NCAA Fantasy Hockey Week 7: Post Weekend Standings

Plenty of surprises on a relatively quiet weekend

Standings

Blah blah blah House of Seven Gabels blah:

Not quite so many dramatic moves in the standings this weekend, though Esteemed Leader Michelle Jay’s Team Watt’s Up! rose six spots and Legends of the Hidden Wemple went down six, the latter due in part to St. Cloud’s surprising failure to explode this weekend (see below). Our biggest scorer this weekend was, oh look, House of Seven Gabels with 21.8 points. The second biggest scorer this weekend was overall 22nd place Holmes Sweet Holmes with 19.5 points, which came from all over the place. I continue to believe without evidence that my own personal 17th place is a statistical blip.

What happened this weekend

  • Surprises:
    — RIT destroyed Dartmouth 5-1 before settling for a 2-2 draw in the second game of the series. A lot of RIT kids show up in the team of the week, led by Terra Lanteigne (RIT, $37, 18.1 SP, 4.4 WP, 1 pick), who’s been very consistent in goal.
    — Bemidji State, who had been winless this season and suffering from goaltending well below the standard they have been used to, faced Ohio State, who were possibly the best team playing this weekend who hadn’t lost any players to the Four Nations Cup (the other team in that conversation is Northeastern). Inevitably, Bemidji swept the series 2-1 and 4-2, prompting these two sets of comments from OSU coach Nadine Muzerall, which have been officially appended to the dictionary definition of the word “disgust”. Haley Mack (Bemidji, $21.4, 1.6 SP, 2 WP, 3 picks), who was a popular dark-horse pick at the start of the season and missed five games earlier this season due to injury, picked up her first points of the year. Jincy Dunne (OSU, $38.9, 14.5 SP, 2.3 WP, 12 picks) was the best fantasy OSU player.
  • Not surprises: Providence won fairly tidily twice, beating Maine 3-1 and Vermont 2-0. Avery Fransoo (Providence, $23.5, 7.2 SP, 3.2 WP, 0 picks) and goalie Madison Myers (Providence, $43.2, 11.6 SP, 3.25 WP, 1 pick) had particularly good weekends.
  • Surprises in that the results were even better than you might have thought: Northeastern beat UNH 3-0 on the road, and then came back with three goals in the last five minutes to beat UNH 5-3 at home. Aerin Frankel (Northeastern, $31.1, 12.25 SP, 2.05 WP, 9 picks)’s phenomenal run in goal continues. This was her fourth shutout in six games and her save percentage is an otherworldly 0.974. Frankel’s still only getting half the starts; senior Brittany Bugalski (Northeastern, $21, 7.3 SP, 0.95 WP, 0 picks) is getting the other half and with a .929 save percentage is doing fine. Northeastern had four skaters in the top 15 this week, with Alina Mueller (Northeastern, $35.7, 18.4 SP, 6. WP, 11 picks) and Chloé Aurard (Northeastern, $25.7, 15.3 SP, 5.8 WP, 3 picks) leading the way.
  • Kind of surprises:
    — UConn beat Maine 4-1. Catherine Crawley (UConn, $23.7, 13 SP, 4.1 WP, 0 picks) had her best weekend yet this season. Tereza Vanisšová (Maine, $31.4, 9 SP, 0.3 WP, 7 picks) scored 6.8 points through the first two weeks of Maine’s season and has scored only 2.2 since then.
    — Syracuse somewhat surprisingly tied Princeton (missing Sarah Fillier) 1-1 on Saturday before Princeton took an early lead and didn’t look back to win 5-3 on Sunday. Syracuse kept any of Princeton’s big guns from running up a large fantasy score — the highest scorer for the week was Stephanie Sucharda (Princeton, $24.5, 4.5 SP, 2.7 WP, 2 picks) — but won’t be pleased to have allowed five goals on only 19 shots on Sunday.
  • Surprises based on recent but not historical context: Brown lost to RPI 1-0 and tied with Union 2-2. Come on Brown! Those of you who’ve been following the Brown story will probably enjoy Nicole Haase’s interview/profile of the team on USCHO.
  • Back to actual surprises:
    — Yale, who were a contender in the early Phoebe Staenz years, but have bumped along the bottom of the ECAC since then, erupted for a 6-1 win against Union. Emma Vlasic (Yale, $17, 3.2 SP, 3.1 WP, 0 picks) and Julia Yetman (Yale, $23, 5.5 SP, 3.1 WP, 0 picks) tied for the fantasy lead. Yale then lost 2-1 to RPI’s backup goalie Kira Bombay (RPI, $9, 4.05 SP, 3.25 WP, 0 picks), because hockey.
    — Lindenwood followed up their split weekend against Mercyhurst with a 2-2 tie and a 2-1 win over the much-higher-scoring-on-paper St. Cloud. Also surprisingly, Lindenwood outshot St. Cloud both times, 34-24 and 42-35.
  • Back to not surprises: The very consistent Merrimack beat Holy Cross 3-0 and 6-2 in a home-and-home. There’s a minor surprise there, I suppose, in that very-very consistent Merrimack goalie Samantha Ridgewell (Merrimack, $37.8, 17.8 SP, 2.75 WP, 0 picks) let in two goals in the second game. Dominique Kremer (Merrimack, $21.9, 13.6 SP, 4.6 WP, 0 picks) led the scoring for Merrimack, which had two other skaters on three fantasy points or more.
  • Results which are unclear if they’re surprises because it’s not clear what the baseline of expectations was for the results to be surprises against:
    — BU beat UConn 4-1, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Jesse Compher (BU, $32.5, 12.3 SP, 4.1 WP, 2 picks) continues to be BU’s best player, leading in both weekly and season-long points.
    — Colgate beat Robert Morris 4-3 on Saturday, then tied 2-2 on Sunday. Last year we would have expected Colgate to take the series by much more. This year both Colgate and Robert Morris seem to be worse, but we didn’t know how much worse (and still don’t really). Significant fantasy points in this one for Maggie Lague (Robert Morris, $35.8, 14.2 SP, 4.5 WP, 1 pick) and Jaycee Gebhard (Robert Morris, $39.9, 19.1 SP, 4.3 WP, 2 picks), but not for anyone from Colgate.
    — Cornell, missing three Canadian Four Nations players, played Mercyhurst, missing one Finnish Four Nations player. The results were two ties, 4-4 and 0-0, with strong individual performances from Madlynne Mills (Cornell, $38.1, 11.2 SP, 4.4 WP, 0 picks) and Mary Katherine Gialames (Mercyhurst, $14.8, 5.5 SP, 3.1 WP, 0 picks). The Saturday game featured Mercyhurst coming back from 3-0 down to lead 4-3 before Cornell managed to tie it up with less than seven minutes to go./

Weekly awards

Individual

  • Most points: Alina Mueller (Northeastern, 6. points this week (WP), 18.4 points this season (SP)), from Chloé Aurard (5.8 WP) and Dominique Kremer (4.6 WP)
  • Most overlooked (highest scoring player that no one picked): Dominique Kremer (Merrimack, 4.6 WP, 13.6 SP)
  • Biggest boost (highest scoring player that only one manager picked): Maggie Lague (Robert Morris, 4.5 WP, 14.2 SP)
  • Biggest contribution (highest value of points this week * number of teams they’re on): Alina Mueller (Northeastern, 6. points * 11 picks = 66. total contribution)
  • Best Freshman: Alina Mueller (Northeastern, 6. WP, 18.4 SP)
  • Best Sophomore: Madlynne Mills (Cornell, 4.4 WP, 11.2 SP)
  • Best Junior: Terra Lanteigne (RIT, 4.4 WP, 18.1 SP)
  • Best Senior: Dominique Kremer (Merrimack, 4.6 WP, 13.6 SP)
  • Best D: Dominique Kremer (Merrimack, 4.6 WP, 13.6 SP)
  • Best F: Alina Mueller (Northeastern, 6. WP, 18.4 SP)
  • Best Goalie: Terra Lanteigne (RIT, 4.4 WP, 18.1 SP)/

Team of the week

Good showing by Northeastern, surprisingly good showing by RIT.

  • Roster: Alina Mueller (Northeastern, F, 6.), Chloé Aurard (Northeastern, F, 5.8), Dominique Kremer (Merrimack, D, 4.6), Maggie Lague (Robert Morris, D, 4.5), Madlynne Mills (Cornell, F, 4.4), Terra Lanteigne (RIT, G, 4.4), Jaycee Gebhard (Robert Morris, F, 4.3), Jesse Compher (BU, F, 4.1), Catherine Crawley (UConn, F, 4.1), Kerigan Dowhy (Bemidji, G, 3.7), Brittney Gout (RIT, F, 3.7), Taylor Baker (RIT, D, 3.6), Paige Capistran (Northeastern, D, 3.4), Madison Myers (Providence, G, 3.25), Avery Fransoo (Providence, D, 3.2)
  • Score: 63.05
  • Cost: 395.40/

Housekeeping

This coming weekend everyone’s back playing except Dartmouth, Mercyhurst and Union, and Lindenwood has two exhibition games against the Whitecaps, pray 4 them. Trades to tigFantasyHockey@gmail.com by 11:59 pm Eastern on Thursday November 15th, please!