUY NICOLE MCGUIGAN UNLESS YOU CAN HANDLE VIEWING INFINITY ITSELF./

Missing in action

• Chloé Aurard (Northeastern, $30.2, 23.3 SP, 1 WP, 9 picks) took a nasty turn off Megan Keller’s knee in the first BC/Northeastern game and seemed to have hit her head on the ice. She didn’t play the rest of the first game or the second game and it’s not known whether she’ll play this coming weekend.
• Whitecaps draft pick Grace Bizal (BC, $24.5, 15.5 SP, 0 WP, 1 pick) hasn’t dressed for the last three games.
• Tereza Vanišsová (Maine, $24.4, 12.3 SP, 0 WP, 5 picks) didn’t dress for either of the Holy Cross games because of a league suspension. That is now over and she’s expected back for the next game. Ida Press (Maine, $15.7, 10.2 SP, 0 WP, 0 picks), one of Maine’s Swedes, also hasn’t dressed for two games but I don’t have any information about her status.
• Kirsten Welsh (Robert Morris, $26.2, 13.2 SP, 0 WP, 4 picks) hasn’t played for Robert Morris since she suffered a lower-body injury against Cornell on November 23rd. Thanks to Robert Morris’s crazily front-loaded schedule this is only five games, but it looks like she might be out for some time. The four of you who have her on your team might want to take note.
• Dominique Petrie (Harvard, $16.3, 3.4 SP, 0 WP, 0 picks) hasn’t dressed since the Princeton game on November 3rd, but she did play in the U18 World Championships, so it’s safe to assume she’ll be back. If she does come back she might be a value pick — she had 3.4 points in the five NCAA games she played so far this season and was the USA’s fourth-highest scorer at Worlds over six games there.
• Vermont’s highest scorer, Ève-Audrey Picard (Vermont, $22.1, 15.5 SP, 0 WP, 2 picks), was hurt in the first game against Merrimack last weekend and didn’t dress for the second.
• Taylor House (Quinnipiac, $11.1, 8 SP, 0 WP, 0 picks) (who scored this amazing goal against Vermont in October) didn’t dress for the second game of the weekend.
• Sierra Burt (Lindenwood, $13.2, 7.9 SP, 0 WP, 0 picks) didn’t dress for the games against Post, perhaps because she has some decency./

And we’ve got no space for the team of the week or the weekend preview!

I’ll try to write them up before Thursday. Trades to tigFantasyHockey@gmail.com by 11:59 pm Eastern on Thursday January 17th, please! Costs are on the cost tab of the spreadsheet.