Thursday Afternoon Goalies - Week 7

A quick heads-up, I recently started working a day job and that has really cut into my hours for the website, add on top of that I have some school work to take care of and things really start piling up. Anyways, I wasn't able to do the picks the last couple of weeks unfortunately, but I will this week. Anyways, here's your TAGs, I've also inserted comments on why they are ranked where they are.

1.   Pekka Rinne
2.   Kari Lehtonen
3.   Mike Smith (a true sleeper, he has performed phenomenal for a very underrated Phoenix team)
4.   Jonathan Quick
5.   Henrik Lundqvist
6.   Jimmy Howard
7.   Marc-Andre Fleury (looks like he might not even play 60 games this season)
8.   Tomas Vokoun (may be on the best team in hockey, but the team is not performing)
9.   Nikolai Khabibulin (still might be ranked too high)
10. Miikka Kiprusoff
11. Carey Price
12. Tim Thomas (Rask is taking too many games, Thomas won't even hit 60 GP this season)
13. Niklas Backstrom (Harding was on a nice run, but Backstrom is back to being #1)
14. Corey Crawford
15. Cam Ward
16. Jose Theodore
17. Jonas Hiller (Ducks might be overworking him)
18. Craig Anderson
19. Brian Elliott (the more games he plays, the higher he will be ranked)
20. Ondrej Pavelec
21. Ilya Bryzgalov (SV% and GAA have not been good)
22. Johan Hedberg (looks better than Brodeur)
23. Semyon Varlamov (hot start, but has performed terribly since)
24. Antti Niemi (started off the season injured, expect his ranking to climb)
25. Ryan Miller (poor start to the season, concussion, and Enroth is looking really good)

Just to give you an idea of how the rankings work, the main thing I really look at is how many games they are projected to play this season and then I look at all the other stuff, Wins, GAA, SV%, etc. So a guy that is projected to play 62 games who's stats are slightly worse than a guy who's projected to play 52 games. Why do I do this? Because goalies that play more games for you are better than goalies that don't play as much. I will compare two site's rankings to give you an idea.

ESPN's top 5 goalies according to their PRK
1. Nikolai Khabibulin
2. Brian Elliott
3. Jimmy Howard
4. Jonathan Quick
5. Marc-Andre Fleury

The problem should be very apparent, the only goalies up there that are worthy of a top 5 ranking are Quick and maybe Howard. Khabibulin's ranking is strictly based off his performance thus far this season which may or may not be a fluke. Elliott's ranking is a joke because he's a back-up in St. Louis, he hasn't even started half of his team's games. Fleury's ranking is debatable because while he has been a good goalie, the fact that ESPN has neglected both Rinne and Lehtonen should tell you how intelligent they are.

Yahoo! Rankings
1. Jimmy Howard
2. Nikolai Khabibulin
3. Jonathan Quick
4. Brian Elliott
5. Pekka Rinne

Again, the problem is with Khabibulin and Elliott being ranked too high. At least they inserted Rinne into the top 5, but Rinne will obviously be better than all those guys at the end of the season.

Thursday Afternoon Goalies - Week 5

To be quite literal, exactly four weeks have passed since the start of the NHL season, and today would mark the start of the fifth week, although, for many fantasy hockey owners going by a week-to-week lineup, this is also considered Week 5. Anyways, we've seen some goalies change homes this off-season, some goalies get promoted, and some goalies have come out of nowhere to perform amazingly well to start the season. Anyways, here's my first set of rankings.

1.   Kari Lehtonen
2.   Jonathan Quick
3.   Pekka Rinne
4.   Tomas Vokoun
5.   Mike Smith
6.   Cam Ward
7.   Nikolai Khabibulin
8.   Johan Hedberg
9.   Marc-Andre Fleury
10. Semyon Varlamov
11. Henrik Lundqvist
12. Ryan Miller
13. Corey Crawford
14. Jimmy Howard
15. Tim Thomas
16. Jose Theodore
17. Miikka Kiprusoff
18. Carey Price
19. Jonas Hiller
20. Craig Anderson
21. Brian Elliott
22. Ilya Bryzgalov
23. Niklas Backstrom
24. Mathieu Garon
25. Antti Niemi

Players will go up and down the rankings as the season proceeds, but I am hopefully not expecting too much change in the future. Some of these goalies are on some ridiculous paces to start the season, but as the back-ups start taking away starts, expect to see changes that reflect in the overall rankings. You'll notice that Hedberg is ranked at #8, that's because I believe he will be splitting starts with Brodeur and still end up with a majority of the starts, also, the way he's started the season is phenomenal and if he can keep it up, he'll be a top 10 goalie before the end of the season. The rankings will be out every Thursday afternoon, feel free to discuss, debate, etc.

Week 8 Picks!

Check them out, you'll find that there was a lot of consensus across the board...

Game	Suny	Josh	Scott	Chris	Dan
Cardinals vs Ravens	Ravens	Ravens	Ravens	Ravens	Ravens
Vikings vs Panthers	Panthers	Panthers	Panthers	Panthers	Panthers
Jaguars vs Texans	Texans	Texans	Texans	Texans	Texans
Dolphins vs Giants	Giants	Giants	Giants	Giants	Giants
Saints vs Rams	Saints	Saints	Saints	Saints	Saints
Redskins vs Bills	Bills	Bills	Bills	Bills	Bills
Colts vs Titans	Titans	Titans	Titans	Titans	Titans
Lions vs Broncos	Lions	Lions	Lions	Lions	Lions
Patriots vs Steelers	Patriots	Patriots	Steelers	Patriots	Patriots
Bengals vs Seahawks	Seahawks	Bengals	Bengals	Bengals	Bengals
Browns vs 49ers	49ers	49ers	49ers	49ers	49ers
Cowboys vs Eagles	Eagles	Cowboys	Eagles	Eagles	Eagles
Chargers vs Chiefs	Chargers	Chargers	Chargers	Chargers	Chiefs

New ranks will be up Tuesday!

Week 7 Picks!

Here's our picks for this week, all the games should be decided by 4pm, so I'll post the new rankings tomorrow!

Game	Suny	Josh	Scott	Chris	Dan
Redskins at Panthers	Redskins	Panthers	Panthers	Redskins	Panthers
Seahawks at Browns	Seahawks	Browns	Browns	Browns	Seahawks
Falcons at Lions	Lions	Lions	Lions	Falcons	Lions
Broncos at Dolphins	Broncos	Broncos	Dolphins	Dolphins	Broncos
Chargers at Jets	Chargers	Jets	Chargers	Chargers	Jets
Bears at Buccaneers	Buccaneers	Bears	Bears	Buccaneers	Buccaneers
Texans at Titans	Texans	Texans	Texans	Titans	Texans
Steelers at Cardinals	Cardinals	Steelers	Steelers	Steelers	Steelers
Chiefs at Raiders	Raiders	Raiders	Raiders	Raiders	Raiders
Rams at Cowboys	Cowboys	Cowboys	Cowboys	Cowboys	Cowboys
Packers at Vikings	Packers	Packers	Packers	Packers	Packers
Colts at Saints	Saints	Saints	Saints	Saints	Saints
Ravens at Jaguars	Ravens	Ravens	Ravens	Ravens	Ravens