Category Archives: Hockey News

Fantasy: 5 moves you need to make (Week 4)

Every Monday, theScore will be rolling out a weekly fantasy hockey column: Five moves you need to make. Ownership percentages (as of Oct. 28) and position eligibility are courtesy of Yahoo.

Pick up Dustin Brown

Team: Kings
Position: RW
Ownership: 31 percent

Fantasy owners might have dropped Brown after he broke his finger prior to the start of the season, which could explain his low ownership percentage. He returned to the Kings' lineup Sunday, scoring a power-play goal and collecting seven hits in his season debut.

Brown is coming off a career year, plays on the Kings' top line with Anze Kopitar, and serves as the net-front presence on a power-play unit that could wind up as one of the league's best. He needs to be owned in all leagues.

Buy low on Dougie Hamilton

Gregg Forwerck / National Hockey League / Getty

Team: Hurricanes
Position: D
Ownership: 95 percent

The Hurricanes are off to a nice start, but it's been without much production from prized offseason acquisition Hamilton. The towering blue-liner has just one goal and three assists in 11 games.

However, Hamilton is first among NHL defenseman - and tied for fourth overall - with 47 shots on goal. That is Brent Burns-level shot volume, but he's yet to see the results he's hoped for. His 2.1 shooting percentage is nearly a third of his career mark (6.0) heading into this season.

Hamilton is bound to start getting some puck luck soon enough, so pry him away from his owner for less than market value before he starts racking up points.

Stream Jason Pomiville

Team: Sabres
Position: RW
Ownership: 14 percent

The veteran Pominville has dipped into the fountain of youth lately, tallying eight points in his last four games while playing with Jack Eichel and Jeff Skinner on the Sabres' top line. He may not be a permanent fixture on your fantasy team, but he can help you win this week.

Buffalo is one of five teams with four games this week. Its opponents (vs. Flames, at Senators, vs. Senators, at Rangers) have all struggled to keep the puck out of their net this season.

Add Jack Campbell

Ethan Miller / Getty Images Sport / Getty

Team: Kings
Position: G
Ownership: 22 percent

Campbell will man the Kings' crease while Jonathan Quick is sidelined, again. Quick is day to day with a lower-body injury and will be re-evaluated this week, so it's unclear exactly how long he will be out.

However, Quick owners - or anyone needing goalie help - can turn to Campbell. He's 3-4-0 with a .912 save percentage and a 2.72 goals-against average, and the Kings will play their next six games at home.

Take a flier on Chad Johnson

Team: Blues
Position: G
Ownership: 3 percent

Blues starting goalie Jake Allen left Saturday's game after a collision with his own teammate. It's unclear how many games he'll miss - if any - but it'll likely be Johnson handling the starting workload if Allen is out.

Johnson is a career backup and hasn't enjoyed success since the 2016-17 season, but on paper, the Blues are one of the league's most talented teams, so Johnson could rack up some wins even if he gives his team average play in goal.

Moreover, Allen has been so bad this year that if Johnson can get hot and string together some wins, it's not too far-fetched to think he could play himself into a starter's role after Allen returns.

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Matthews expected to miss at least 4 weeks with shoulder injury

Toronto Maple Leafs forward Auston Matthews was placed on the injured reserve Monday and is expected to miss a minimum of four weeks with a shoulder injury, the team announced.

Matthews suffered the injury on Saturday when Winnipeg Jets defenseman Jacob Trouba bumped him.

This isn't the first time Matthews has suffered a shoulder injury, as he missed 10 games last season with a similar ailment.

With Matthews sidelined, John Tavares is expected to center Toronto's top line:

After a torrid start to the season in which he posted 16 points in just seven games, Matthews has been held off the scoresheet in his past four appearances.

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Senators’ Borowiecki handed game misconduct for hit on Golden Knights’ Eakin

Ottawa Senators defenseman Mark Borowiecki was assessed a game misconduct during the first period of Sunday night's tilt with the Vegas Golden Knights for his hit on Cody Eakin.

Here's a look at the play:

Golden Knights blue-liner Jon Merrill came to the defense of his teammate, dropping the mitts with Borowiecki.

The 29-year-old received a one-game suspension earlier this week for elbowing Boston Bruins rookie Urho Vaakanainen, so there's a good chance another meeting with the department of player safety is in his future.

Eakin left the game and didn't return.

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Dustin Brown makes season debut vs. Rangers

Los Angeles Kings winger Dustin Brown was activated from the injured reserve and made his first appearance of the season Sunday vs. the New York Rangers.

Brown missed the first 10 games of the season after he broke his finger during the preseason.

The veteran forward, who notched a career-high 61 points last season, will be looked upon to provide an offensive spark to a Kings squad that sits last in the Western Conference with just five points on the season.

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Unflappable Price the best goalie in Habs history

This week, Carey Price carved out another spot for himself in the Montreal Canadiens’ record book when he passed Hockey Hall of Famer and Habs' legend Patrick Roy for second on the storied franchise’s all-time wins list. Beating the Boston Bruins on Saturday gave Price career regular-season win No. 290 as a Canadien.

Naturally, people are going to want to compare the two. And while it’s certainly true any team would be blessed in the extreme to have employed either Price or Roy, if you were forced to choose one, who would you pick?

For me, it would be Price. And I say that in total and complete acknowledgement of everything Roy achieved, both in Montreal and in his eight subsequent seasons with the Colorado Avalanche. Roy has four Stanley Cup rings clogging his ears, three Conn Smythe Trophies to his credit, three Vezina Trophies on his mantle, and was named to the NHL’s First All-Star Team four times. When it comes to accumulating accolades, Roy has few peers, and even fewer in the NHL’s goaltending community.

Dave Sandford / National Hockey League / Getty

But as the hockey world has changed under the salary cap, so too have the situations NHL goalies have to operate in. And ultimately, I think that’s where Price comes out looking better than Roy in the modern age. Over the dozen years Price has played in Montreal, he’s shown the patience of Job, both on the ice and off of it, in a manner that has always served the team more than himself. Most notably, Price has kept his temper when the Habs went through three GMs and multiple new blueprints for success, whereas Roy went nuclear a mere 40 days into working under only the second NHL GM he’d ever known.

(Granted, that second GM was Rejean Houle, who dealt Roy to Colorado in one of the worst trades in league history, so clearly, Roy knew something was rank in Denmark.)

Price may not have any Cup rings to dazzle you with, but he’s a tremendous soldier, and one you’d always want to build a team around. He’s gritted his teeth and kept working hard even when GM Marc Bergevin traded away his good friend and star defenseman P.K. Subban. He maintained his composure through the “Price vs. Jaroslav Halak” Era, and proved then-GM Pierre Gauthier made the right decision. No matter the trajectory Montreal found itself on, Price was happy simply to be a part of the group. You never got the sense his ego was somehow affecting the steering of the ship, and I don’t think the same is true of Roy.

Again, this isn’t to say I wouldn’t be happy to have Roy between the pipes for my side. The emotion that drove him to stomp around the Canadiens’ bench like a masked mastodon that fateful night in December of 1995 was probably what made him as successful as he was. But there’s something to be said for constant calm in the face of any storm. Price’s unflappability is what you want out of goalies. Regardless of the situation, regardless of whether or not he’s particularly pleased with a move his GM has made, Price has skated out to Montreal’s net and performed to the best of his terrific ability. He deserves credit for that.

Besides, it’s harder to win in today’s NHL. There are more teams battling for a championship than when Roy was in his prime. But Price still has a number of honors to his name. He led Canada to an Olympic gold medal at the 2014 Sochi Games - being voted the tournament’s top netminder - and in 2015 he won his first Vezina and first Hart Trophy.

Roy never won a Hart - which isn’t a slander on his play as much as it is a recognition of the talent he had surrounding him in Montreal and Denver. Price, meanwhile, has played on many different types of teams: mediocre ones; ones that made it to the Eastern Conference Final; and even a couple that didn’t make the post-season. It’s not his fault Canadiens' management has bungled what could have been a year-in, year-out Cup contender. Nothing that Bergevin has done has chipped away his talent level.

Jean-Yves Ahern / USA Today

That’s part of what makes it so difficult to truly judge which of the two is better. Roy existed in a smaller, less watered-down NHL. And he had GMs in Serge Savard and Pierre Lacroix who assembled some of the better squads in the history of the game. Roy benefited from that, undoubtedly. Compare some of the defense corps that Roy played behind with those that Price had in front of him and you get an even better appreciation for Price’s save percentages over the years.

You can’t blame Price for the caliber of his teammates or the follies of management. In the end, if you’re a Canadiens fan, all you can do is be thankful that Roy was a central component of your team’s glorious past, and that Price has been in your team’s net for more than a decade and likely will remain there for at least eight more years.

If you have to make a choice between the two best goalies of a team’s modern day, you’re going to wind up with an outstanding choice in Montreal. And that’s more than most NHL franchises can say.

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