Fantasy Hockey Forecaster: February 24th – March 1st

Welcome to the 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 2/20/2020
• 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. Auston Matthews (100% owned) — Auston is making that run for the Maurice Richard trophy, he has four goals and five assists over the last two weeks including four power play points.
2. Sidney Crosby (100% owned) — He’s healthy, he’s in the groove with his team and he has 11 points including SEVEN power play points in the last two weeks.
3. Mackenzie Blackwood (58% owned) — Four wins. Four shutouts. Five goals allowed over four games.

3 players who are cooling off

1. Evgeni Malkin (98% owned) — As Crosby moves up, Malkin moves down. Over his last three games he has no points and a -2. Over his last five he has 1 goal and 1 assist with a -3.
2. Filip Forsberg (91% owned) — No goals and 2 assists along with a -4 over the last two weeks.
3. Frederik Andersen (97% owned) — One win in his last four games. Over that time he allowed 5 goals twice and only had one game with more than 25 saves.

3 free agent pickups (under 50%)

1. Mikael Backlund (22% owned) — Three goals over his last four games along with 1 assist, a +1, 33 face-offs won and a short handed point.
2. Zach Hyman (33% owned) —Five goals and 1 assist over his last six games. He’s on the top line with Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner, I hear money sounds next to him on the free agent market in your fantasy league.
3. Mike Smith (12% owned) — He has started five of Edmonton’s last six games. Over those five games, he has three wins and has not allowed more than three goals in any game in spit of a handful of 30+ save games.