Coffee in the Crease: Murray's injury, Oettinger's hot start, and goalies to target in week 2

Week one is in the books following a Sunday slate that featured, well, no games (sad), but we have a lot to dive into to start the week. We’ll highlight some goaltending news around the league and some potential lower rostered targets for the week ahead with one obvious spot we have to start at this week, let’s dive in!

Matt Murray to LTIR

A Leaf’s goaltending controversy, this early into the season and in THIS economy? All joking aside, whenever a club loses it's starting goalie to injury early on in the season, it’s never at all ideal. Murray was put onto long-term injured reserved with an abductor injury prior to Toronto’s matchup versus his old club, the Ottawa Senators, and I feel like I have a couple Sens fans in my life that tried to warn me that this could happen as far as injuries are concerned. Looking off of starts alone, there may be some truth to it, in the past two seasons Murray has started 25, and 20, games while seeing time on the IR in both. Currently the timetable for his return is around four weeks, which puts us into the second week of November, so potentially he is set to miss around 10 starts. If you have the IR space on your roster that’s not a horrible timeframe, and I think you will be able to patch together some netminders to get you close to Murray’s eventual return.

Samsonov’s fantasy Impact

It's next man up, and that duty goes to Ilya Samsonov. Samsonov was brought in over the offseason on a one year, $1.8 million dollar contract and will most likely get the bulk of the starts in net for Toronto in Murray’s absence. As far as backups go, you can do a lot worse, Samsonov got 39 starts last season in Washington, with 23 wins, 5 OT losses, and 3 shutouts, and in two starts this season he’s allowed four goals off 54 shots with a .926 save percentage. If you’re looking to add Samsonov in the short term, his roster numbers are much higher (57% ESPN, 92% Fantrax, 83% Yahoo) following the injury, but this was a backup goaltender that came into the season with higher roster numbers and that’s likely due to two aspects – 1) Murray’s injury history and 2) He is a solid cheaper option for a backup in salary cap leagues where you may be able to roster three to four goaltenders at a time. If he’s somehow still available in your league(s), he is worth putting in a claim or add/drop towards.

Flower struggling early

It's very easy to overreact in fantasy following week one and moving the panic button is easier to do than hold tight and see what type of roster you have moving forward. For those with Fluery on their fantasy team(s) I think we at least have to dive into his first two starts to help get a grasp on things, whether this is just a slow start, or a pattern of things to come. The, we’ll call them surface stats, are not great with Fluery allowing seven goals on 35 shots during the Wild home opener versus the Rangers and getting pulled following the first period during the Wild’s Saturday night contest versus Los Angeles where he surrendered four goals on 14 shots. Sure, both the Rangers and Kings could be two of the league’s top teams by the time it’s all said and done and while there’s no Cam Talbot anymore in Minnesota to potentially force a shared net, it is at least concerning that if things begin to go south quickly for Minnesota that the club wouldn’t begin to share starts with Filip Gustavsson.

While I don’t think that the Wild would be that quick to overreact to an 0-2 start, the advanced stats on Fleury are worrisome. Through two starts he has a league worst, goals saved above average (-6.55), Fenwick save percentage (82.82), high danger goals above average (5.21), and high danger goals saved above expected (-2.98). The high danger goals are what’s most troublesome to me, and it’s hard to compare year-to-year with Fleury because of the number of shots and rushes he saw last season before coming to Minnesota on a bad Blackhawks team. When the dust cleared last year, his high danger save percentage was at .816%, this season it’s at .523%. Minnesota as a club is fairly sound defensively and that’s not only on their blueline, but as a group they have good defensive forwards as well, and that over time will help Fluery’s starts slide more towards the mean. I think for now in fantasy it’s well worth holding on to Fleury but if you’re in between two goalies for a start, I would think of starting someone else for the time being.

Oettinger’s hot start

I feel like in today’s world of Twitter it’s so easy to potentially overreact in the moment when something is happening. Last season’s game seven in Calgary for Oettinger was not one of those things, but if anything, an excellent snapshot of what potentially is to come for the Stars twenty-three-year-old netminder. Now, before the season I had Oettinger as my prediction to win the Vezina and yet in all of my leagues I somehow let someone else draft him before I got the chance to. For those like me, booo tomato, we missed out. Everyone who drafted Oettinger, put him right in the lineup for starts and watch the production soar. It’s a small sample size this season but so far he has stopped 60 of 62 shots, has a perfect high danger save percentage, a .968 SV%, and tied for 1st in goals saved above expected with Tristian Jarry, who by the way, is another goaltender that somehow I don’t have in all of my leagues. It’s fine. We’re all fine.

Goalies to target this week

Phillip Grubauer, Seattle Kraken (Rostered in 13% of ESPN leagues, 28% Fantrax, 64% Yahoo)
1 start, 0 wins, 1 OTL, 3.72 GA/G, .848 SV%, 2 SO.

Normally I would advise not starting anyone for Seattle, unless it’s DFS and you need a cheaper option in net, and even then, proceed with caution. However, this week Seattle might be in an alright spot to pick up a lower rostered option to get you starts in net. It’s a weird fantasy week following a Sunday with no games, giving us nine games today, and eight tomorrow. Moving through we go back to “off days” with smaller slates on Wednesday and Friday, each with only three games, and with Seattle in action Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday, it gives a good chance to get starts in net on days where your matchup might not have that option. Grubauer came on in relief during Seattle’s last outing and my guess is he is going to see the bulk of starts this week.

Craig Anderson, Buffalo Sabres (Rostered in 4% of ESPN leagues, 9% Fantrax, 23% Yahoo)
1 start, 1 win, 0 OTL, 1.00 GA/G, .972 SV%, 0 SO.

Buffalo is on a western Canada road trip this week which means that they will see, Edmonton (Tues), Calgary (Thurs), and Vancouver (Sat), and for Anderson that is going to mean seeing a fair amount of shots on goal. Wins might be harder to come by over this stretch but with sheer volume that Anderson is set to face, it might not be a terrible short-term option for this week. If the starter net is given to Eric Comrie on Tuesday, we can potentially assume that Comrie will be the regular starter throughout the week. It’s something to look for but Anderson might be a decent lower rostered play for this week.

Sam Montembeault, Montreal Canadiens (Rostered in 1% of ESPN leagues, 10% Fantrax, 1% of Yahoo)
1 start, 0 wins, 0 OTL, 3.08 GA/G, .892 SV%, 0 SO.

Everyone with Jake Allen as a starter who saw the little red flag next to his name pop up over the weekend can take a sigh of relief. The starter is not hurt but will be out on parental leave and will miss tonight’s start versus Pittsburgh indefinitely and is questionable for Thursday’s matchup versus Arizona. Montembeault might be a good play here for volume but will have his work cut out for him tonight versus Pittsburgh who led the NHL in scoring with 12 goals.

For continued fantasy news and notes throughout the season, follow me on Twitter @ndySanz