1998-99 EFHL Newsletter #6
November 20, 1998
The new period is underway with some different teams at the top after the first week. Chris led the week with 42 points. Charlie, despite his team's injury woes, was second with 35. Tony and Rich had 34. Here are the scores.
Brett 30 - Jay 24. Brett was led by Forsberg with 10 points and Lindros with 8. The rest of his team could only manage 12 points. Brett leads the league using 6 moves and I have the feeling he will be shuffling guys all season trying to find somebody to get hot. Jay is the first team to start 0-5. One move that didn't work out was benching Deadmarsh. He has been hot during the Avs mini-resurgence.
Chris 42 - Rick 25. Chris got decent production from just about everybody. Rick showed that last week may have just been an aberration. Bondra may be the top early season bust, but you have to think he will start scoring soon.
Grant 32 - Bill 27. Sakic's 11 points made up for Selanne missing 3 games. I also got points from Kolzig for the first time in 3 weeks.
Tony 34 - Rich 34. I even checked this score against USA Today's 7 day stats. Tony got a hat trick and 8 points from Sundin and another shutout from Salo. Rich was led by Barnes and Hasek with 6 points and continues to be respectable despite missing Bure, Weight, and Blake.
Charlie 35 - Mike 26. Charlie had an impressive week for a team that can considered to be in shambles. Amonte had 11 points and Primeau 10, but let's look at his situation. Alfredsson came back from his knee injury and in the game after Charlie activated him, he went down with an eye injury. To add insult to injury, he dropped Linden (opting to keep Nedved in reserve) and lost Linden in a drawing to Brett (Rick was also in the running) when trying to pick him up again. Last week he activated Khabibulin, who didn't play a game due to an injury. In addition, Chelios was hurt and Primeau left Tuesday's game with an ankle injury but is OK.
Charlie also has the honor of picking up the first player that I had never heard of. With Chelios on IR, he picked up Gusev on Dallas after reading somewhere that he could be a good pick up. As far as I can recall, he is also the first player to be on an EFHL roster before ever playing an NHL game. Maybe Charlie is onto something as Gusev had a goal and an assist in his first game tonight.
Unlike the NHL, where parity rules early in the season, in the EFHL after 5 weeks there are only 3 teams with 2 or 3 wins. Four teams have 4 wins and the other 3 have 0 or 1 win. It is very early yet, but if this keeps up two playoff spots in each division could be locked up early, with a battle among the remaining teams for the last playoff spot. The division champion battles could be interesting, too. Remember that the division winners receive a first round playoff bye and $40.
The featured match up this week is Tony vs. Mike. The winner will be in first place in the Moose Jaw division. Tony currently is ½ game up. Both teams have strong forwards from top to bottom. As mentioned last week, Stumpel has been disappointing so far and is the dreaded day-to-day again. After last week's subpar week, Mike is due for a good week. But I would still pick Tony to win a close one.