Fantasy Hockey: Weekly Forecaster 10/17 - 10/23

Weekly NHL Forecaster 10/17 -€” 10/23

Changes this year. Instead of ranking the goals for and goals against for the home and away teams I'm using advanced stats to do the work for me. This year I am using the average of CORSI For on the Home team and Away team to tell me if this is going to be a shot filled matchup. The graph below is sorted from the most offensively oriented games to the least offensively oriented. To put it in a nutshell, if you want goals scored -€” look at the top teams, if you want to see where your goalie will be seeing few shots and have the best opportunity look to the bottom.

Advantages to this: it takes out some of the noise with home vs. away and teams that are riding hot streaks and goes directly for games where a lot of shots are being fired on net.

Disadvantages: This will not account for a team that truly holds higher shooting averages. That is tough to know until the season is well underway though and I will do some PDO analysis to identify which teams those are as the season progresses.

Weekly schedule -€” ranked by Weekly CORSI:

Offensively charged team -€” St. Louis Blues: They got two great wins over Chicago and Minnesota. They look good and they are doing what they do best -€” firing with a solid deep team with few weak spots. The best part is in their goal dispersion. Paul Stastny, Alexander Steen, Kevin Shattenkirk, Vladimir Tarasenko, Nail Yakupov, Scottie Upshall and Magnus Paajarvi all with goals so far through two games.

Defensively charged team -€” San Jose Sharks. They allowed only 21 shots in their win over the LA Kings. The defense held strong 22 shots. They play both New York teams, Pittsburgh Penguins and the Detroit Red Wings this upcoming week. It'll be a test for sure but they are all home games and if they can continue their strong play, they could see some favorable plus minus and goalie stats for this week.

Offensively weak team -€” Buffalo Sabres. Through one game they weren't creating chances, largely due to continued injuries (Evander Kane going down and Jack Eichel on the IR). I'm not bullish on them this week.

Defensively weak team -€” Toronto Maple Leafs. Auston Matthews was amazing in his first game but their defense was anything but. They are not going to succeed unless they start to get the defense and goalie working together. An upcoming week against Winnipeg Minnesota and Chicago does not bode well for that fact.