Chris Nichols

­Chris Nichols is Sportsnet.ca's fantasy hockey writer.

There are only 24 days and nights remaining in the '09-10 regular season, which means there ain't a whole lot of time left in your fantasy hockey campaign.

It always comes back to 24 somehow, doesn't it? There's always a Jack Bauer connection for this blog. How about this week's episode? The EMP angle was phenomenal.

Anyway... if you're in the midst of your head-to-head playoffs, you're out there battling and grinding nightly for every single point you can manage. It's do or die each week. Win or go home.

If you're in a roto format, like my keeper league, there are only a few short weeks left to either hold off your competition or to make up ground in key categories before the clock runs out on the season.

If you're still mathematically in the race, you owe it to yourself to closely examine every single area where you could possibly make up ground. The season isn't done until it's done, so play hard until the end and know that you didn't leave anything on the proverbial ice when it's all over.

Why? It can happen any year, but injuries pop up at the strangest times and this season has been seen a myriad of ailments plague the entire NHL and virtually every poolie roster. If one of your competitors suddenly loses a key player or two in the coming days, it can dramatically shift a few categories that looked locked in.

In case you missed it recently too, make sure you're fully utilizing The Slingshot Effect on the final weekend of the season.

I'll be with you right up until the end with live blogging that'll always have the latest line combos and key fantasy stats. Once the regular season is over, I'll have the usual comprehensive playoff pool breakdown and with any luck I'll pull out a picks performance that can rival last year's success. Either that or my final four will all be eliminated in the first round. As usual, the live blogging will continue through the playoffs and blogs will run through the summer too as we look at the draft, free agency and all things fantasy to get you geared up for next year.

In terms of my keeper league, things are unfortunately looking fairly dim these days. Despite having a roster of talent that makes the 80s Oilers look like a pick-up hockey team, I just don't see my boys coming out on top this year.

The first and second place teams sit with 79 and 78.5 points, while I've fallen to third place with 70.5. I actually had the lead most of the season until around the Olympic break, since which I've just been sinking nightly.

Are the points there for me to make a comeback? Yes, although most of them would have to come via goaltending and as much as Martin Brodeur and Henrik Lundqvist (who only have a 7.5/ 6/ 6 out of 10 in each of wins, GAA & SV% for me) are great; my competitors are rocking some pretty sweet goaltending as well. One has Roberto Luongo and Ilya Bryzgalov with Josh Harding and Tim Thomas, while the other has Miikka Kiprusoff, Jimmy Howard and Marc-Andre Fleury. I snagged Brian Boucher when Michael Leighton went down and have Thomas Greiss called up from my farm system. The fourth place team has Evgeni Nabokov, Jonas Hiller and Semyon Varlamov and currently sports a 9-9-10 in goaltending. One team further down in the standings with Ryan Miller has a 1-7-9 and is also impacting the race.

I've crunched the numbers and have a pretty good idea of how this scenario will play out between the three of us and who's going to win. I also know how many points I'd likely need to finish with to come out on top and while I wouldn't say it would have to be along the lines of a miracle for it to happen, a lot of things would have to break my way and the other rosters are likely too strong for that to happen. Sadly for me, but likely good for the league; it looks like we'll have a different winner for '09-10.

That said, I've taken a lot of time and effort to acquire a roster of clutch performers and you can bet I'll be giving them a big pep talk for the final stretch of games. In fact, I've got a conference call scheduled for later this afternoon. I'd give you a more detailed look at the standings and my strategy for the final few weeks but shhhhhh... the walls have ears and eyes. We'll do a retrospective after the season is over and I'll detail how things played out.

I've also spoken with my lawyer and we have a contingency plan in place (should this season end without a championship) to file a joint lawsuit with Henrik Lundqvist in the state of New York to sue Glen Sather and the New York Rangers for lack of support.