Brandon Dubinsky has 12 points in his last 10 games. He is a streaky player when he plays with stars, but he keeps getting 20 minutes a game. Without a guy like Gaborik or Jagr, I don’t think he would have the consistency to ever get 60 points. With a superstar on his wing, he could get to 70. Still conservative, I know, but he has far too many zero-point games. He’s still only 23, so there is still time to change my mind on him though.

The Midseason Guide is described here – have a look. I guarantee this will give you a leg up on your competition.

My favorite goalie of all time – Curtis Joseph – will announce his retirement Tuesday, according to TSN. His play for St. Louis is what won me over – that series against the Leafs (I’m sure you know the one I’m talking about). He and Grant Fuhr – two goalies who always seemed to do enough to win games, often times behind weak defense. I have a piece of the mesh from his net from his 300th win, as well as from his 400th win.

Jimmy Howard is 15-7-1 in his last 23 decisions. He has started eight straight contests and has allowed no more than three goals in any of them. His SP was 0.898 on November 21 and is now up to 0.928. Funny enough, his career trend is reminding me of…Chris Osgood. Osgood didn’t have the confidence of the fans or the media when he first started either. A constant complaint about the Red Wings was that they needed goaltending. But the coach had a style that sheltered the goaltender from too many difficult saves and Osgood won a ton of games (to say nothing about the Cup). Howard could very well win 35 games this year without any confidence from fans/media and without any of the hype. And then all summer we’ll speculate on how the Wings will sign a goalie like Nabokov…and then they’ll end up sticking with Howard again – and he’ll succeed. Again. Just like Osgood did. In fantasy leagues, Howard will never have the trade value he deserves no matter how well he does. Just like Osgood. So scoop him up for cheap and you could possibly enjoy all his wins while your fellow GM’s keep low-balling you with laughable offers.

On a losing streak? Just try and arrange the schedule so that you play the Leafs. The Oilers and Penguins did that and it worked like a charm.

The Prospect Rankings will be up later today, or possibly tomorrow latest.

I had a midseason draft last night – just one round. Thanks to injuries and a heavy reliance on prospects (six out of 20 players), I was stuck with the fourth overall pick. I should be doing better than that. About three weeks ago I acquired the eighth overall pick for Brandon Dubinsky. The thinking was that I could get either Mason Raymond or Chris Stewart with that pick, which would be an upgrade to Dubinsky – upsides may be similar, but Raymond and Stewart have more points and the pool counts playoff points as well. Raymond and Stewart have been so hot though, that I was forced to take Raymond fourth and Stewart was gone third. I ended up with Tobias Enstrom eighth (that’s not as good as it sounds, since in this league d-men are no different from forwards). So I ended up losing out a bit on the deal, but I took a chance and it’s just one of those things.

Surprisingly Matt Moulson slipped way down – maybe three weeks ago he would have gone first overall. Last night, he was still around for the 11th pick. The guy who owned the pick – Hallsey, for those long-time readers who remember him covering for me at times – didn’t have any players to drop. I didn’t have any either, but figured he’d be an upgrade to Makarov. So I gave Hallsey a second rounder next summer and scooped Moulson, dropping Makarov. I can always pick up Makarov again if and when he comes to Chicago. I know Moulson has been slumping, but it’s still worth rolling the dice on. Since I don’t own my first rounder next summer, there is no sense in lingering in the bottom half of the league. With the points I gained last night (points carry over), I figure I moved up to sixth and in the mix for fourth.

More strategy talk – fourth place sucks, of course. But at this point I have options. I can go to the guy who owns my first and get it back for much cheaper than I could have when I was 11th. Then I could trade the players who have points to a desperate contender and allow myself to drop back into a good draft position. Or, with four trades left, I can gain enough points – while bolstering my playoff team – to move up.
Matt Duchene has 22 points in his last 25 contests. I think that’s the pace he score at next year and finish in the high-60’s.

It’s interesting how people attribute Phil Kessel’s slump to the fact that he is not playing with a center. The fact of the matter is that Matt Stajan has six points in 12 games, which is triple the amount that Kessel has. You would think that, if the centerman was the problem, then the centerman would have fewer points. Stajan is on a four-game point streak.

So the Caps get eight goals, but Ovechkin has just an assist. Interesting. Jeff Schultz had two points and was a plus-5 in the game. His plus-23 is now second on the Caps.

Michael Leighton is 7-0-1, .931 and 2.06 in his last nine games. Like Howard, Leighton is in a sweet position – in goal for a hot team. This is where I saw Boucher before he got hurt, thus blowing his chance. The Flyers will ride Leighton until he has a bad game, then Emery will get his chance.

Patric Hornqvist is on pace to score over 30 goals. That’s what we at DobberHockey saw him as before he came over – a 35-goal, 65-point player. He’s looking as though he may be even better than that though. Horny has 17 points in the 16 games since his healthy scratch. More impressive: his plus-10 and six PP goals and four GW goals and 138 shots all lead the Preds.

We’re almost at the point where I no longer wonder “who is Hornqvist playing with?” It’s getting to the point where I wonder “so who is playing with Hornqvist?”. The answer last night was: O’Reilly and Sullivan. He also saw time with Dumont and Goc. David Legwand played with Erat (who returned) and Spaling.

Teemu Selanne returned and the line combos shaped up like this: Getzlaf with Perry and Belesky (must have given up on Ryan Carter); Koivu with Ryan and Sexton (so Selanne did not bump him off the line… so far); Nokelainen with Brown and Selanne. That doesn’t look good for Teemu, but he still managed to score.

Randy Jones returned from his neck injury, but was a minus-4. Until then, he had been playing extremely well for LA. Ironically, in the game prior to the one where he got injured, he was a plus-4.

Andy McDonald left last night’s contest with an upper body injury. As a result, you already saw a boost in Berglund’s ice and PP time.

Teddy Purcell had three points in the first five games this year, but has just three in his last 32 and has been scratched from six of his last 32. I would still give him one more year (he is only 24) before giving up on him, but obviously this year is a write-off.

Some Petr Sykora news from Michael Russo:

As I mentioned this morning, this Petr Sykora thing is simmering to a boil. Scratched for two games in a row after working for six weeks to come back from a concussion. He was told this morning he wasn’t playing but that he still had to skate warmups. James Sheppard did not have to skate warmups. Somebody asked me on Twitter during warmups if he was playing because he was warming up, and I replied, “No. They treat him like a rookie.”

Whether that was appropriate of me to say or not, I said it and I said it because I know the veteran of five Stanley Cup Finals and 900-plus regular season games was told that he had to skate warmups even though there was no intention of playing him. Later in the game tonight, agent Allan Walsh retweeted my tweet. Then he tweeted, “No, the coach is treating Sykora with less respect than a rookie.” and “Sykora is a healthy scratch for the 2nd game in a row.”

I talked to Allan after the game because Twitter’s obviously public and I couldn’t ignore it, but he didn’t want to comment further publicly. But here’s the deal: Sykora had a mega-deal in Russia. He was convinced to come here on a one-year deal by Chuck Fletcher, whom Sykora immensely respects, with apparently certain promises, like ice time and linemates. It’s obvious Sykora’s camp doesn’t feel like he’s being given a chance. He’s been scratched three times, played fourth line many nights, has averaged 12:01 of ice time. Anyway, as I mentioned, this is obviously close to coming to a head.

KHL game – bench-clearing brawl – 691 PIMs – game cancelled.