Derek Stepan: Geek of the Week

 

 

Campkin takes an in-depth look at Derek Stepan… and why he’s kicking ass

 

At the beginning of this shortened season, I wrote a piece on Mike Ribeiro and outlined how he was a guy that I targeted in my keeper league because my team (The Campkin Cartel) needed a center and was short on assists, powerplay points and hits. Needless to say Ribeiro has been a homerun for my team, but there is actually another center who I drafted early that is doing even more for the Cartel, so I decided to make him the latest Geek of the Week: Derek Stepan.

 

 

 

Stepan is a guy who I knew I had to target early since he's a young player with upside on a (presumably) good team. In our league setup, Stepan was a borderline keeper last season; he would have been a great keep on one of the lower teams but a top team wouldn't have had the space to hold on to him. When he was dropped into the pool, you knew he was going to be a top pick in the draft. I had some concerns regarding his playing time (specifically his powerplay time) due to the addition of Nash but I liked that he satisfied my positional and category needs and also had some upside to boot. Before the draft, I ran a modified version of our league through Fantasy Hockey Geek to identify guys who contributed well to my needs (As, PPPs & hits from a centre). I entered these parameters into FHG and here is what came back:

 

 

(Yahoo! league using only Cs, counting A, PPP, hits and using stats from the 2011-12 season)

 

 

Rank

Player

GP

A