Well, we are here. If you are still reading this it is probably because you have something to play for all the way in Week 22 of the fantasy hockey season. In my 3 Fantrax leagues, 1 started its playoffs this week, 1 will next week, and 1 will the week after. That is one of the nice things about the platform – it is easy to customize your schedule, including creating 2-week playoff matchups. But you can think about all that next year. Right now you need to figure out some streamers. You can also listen to my “Fantasy Hockey Life” right here on FantraxHQ while you do your research this weekend. All streamers listed in the Week 22 Fantasy Hockey Planner are owned in less than 50% of Fantrax fantasy hockey leagues as I write.
In addition to our fantasy hockey planner, be on the lookout for our waiver wire column and all the rest of our Fantasy Hockey content.
Week 22 Fantasy Hockey Planner
Weekly Lineup Picks
Standard disclaimer: weekly leagues are not about what days games are on, they are about how many games your guys play. A 4-game guy only needs to be half as good as a 2-game player to match the results. Repeat after me: win most games played every week.
Week 22 Fantasy Hockey Schedule Grid:
| Team | G | QG | 3/2 | 3/3 | 3/4 | 3/5 | 3/6 | 3/7 | 3/8 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ANA | 4 | 3 | @CHI | @COL | TOR | MIN | |||
| ARI | 2 | 2 | @VAN | @CGY | |||||
| BOS | 3 | 0 | @TB | @FLA | TB | ||||
| BUF | 3 | 0 | @WIN | PIT | @PHI | ||||
| CGY | 3 | 3 | CBJ | ARI | VGK | ||||
| CAR | 3 | 1 | @PHI | @NYI | @PIT | ||||
| CHI | 4 | 2 | ANA | EDM | @DET | STL | |||
| COL | 4 | 4 | @DET | ANA | @VAN | @SJ | |||
| CBJ | 3 | 2 | @CGY | @EDM | @VAN | ||||
| DAL | 3 | 0 | EDM | @NSH | NSH | ||||
| DET | 3 | 3 | COL | CHI | TB | ||||
| EDM | 4 | 1 | @NSH | @DAL | @CHI | CBJ | |||
| FLA | 2 | 0 | BOS | MON | |||||
| LA | 2 | 0 | TOR | MIN | |||||
| MIN | 4 | 1 | NSH | @SJ | @LA | @ANA | |||
| MON | 3 | 0 | @NYI | @TB | @FLA | ||||
| NSH | 4 | 1 | EDM | @MIN | DAL | @DAL | |||
| NJ | 3 | 1 | @VGK | STL | @NYR | ||||
| NYI | 3 | 0 | MON | @OTT | CAR | ||||
| NYR | 3 | 0 | STL | WSH | NJ | ||||
| OTT | 3 | 0 | @PIT | NYI | @SJ | ||||
| PHI | 3 | 1 | @WSH | CAR | BUF | ||||
| PIT | 4 | 1 | OTT | @BUF | WSH | CAR | |||
| SJ | 4 | 1 | TOR | MIN | OTT | COL | |||
| STL | 3 | 2 | @NYR | @NJ | @CHI | ||||
| TB | 4 | 1 | BOS | MON | @BOS | @DET | |||
| TOR | 3 | 1 | @SJ | @LA | @ANA | ||||
| VAN | 3 | 3 | ARI | COL | CBJ | ||||
| VGK | 3 | 2 | NJ | @WIN | @CGY | ||||
| WSH | 3 | 1 | PHI | @NYR | @PIT | ||||
| WIN | 2 | 1 | BUF | VGK | |||||
| Total | 4 | 20 | 8 | 20 | 12 | 20 | 14 |
In your fantasy hockey playoffs you need to study your schedule extra-closely. Free agent bids will no doubt be more aggressive than usual. If your week 21 matchup has already been decided you may even want to make a move for next week this weekend. 9 of 31 teams have a 4 game schedule, which is much improved from last week.
My Week 22 4-game skater targets:
Adam Henrique (C/LW- ANA) is living through tumultuous times. He potted 2 goals with 2 assists on Saturday with 6 shots, 2 hits, and 3 blocks. Alongside him were Troy Terry and Nick Ritchie, his linemates of most of the new year. Ritchie was traded for Danton Heinen and Tuesday night Henrique played with him and Kiefer Sherwood, who was just recently recalled from the San Diego AHL affiliate. All Henrique did was score another goal and another assist. As unsettled as things are in Anaheim, it is hard to ignore 9 points in 6 games with reasonable peripherals for a forward.
Mario Ferraro (D – SJ) is a survivor of the zombie apocalypse that is the San Jose Sharks. With Erik Karlsson shut down for the season and Brendon Dillon off to Washington, Ferraro was second in TOI in Thursday’s matchup and fifth on Tuesday night. He is paired with Marc-Eduard Vlasic. He has a goal and an assist in the past week for a Sharks team playing out the string this year. The good news is this is yet another peripheral streamer. He has averaged 2 hits and a block for the season. It has grown to 3 hits and 2 blocks the last 5 games as his TOI has spiked.
Barclay Goodrow (C/LW/RW – TB) may well get the JT Miller treatment in Tampa — a winger who gets buried on a depth line because of the team’s quantity of talent. You will want to monitor Tampa’s remaining game Saturday. Goodrow debuted playing with Ondrej Palat, Tyler Johnson and Yanni Gourde (pretty good), then skated next to Gourde and Paquette in game two (less good). ATOI is down so far from 16 minutes in San Jose to 12 in Tampa, but for the season peripherals have averaged 2.5 hits, a block, and 1.5 shots per game.
Connor Sheary (LW/RW – PIT) had inauspicious performance in his return to the Penguins this week, following a trade from Buffalo. 1 hit and 1 shot are not acceptable numbers for a streamer. In the past two years Sheary has been well under half a point per game. He has never had impressive peripherals. You have to love, however, that in game one back he was immediately paired with Sidney Crosby and Jason Zucker. He skated for 18 minutes with 2:45 PPTOI. Sheary’s last exceptional season with the Pens came in 2016-17, when he put up 53 points in 61 games, paired constantly with Crosby. In his poor 2017-18, by contrast, he had very little time with Crosby. I am willing to give Sheary a 4-game run next week to see what happens next.
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Daily Head-to-Head Streamers:
Week 22 is also a stark contrast to last week. The difference between schedules is extreme. Ottawa at Columbus is the only action Monday night. 26 of 31 teams play Tuesday for the heaviest night of the week. No team has a Monday-Wednesday combination. It is a dark time for daily streaming. If you can be patient, Columbus has a Monday-Tuesday back to back with two more quality games later in the week.
Daily Streaming Targets for Week 22 Fantasy Hockey:
Duncan Keith (D – CHI) Don’t look now, but the old man is on a hot streak. With a goal and 6 assists in the last 5 games, Keith has been in on 7 of Chicago’s 16 goals. He is never going to be the top fantasy defenseman he once was, but as long as he can stay on the ice for 28:23 as he did last Friday in a win over Nashville, he has a chance to be on the ice when good things happen. His last three games feature 7:19, 4:49, and 7:49 PPTOI. With that kind of deployment, a score is likely. If not, there is always that steady 2 shots and 2 blocks Keith averages nightly.
Valeri Nichushkin (LW/RW – COL) Remember a few weeks ago when I said Colorado had a golden streamer schedule coming into the fantasy playoffs? Now is the time to grab Avalanche skaters as they have BACK-TO-BACK weeks of 4 quality games. Nichushkin gets to skate on the top line with Mikko Rantanen likely out. Nichushkin throws hits even when he is not scoring, and takes a shot or two to boot. He has a recurring role on the power play. Please note the impending return of Andre Burakovsky could knock Nichushkin to a lower line, but with the 8 quality game opportunity, I am still buying.
JT Compher (C/RW – COL) is my other Av for the week. Compher has been getting a ton of PPTOI lately (7:29 last Saturday, 4:00 on Wednesday). In both games, he also topped 21 total minutes. There are still a lot of injuries late in the Colorado season. Compher’s linemates change a lot, but Joonas Donskoi has been a fairly constant and perfectly adequate companion. Compher is a sneaky source of blocks with 50 blocks in 59 games. The main value here is getting four starts on nights you will almost certainly have lineup vacancies.
Tyler Ennis (LW/RW – EDM) only has one quality game next week, but he has the decency to have it on a Monday. Maybe if you have enough guys with favorable schedules you will be able to fit him in on Tuesday as well for a back-to-back. As I often point out in this space, if you have several moves to make in the week, it is more important to get your extra games early, so you can drop the first set of players and take others later. In two games in Edmonton since a trade from Ottawa, Ennis has 1 goal, 1 assist, 6 shots, 8 hits, and 26:33 TOI next to Connor McDavid. Whether or not he becomes a fixture on the top power play, that is enough for me.
What else would you like to see in our Fantasy Hockey Planner? Let us know in the comments below.
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