October 13, 2014
Dobber
2014-10-13
When to evaluate your fantasy hockey team, thoughts on Rick Nash, James Reimer, Adam Larsson and more …
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Happy Thanksgiving, Canada!
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Detroit, Boston, Colorado, Dallas have scored just three goals (or fewer). Time to panic? You know it’s not. But your competitors just might. The Avs haven’t scored a goal yet, so now is the time to start trying to acquire the likes of Barrie, MacKinnon, Duchene, Landeskog and Iginla, to name a few. You won’t get a deal on them. But at least now they’re possibly available. You’ll pay a fair price, or perhaps even overpay, but it’s easier to get it done now than after six games and the stats are all back on track.
And on the other side of the coin, New Jersey has 11 goals? Ha! While I wouldn’t put it past Michael Ryder to bounce back and score 30 goals and 55 points again (the guy just never wants to stay dead – his fantasy corpse keeps sitting up a la the Undertaker), it’s hard to imagine the scoring to continue like this. Besides, Martin Havlat is due for an injury any time now
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Generally I take 10 games to evaluate. I don’t even look at the stats on my team before then. I pay attention to injuries, line combinations, ice time (and trends in ice time), and I see who scores when I peruse the summaries. So I have a good idea what’s going on. But I don’t scroll through the team stats, or my own team’s stats. And that’s because I don’t want to get panicky. At 10 games I take a look and start my trade offers at that time. At 20 games, I start concluding that the trends that I saw at the 10-game mark are true or false. And that’s when I get serious.
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Damon Severson was my preseason pick in 2013 to become the next big thing on New Jersey’s blue line. But I was wrong – it was Eric Gelinas. And then by the end of the year, it was starting to look like Jon Merrill will take over. Well, it’s Merrill. He’s third on the team in ice time (21:54). But Severson may have leapfrogged Gelinas as well. He has two points in two games and is seeing 19 minutes per game. Gelinas is just under 16 per game.
No wonder Adam Larsson keeps getting scratched.
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CHI-KANE,PATRICK – CHI-SHARP,PATRICK – CHI-SHAW,ANDREW – CHI-TOEWS,JONATHAN
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CAR-SEMIN,ALEXANDER – CAR-STAAL,ERIC – CAR-TLUSTY,JIRI
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N.J-CLOWE,RYANE – N.J-HENRIQUE,ADAM – N.J-RYDER,MICHAEL
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NSH-FORSBERG,FILIP – NSH-ROY,DEREK – NSH-SMITH,CRAIG
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EDM-DRAISAITL,LEON – EDM-PERRON,DAVID – EDM-PURCELL,EDWARD – EDM-YAKUPOV,NAIL
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CGY-BRODIE,T.J. – CGY-GIORDANO,MARK
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The Sedins are back – is it because of the quality upgrade in a linemate? Or the new coach? Definitely the latter, though the former certainly helps. John Tortorella stole a year of the Sedins’ life.
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If you created a team or league at Dobbernomics, send me an invite! Look up the Legion of Dobber and bring me on board. I’ll somewhat be randomly choosing which one I go in, but one criteria will be – I’d like to join the biggest organized league (so more people can laugh at me when I stumble!).
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I’m hard on Rick Nash so it’s time to give him some credit when it’s due – he’s found his mojo. Four goals already and last night he left in the middle of the game to go to the hospital – his wife went into labor!
Speaking of line combos, Alain Vigneault kept Nash with Martin St. Louis and Anthony Duclair together all game until Nash left. Duclair had one pretty ugly giveaway, but he used his size and strength to create more than a few opportunities.
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Randy Carlyle scratched Jake Gardiner. What a message! But a terrible move in my opinion, despite the win. That’s loyalty by the team to the big contracts – Stephane Robidas should have been scratched before Gardiner. So what will happen next? Stuart Percy has been awesome – three assists, plus-2, and usually pretty good decision making. Cody Franson scored Toronto’s first goal. So it may very well be Robidas if Carlyle wants to get Gardiner back in.
Tyler Bozak has 67 points in his last 82 games. This non-first-line center has been doing alright. He wins draws (and takes a ton of them), and produces in the same ballpark as some of the big-named top centers.
Phil Kessel scored. He also had two assists. When he gets into the zone, it usually carries on for seven or eight games, so look for a big hot streak.
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James Reimer gets a hip off the side of the head and has to leave the game. Reimer was actually having a decent game and could have earned additional starts early on thanks for Bernier’s struggles. But this puts a damper on those dreams. A great angle here at the 1:40 mark: