We’re another week through the Columbus Blue Jackets’ season, which means that we’re another week through the fantasy hockey league season. In the Union and Blue league, we had an upset while some CBJ players disappointed in fantasy points.
The Columbus Blue Jackets had their first rough week of the 2017-18 season, going 1-2-0 while facing some stiff competition. One of those losses involved a shutout of the CBJ, which is never good for fantasy owners that have Blue Jackets players. Let’s dive into the best and worst of the CBJ in fantasy this week.
Related Story: Last Week's Fantasy Results
Best & Worst
While his buddy Sergei Bobrovsky topped the Blue Jackets players last week in fantasy points, Nick Foligno took over the No. 1 spot for the team this past week. The captain scored two goals and assisted on another to accumulate 14.8 fantasy points.
The next highest on the team was no surprise. Artemi Panarin continues to be a consistent assist machine for the CBJ, allowing him to get another 11.3 fantasy points this week. Josh Anderson and Cam Atkinson followed him up closely, getting 10.5 and 10 fantasy points, respectively.
The worst player on the entire team should come as no surprise if you watched the games this week. Sergei Bobrovsky scored -2.5 fantasy points due to his incredibly poor showing in the net against the Lightning and Kings. This was about 7 points worse than fantasy owners would’ve gotten had they started Joonas Korpisalo instead of Bobrovsky for the entire week.
The worst skaters that played in all three games were Ryan Murray, Alexander Wennberg and Markus Nutivaara. Both Murray and Nuti are not surprises due to their bottom pairing status on the team, but being one of the worst fantasy point players is unacceptable for Wennberg. He’s a first-line center that plays with two of the most deadly scorers in the league yet he finished with only 4.3 fantasy points this week.
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Union and Blue Matchups
Last week, I picked up my first win of the season by beating Mike while Will started off his season with a win over Tony in a high-scoring affair. Lansing had the bye week.
This week, I had a tough challenge in facing Will. Will scored the most points of anybody last week and I wasn’t sure if my team could keep up with his incredible scoring lineup. But, as it turns out, my team is pretty good.
I had three 20-point scorers this week as Buffalo’s scoring turned up with Evander Kane and Ryan O’Reilly dominating. The pair combined for 43.3 fantasy points while Phil Kessel scored 20 on his own as well. Martin Jones also bounced back to get 16.6 fantasy points.
Despite Will having Nikita Kucherov put up a ridiculous 32.3 fantasy points by himself, the rest of the team didn’t carry their weight as well. Several players, including Will Butcher, ended up scoring in the single digits to really drag the team down.
In the other matchup, Lansing took on Mike. Despite having stars like Sidney Crosby and John Tavares, Mike’s team kind of sucks. He fell again for his third-straight loss to start the season.
The reason for this week’s loss turned out to be the -2.5 performance by Sergei Bobrovsky, a 6-point showing for Crosby and no player reaching 20 fantasy points.
Lansing also has a very good team. Steven Stamkos is off to an incredible start and contributed over 30 fantasy points this past week for the team. Evgeni Malkin also added 22.3 points while most other players on the roster was rather consistent.
This week is underway and we have myself going up against Tony, who is coming off the bye week. Will is taking on Lansing in a matchup that I could definitely see being the first loss of the season for Lansing. Mike has a much-needed bye week.
Next: Minding Metro - Still Jersey
Check back here next Monday to see the results of our fantasy hockey league and see who the best CBJ players were for the week of Oct. 23. To keep up to date with all of our fantasy transactions, point totals and everything else, bookmark our league link.