Saturday's Daily Dosage - Neuvirth, Greiss, Vanek...

by Cam Collingwood on Oct 8, 2011 11:06 AM EDT

Bruce is playing the hot goalie game already

This is the big fantasy news... Michal Neuvirth will be given the start on opening night for the Caps. It makes sense as he greatly outplayed Vokoun in the preseason and we'd expect Vokoun to get a start shortly but might as well go with the non-struggling goalie right now. Good sign for Neuvirth though as some people assumed that Vokoun would get a vast majority of the starts this year but it seems that Coach Bruce is ok with a healthy competition. Jay owes me one here as I suggested we grab Neuvirth as insurance for Vokoun in our league with Rotowire staffers much like we grabbed Thomas as insurance for Rask last year and we all know how that turned out.

Not as controversial but a nice bonus here as Thomas Greiss will get the game #1 start for the Sharks as Antti Niemi isn't ready to go after having a cyst removed about two weeks ago. The Sharks have five days off between their first & second games so Niemi might be able to return for their next game.

Buffalo kicked the season off nicely as Thomas Vanek and new captain Jason Pominville each had a trio of points. Luke Adam is supposed to be their temporary #1C center until Derek Roy gets back up to full speed but Adam had 2A in just 9:47 of ice-time, so maybe he'll make it tough for them to remove him from that spot... I'm not counting on it but I'm hoping.

Marc-Andre Gragnani played under 14 minutes yesterday but saw 3:13 of PP time.

David Rundblad started in the pressbox last night and Mika Zibanejad started as the #2C but by a few reports he was outplayed by Stephane Da Costa who took over his spot part-way through the game. Both were minus-2 but Z-bad did pick up a 2nd assist on a late garbage-time goal.

Ryan Callahan with a goal on a crazy 11 shots yesterday... so dude was fired up for the season to begin.

After all the preseason hype about Zac Dalpe, he played on the 4th line last night and played less than 11 minutes (no PP time).

Jamie McBain & Ryan Murphy were opening night scratches on the Carolina blueline. Justin Faulk was in the lineup and played nearly 20 minutes but was a minus-2 & had four PIMs.

Preds rookie Craig Smith with a nice NHL debut with a goal on five shots in just 13 minutes of ice-time.

Ryan Johansen played just 8:46 in his debut whereas Cam Atkinson saw 17:36 including 4:39 on the PP.

Mattias Ekholm & Niclas Bergfors were scratches for the Preds last night.

Patrick Sharp was the in the Hawks lineup on opening night and saw 20:54 of ice-time so he seems to be over his appendectomy.

The Avs have put Kyle Cumiskey on waivers... the kid has some skills, particularly blazing speed, but a team would have to be willing to deal with all his various injury problems and that may be too much so he may have to go to the AHL and prove he can stay healthy.

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Shocked about Neuvirth, but when I stop to think about it, it shouldn’t be all that shocking. He earned it.

At this moment, would you rather own Rask or Neuvirth?

by Michael Benedicks on Oct 8, 2011 1:11 PM EDT reply actions

Still prob Rask. Boston sounds pretty committed to a 60/40-ish season long split.
Whereas Washington is less certain — and you have to figure they will want to ride Vokoun for the most part — although that split will prob be something like 70/30.

Wait a minute…that’s a good question. I think I might prefer Neuvy’s 30 with a shot at significantly more to Rask’s 40 which you have to figure is pretty well capped (barring injuries, of course).

Close call, but I’d go w/ Neuvy.

by Diomedes7 on Oct 8, 2011 4:12 PM EDT up reply actions