Fantasy Hockey Forecaster: January 7th – January 13th

Welcome to this week’s Fantasy Hockey Forecaster! In here, you’ll find:

• Each team’s ranking for goalies, forwards, PK and PP against the other teams in the league. These stats are as of 1/04/2019.
• Three players who are on fire (this might not even be points wise, it might be an uptick in play that signals to me they are on the cusp of some point production
• Three players who are cooling off (this will also include players that aren’t materializing the way we expect)
• Three free agent pickups (among all players under 50% owned, preferably some in the single digits and some that are close to 50 to feed all different sizes of leagues)
• The schedule which will show each team they play and what the individual rankings are for each matchup, this is more useful in the daily leagues where you are looking at individual matchups

Let’s begin!

3 players who are on fire

1. Patrice Bergeron (96% owned). He followed up an impressive Winter Classic (1G; 1A) with a 2 assist performance against Calgary. He now has nine points in his last six games including four power play points.
2. Nikita Kucherov (100% owned). 17 points in his last six games and he’s currently on a seven game point streak.
3. Robin Lehner (58% owned). The Islanders are playing well as of late and Robin now has five wins across four starts (he filled in on the Ottawa game).

3 players who are cooling off

1. Claude Giroux (99% owned). The Flyers are struggling and Claude is at the forefront. He has four points in his last six games with just goal over that time across 13 shots. Additionally he’s -3 during that time.
2. Alex Ovechkin (99% owned). The Capitals are 4-3 over their last seven games but during that time Alex has just three points and only 1 goal despite him shooting the puck 25 times.
3. Connor Hellebuyck (99% owned). He is 2-3 over his last five starts allowing at least three goals in four of those five starts, while it’s likely just a short term struggle, it’s not ideal for what many hoped to be a top five goalie.

3 free agent pickups (under 50%)

1. Mark Jankowski (2% owned). As I highlighted, it’s likely short term but a good deep flier for a week or two.
2. Brandon Pirri (24% owned). Sitting on Vegas’s second line with Alex Tuch and Paul Stastny his eight points over the last six games isn’t surprising. He’s worth a flier in 12 team leagues to see what he can do.
3. Nico Hischier (44% owned). He’s heating up much like he did last year and now is a good time to ride the streak, he has six points over his last six games including a power play point and 38 face-offs won, nine hits and six blocked shots.