Posted by Tim Kavanagh, special to ESPN.com
For the Colorado Avalanche, playing without Joe Sakic must be like if Metallica were forced to take the stage without James Hetfield. Sakic has been a cornerstone of the franchise going back to the Quebec Nordique days, and so the fact that he's missed all 11 of the team's December games must be especially disappointing to those who have supported the team throughout its residency in Denver.
But in spite of losing their team leader, the Avalanche have found success in the final month of 2007, going 7-4 in those 11 games. Even as the bell tolls for Sakic, this has cleared the pathway for 2007-08's edition of the Four Horsemen: it has been the continued excellence of sophomore Paul Stastny and veteran Milan Hejduk, as well as the emergence of Wojtek Wolski and the renaissance of Marek Svatos that have contributed to the hot streak.
Friday night the winning continued, as the Avalanche downed the visiting Rangers, 4-3 on an overtime winner by Wolski. In addition to the Polish native's contribution, Hejduk scored two goals and Svatos added the game-tying tally in the third. For the Rangers, Brendan Shanahan scored the first goal of the game, and was joined in the goal-scoring party by Marc of the clan Staal and Michal Roszival. Jaromir Jagr notched an assist in the game, giving him 926 for his career, which puts him in a tie with Stan Makita for fifteenth on the all-time list. No word on whether Jagr will also open a donut shop in Aurora, Illinois.
The Rangers' cross-river rival, the New Jersey Devils, squared off against the Oilers, looking to shake off the embarrassing beatdown administered by the Canucks three nights prior. After falling behind 1-0 on a Joni Pitkanen goal, the Devils put together a monster third period, and won 3-1. That third period result is good news for owners of Brian Gionta, Patrik Elias and Dainius Zubrus, as that line produced the first two goals, and appears to be taking the reins as a legit No. 1 line. John Madden added the empty-netter, and is now at 11 goals and 11 assists on the season. Not a bad low-end option for you deep-leaguers. Martin Brodeur was probably the most shell-shocked of the Devils after the 5-0 drubbing on Tuesday, but he rallied back, stopping 20 of 21 for the win.
The third New York metropolitan area team, the Islanders, was also in action, upending the all-of-a-sudden impotent Penguins, 4-2. Blake Comeau, the replacement for Chris Simon, scored his first NHL goal on what ended up the deciding tally in the contest. Comeau was impressive at the World Junior Championships in 2006 with Team Canada, scoring three goals and four assists in six tournament games, and he projects as a second-line player in the NHL. Deep-league folks keep an eye on his progress (we won't be seeing the suspended Simon anytime soon, so Comeau's roster spot is reasonably safe), but he's not the type of player to make much of an impact in shallow leagues.
An interesting moment from this game was when, during a second-period power play, Jordan of the clan Staal notched his third goal of the season, and was skating on the top unit with Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby. So, in spite of just about every fantasy hockey owner worldwide having lost faith in the youngster, Pittsburgh coach Michael Therrien has not, evidenced further by the fact that only two forwards skated more time on the power play than Staal, the aforementioned Malkin and Crosby. Staal's ownership in ESPN leagues has dropped to 7.9 percent, but if these looks on the power play continue, you'd be a fool not to give him a shot.
Rick DiPietro was steady in net, stopping 24 of 26 for the win. Across the rink, Dany Sabourin was Dany Sabourin for the Penguins, letting in four goals for his second straight start.
The final Friday contestant from the Atlantic Division, Philadelphia, fell victim to a winsome two-goal third period by Buffalo, and fell 3-2. The loss is the fifth in a row for Philly, and they're 2-7 for the month of December. At least Joffrey Lupul hasn't slowed down, he followed up his twin hat tricks from earlier in the month to notch another goal in this one. So, for one night, that trade from Edmonton for Joni Pitkanen looks even, as both men had a goal. Oh, P.S.: Lupul's at 28 points through 33 games, the same total he mustered through 81 games last season in Edmonton.
For the Sabres, we had a pair of two-assist defensemen, Bruce Campbell and Jaroslav Spacek, both of whom have been key contributors to the turnaround in Buffalo that has been played out through this month. Teammates in 2006-07, goaltenders Martin Biron and Ryan Miller squared off in this contest, and although Biron had the higher save percentage at the end (32 saves on 35 shots versus 20 saves on 22 shots), Miller gets the win. In a surprising development, backup Sabres' goalie Jocelyn Thibault belied his veteran intellect as he broke his nose while on the bench during the game. No word on whether or not he was fooled by the old "if your hand is bigger than your face, you have some horrible disease" trick that was all the rage in my schoolyard days.
Heading back out to Western Canada, the Stars took overtime to defeat the Flames, 3-2, the game-winner coming off the stick of Mike Ribeiro. Hopefully you paid attention two weeks ago in the "Icing it Down" column, when I pointed out the newest member of the top line in Dallas, Antii Miettinen. In the six games he's played on that unit, he has eight points, including three power-play points and a game-winning goal.
I've always found that latter "stategory" kind of dumb, mainly because if a team wins 6-2, the fella that scored goal No. 3 for the victors is awarded that extra bonus even though the game wasn't even close. For instance, in the Wild's 6-3 assault of the Rangers on Thursday night, all eyes were on Marian Gaborik, he of the five-goal outburst. Do you know or care who got the "game-winning goal"? Pierre-Marc Bouchard, since his goal was the fourth, and therefore the "deciding" goal of the contest, even though the tally put the Wild up 4-2, not 4-3. But, we live with these long-seated traditions in fantasy sports, and so must take into account how adept players are at earning that coveted distinction of "winning the game", even if it happened halfway through the second period of a blowout.
In spite of all this, the man who generated the legit game-winner in this contest a goal that literally ended the game was Ribeiro, who has likewise become a legit No. 1 fantasy center, with 18 goals and 18 assists this season. The first thing that pops up when looking at Ribeiro's seasonal stats is the remarkably low number of shots on goal (47) compared to his peers -- many guys are well above 100 and Alex Ovechkin has 200 -- but this is only an ownership deterrent in those leagues that count that as a stat. Mike Smith took the win in this one on 22 saves of 24 shots, spelling Marty Turco who had backstopped the team in eight of the last nine games.
Our last game of the night found the host Blue Jackets taking a close victory 2-1 over the Kings. I gave this game the untouchable treatment, burying it at the end, because as a recovering Pascal Leclaire addict, I was overjoyed to see the score on the ESPNEWS crawl tonight, only to later discover that Fredrik "Freakin'" Norrena was in goal. Even more distressing? Since Nov. 26, Norrena has been the goalie of record in seven of eleven games (replacing Leclaire twice). Not only that, but Leclaire hasn't won a game since November 24, which is almost a month now. We were warned, my fellow Leclaire owners, were we not? Well the bubble has officially burst, it's time to make some new plans if you had penciled the man in to be rock-solid in one of your goalie slots.
Offensively, Nik Zherdev led the way for Columbus with the game-winning goal and an assist, while Michael Cammalleri added the Los Angeles goal in the first period for No. 15 on the year. Penalties were fairly scarce in this one, but Ole-Kristian Tollefson managed to pick up six total penalty minutes, pushing him to 67 for the season. As mentioned before, he's a nice option if you need to rack up some penalty minutes from the back-end of your defensemen slots.
Tim Kavanagh is a fantasy hockey analyst for ESPN.com
