WK8 - Century Crunch

Happy December everyone. After last week's mild temperatures and melting snow, we're getting hit this morning with your typical Canadian winter storm. Whiteout alerts are being reported all over the city and road conditions are poor at best. A trip to your local mailbox is now a parka affair and there's no guarantee you'll return home.

"I love Canada," said a sarcastic Tree Bone.

WK8 is now in the books, and Sir Fucking Randy would like to congratulate the first two select-GM's for hitting the Century Club. Sitch and Dick Burns are now over the 1,000 point plateau, though it is only a matter of days before the remaining select-GM's reach that mark as well.

With that said, we have a new leader. After three courageous weeks at number one, Dick Burns has fallen to second position, making way for Sitch to overtake the lead. He christened the event with a ceremonial "Century Crunch".

"Ooooo! Yeah! Uh-huh! Let's go!" shouted Sitch, while pumpin' to Enrique Iglesias. "Keep up that fffffform, bitches!"

Here are the stats, courtesy of the stats machine:

Sitch has taken the lead, but this week's top bread winner was actually Safari, who collected 149.85 fantasy points. Sitch was second with 142.30 fantasy points. The performances from both these select-GM's was admirable, considering League-wide point production for this week was down (average of 122.43 fantasy points).

Dick Burns still dominates PPGP with a 3.23, but this is down from last week (3.32). Safari was this week's most improved PPGP; he is now at 3.08, which is +0.07 better than his previous week. As the chart shows, PPGP is becoming extremely clustered; all select-GM's are falling into that 3.00 to 3.30 range. Will Dick be able to maintain his PPGP lead?

Adds McGuire: It's tough to say, but I think there's a lot of early goalie games baked into Dick Burns's PPGP. His players are doing slightly above average, but his goalies WERE playing out of their minds at the beginning of the season. However, hot streaks will end and goalie stats will fall as a result. We're seeing a slight regression now with Dick Burns when we look at the Rainbow. He still leads overall goalie PPGP with a 5.72, but it had been over 7.00 in mid-November. It's a product of the law of averages. It's a product of ebbs and flows. It's a product of hot streaks going cold. It's a product of --

Thanks, McGuire.

As stated, Sitch has made his way to the top for the first time this year. Safari has also moved a spot up to third after falling to fourth for one week.

"My team is a complete cluster-fuck" said Safari in a text earlier last week. "The production just isn't there. OV and the Capitals are not what I thought they would be, and I feel as though there are too many holes to plug on this ship."

I see your pain, Safari. With names like OV and Holtby, it's no wonder Safari's roster hasn't produced the way he's wanted it to. Holtby has been mediocre at best so far this season, and his stats have been hurt by lack of wins. OV, who was ranked #2 going into this year's draft, is currently ranked 22nd; this is a guy who should be consistently in the top 5 as far as I'm concerned.

But to all those who feel they are getting ball handled, I must simply say this: the season is still young. Seriously, we're only a quarter of the way through this thing, and lots can happen in the back end.

"Oh indeed they do," grinned a perverted Dick Burns.

Wise words, Dick.