With scoring down, are you taking your goalies early enough in your fantasy hockey drafts?

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It is a tough act to follow up Cliffy. That was some high-level stuff the past two days.

Nonetheless, here we go …

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In the last two ramblings, I threw out tons of game reactions and hopefully some actionable fantasy advice, but with a Buffalo-Columbus tilt Friday, I wanted to run something by you.

And, I am looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

There is no fantasy intent in Dimitri Filipovic's recent article Why we need to redefine what makes a "good" offensive player. But the realities of scoring in this era of the National Hockey League should redefine how we approach fantasy drafts.

I've been playing fantasy hockey so long, that when I started, Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux were each sold twice in auctions, once each for their goals and a second time each for their assists.

If Patrick Kane were drafted/sold separately for his goals and assists this season, he would be a middle-round pick, at best, and he is the best point producer we have.

In rotisserie leagues and category based head-to-head formats, goals, assists and points are usually valued at a premium because there are so few of them occurring in the modern era. The number of 70-point scorers has dropped in each of the past three seasons, after all.

However, the number of players hitting the 40-point, 50-point and 60-point marks have remained relatively consistent. Clearly, grabbing one of those 70-point locks is critical to the foundation of your fantasy roster, right?

Maybe not …

Stealing a thought process from Chris Liss, if scoring is scarce, than it is scarce for everyone in your league, and therefore, you need less of it to be completive relative to your opponents.

Liss' analysis is focused on the steals category in fantasy baseball, but the overarching theme is perhaps even more applicable to offense in fantasy hockey because of the reality of the scenario highlighted with Gretzky and Lemieux in the late 80s and early 90s.

Even 10 years ago, when there was more scoring, your fantasy team needed more goals and assists to ensure it remained competitive, but that just isn't the case in 2015-16.

The drop off over the past 10 seasons is significantly less drastic in the 40-point, 50-point and even the 60-point tier than it is in the higher tiers, and while the amount of 50-goal, 40-goal and 30-goal scorers has been gashed dramatically, the number of 20-goal scorers has only dropped slightly.

Hammering this home, in 2014-15, 19 players hit 70 points and 15 players hit 30 goals. There were actually more 30-goal scorers this season and a few more guys (John Tavares, Nicklas Backstrom and Alex Ovechkin) could still hit 70 points and skew these numbers, but only eight skaters have back-to-back 70-point campaigns and only five skaters have consecutive 30-goal seasons.

The lack of year-to-year consistency means players are rising and dropping offensively at a high rate, and that volatility should raise at least modest concerns.

It should raise major concerns after this, though …

Just 12 goalies won 30 games in 2015-16, after 15 tenders hit the mark in 2014-15. The difference here is NINE goalies hit the 30-win mark in consecutive seasons: Braden Holtby, Jonathan Quick, Ben Bishop, Corey Crawford, Marc-Andre Fleury, Henrik Lundqvist, Pekka Rinne, Devan Dubnyk and Tuukka Rask.

What the list doesn't include is the good to excellent fantasy goalies that shared starts or played for weak teams this year: Cory Schneider, Brian Elliott, Frederik Andersen and John Gibson.

Martin Jones, Petr Mrazek, Roberto Luongo, Jake Allen and James Reimer have also all returned No. 1 (or fringe No. 1) goalie results for spurts this season, or in the case of Luongo and Jones, all season.

Because there are so many excellent goalies producing at a high level, you need more shares, and because there is more year-to-year consistency in net, we should value goalies higher.

Imagine going head-to-head against any collection of those three goalies with Cam Ward, Ryan Miller and Mike Condon. Better yet, take Holtby and two from the field against any three of the above. Maybe you squeak out ahead here and there in weekly formats, but over the course of a season, you're done. And that was cherry-picking the No. 1 fantasy goalie as your No. 1.

Goaltending is deep, but we shouldn't wait on goaltending because it is deep, we should invest early to make sure we're competitive and stocked with high-end goalies.

There is an assumption that you can stream goalies throughout the year and pin-point plus-matchups, but when you're relying on the waiver wire, you're also competing against the rest of your league for those favorable matchups, and you're also more susceptible to blow-up starts.

Streaming a goalie in a favorable matchup is a lot easier when you've got a ratio (Sv% and GAA) foundation laid down by Bishop and Holtby, for example. Because when your streamer allows four goals in winning fashion, it isn't nearly as harmful to your ratios, as it is when you other goalies are Ward and Miller, sticking with the examples.

Sure, when you invest early in your drafts on goalies you have to lean on hitting those upside skaters in the middle rounds. However, the replacement level among skaters is also much higher than in nets. Plus, more skaters are climbing up to and falling out of the elite tier. After the top four or five skaters, is there such thing as a safe bet for a top-10 scorer?

This also means that riding the hot hand with your skaters is much easier than consistently chasing goaltending categories.

If you're in doubt, just look at the scoring data outlined in Filipovic's article.

Hit the comments, what are your thoughts?

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A quick disclaimer, remember this is fantasy baseball focused, but it has legitimacy for our iced game, too. Here is the snippet from Liss:

Ten to fifteen years ago, power used to be plentiful, and you had to have a lot of it to win, but you could wait on pitching. Now it’s the opposite. While this might seem counter-intuitive (doesn’t low supply = higher prices?), that’s only because people are confusing rotisserie baseball with a standard economy.

If food is scarce, and everyone needs food, it becomes pricey. But in roto, you are competing relative to everyone else. If food is scarce, so no one has much, then you don’t need much either to score decently in the “food” category. There’s not this requirement of having food to survive. You only need commodities relative to everyone else, not as an absolute good in itself. That means all those people paying up for steals because they’re scarce are making a mistake. The scarcity means you need less, not more to compete. With pitching it’s just the opposite.

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It wasn't long ago that drafting three running backs in the first three rounds of fantasy football drafts was dogma, and then the Zero-RB approach succeeded because it zigged where others zagged.

Fantasy sports are games, and we should always be looking for ways to improve our game play, and considering strategies and philosophies from other sports can't hurt, can it?

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Rapid-fire updates

Pittsburgh has nothing to play for Saturday, and head coach Mike Sullivan is still uncertain of his starting lineup.

Zach Parise and Thomas Vanek will not play Saturday.

Jason Spezza is expected to play Saturday.

Artem Anisimov, Andrew Shaw and Marian Hossa won't play after not traveling to play the Blue Jackets Saturday.

Mark Stone will not play Saturday.

Robby Fabbri will return to the starting lineup against Washington Saturday.

Mats Zuccarello is not going to play against Detroit Saturday.

Here is a Twitter list of the best NHL Beat Writers to keep tabs on the rest of the news Saturday.

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Thanks all, enjoy an action-packed Saturday on the ice and The Masters Sunday.