Welcome everyone to the last trade tips post of the season! Let me just remind you of the two special rules we have this week, the trade rule and the Final Jeopardy rule.

Trades. This week you can trade up to THREE players, and you don’t have a limit of three players from any one school, you have a limit of FOUR players from any one school.

Final Jeopardy. As well as sending me your trade, you can if you wish send me a wager. Your wager is the following two pieces of information:

• The number of points you want to bet. This must be between 0 and the number of points you have.
• The player you want to bet them on. You have to own this player, but you can of course trade to get her./

At the end of the weekend:

• If that player scored more points than any other player this weekend, you add the number of points you bet.
• If that player didn’t score most points this weekend, you subtract the number of points you bet./

(If there’s a tie for most points scored, both players are treated as winners).

Deadline for trades and wagers is Thursday March 21st 2019 at 11:59 Eastern to tigFantasyHockey@gmail.com.

So if you’re going all in, who should you go all in on?

Who’s likely to make the final?

Obviously, you’re going to want a player who plays two games. So who’s going to make the final?

Clarkson v Wisconsin: Wisconsin has been very, very good this year. Clarkson has the best top line in college hockey.  KRACH gives Wisconsin a 0.785 chance of winning. Clarkson has a habit of playing their best hockey at the end of the season. Wisconsin has a reputation for their offense going missing in big end-of-season games, although looking at the actual record over the last few years this seems to be based on only a handful of games against high-level opposition. Wisconsin is the safe choice. Clarkson is the scrappy underdog who is also defending national champions. Wisconsin has the lowest goals against average in the nation. Clarkson has won more overtime games than any of the teams that are left in. Wisconsin has 40 shots for per game and 17 shots against. Clarkson has 31 shots for per game and 26 shots against. Both goalies are likely to see many more shots than they’re used to.

Minnesota v Cornell: Minnesota has the most goals for this season, helped partly by a relatively soft out of conference schedule. (In fairness, Wisconsin’s was also pretty soft, though Wisconsin scheduled Princeton before we knew how good Princeton was and Harvard before we knew how good Lindsay Reed was.) Cornell has the second lowest goals against this season, with their only really bad result a 5-0 pasting by Princeton at the height of their powers. Minnesota has one US National Team player and two Canadian national team players. Cornell has three Canadian National Team players. Minnesota won the WCHA regular season title thanks to their nearest rival stumbling on the final weekend. Cornell won the ECAC regular season title thanks to all three of their nearest rivals stumbling down the home stretch. Minnesota, Wisconsin and Clarkson are the top three in goals for per games played; Cornell is in eighth. Cornell was the only lower seed to win their national quarter-final. KRACH gives Minnesota a 0.819 chance of winning.

Conclusion: The safest bet for the final is probably Minnesota.

Goalie or forward?

A starting goalie is much more likely to consistently score points than a forward. Forwards can be streaky, goalies are steady — especially good goalies. So the natural choice is the Minnesota starting goalie, right? Problem: Minnesota plays two goalies. Sydney Scobee has played 42% of the minutes and has a .927 save percentage. Alex Gulstene has played 56% of the minutes and has a .917 save percentage. Gulstene played the WCHA semifinal. Scobee played the WCHA final and the NCAA quarterfinal.

The other three teams do have a clear starter. Kassidy Sauvé (Clarkson, $54.80, 52.15 points, 11 picks) and Kristen Campbell (Wisconsin, $40.20, 40.15 points, 13 picks) are recognized as among the elite. But if you’re picking one of these goalies you really need their team to win that Clarkson/Wisconsin game. Marlene Boissonault for Cornell hasn’t been quite the fantasy point producer that Sauvé and Campbell have been, and only played one of six periods on ECAC finals weekend.

Skaters?

Let’s have a look at the players from teams that are still in, who have scored most over the last ten games:

Most points in the last ten games

Looking at the whole season:

Only two Wisconsin skaters — Annie Pankowski ($47.10, 47.10 points, 13 picks) and Abby Roque ($37.10, 37.1 points, 4 picks) are in the top 50 fantasy players this season.

Three Clarkson skaters are in the top ten: Elizabeth Giguère ($80.10, 76.8 points, 15 picks), Loren Gabel ($70.30, 66.8 points, 19 picks), and Michaela Pejzlová ($58.20, 55.6 points, 9 picks). If Clarkson make it through, Gabel or Giguère are obvious picks. But will they make it through?

Minnesota has three skaters in the top fifty fantasy players this season: Nicole Schammel ($44.80, 43.9 points, 1 pick), Grace “Zoom Boom” Zumwinkle (Minnesota, $41.70, 40.7 points, 7 picks) and Emily Brown (Minnesota, $38.60, 38.1 SP, 1 WP, 0 picks). But as you can see from the table above, none of them (except possibly Schammel) have stood out in the team’s last ten games. Minnesota’s offense has been led much more by the players we were expecting to see all season, the Potomak sisters.

Cornell has scored by committee: they have no-one in the top thirty, and only Jaime Bourbonnais (Cornell, $41.40, 41.4 points, 5 picks) and Maddie Mills (Cornell, $39.30, 39.3 points, 2 picks) in the top fifty. Recently Micah Zandee-Hart (Cornell, $28, 28 points, 1 pick) has stepped up, but it’s hard to say if she’s worth a gamble.

Frankly, I’ve given you all the help I can at this point

So who should you go for? It feels like Gabel or Giguère have the highest expected points, or maybe that Sarah or Amy Potomak is the highest scorer in the greatest number of possible futures? But I can’t make the decision for you, you have to make it for yourself. Deadline for trades and wagers is Thursday March 21st 2019 at 11:59 Eastern to tigFantasyHockey@gmail.com. All to play for!