The Fantasy Guide can be picked up online in pdf form for the small price of $9.99 – and it comes with an updated spreadsheet, free. Updates are all free, download as often as you’d like. Updated Today – with my projections for the final team standings.

Also – ‘LIKE‘ Dobber Sports on Facebook as I will be making several announcements this week about some exciting things coming up (starting today).

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I’d like to weigh in on the Gabriel Landeskog signing if I may. Seven years, $39 million extension works out to a shade over $5.5 million per year (funny that I say ‘a shade over’ to describe a number that’s actually higher than a lot of our salaries). I think there’s a very good chance that this deal works out really well for the Avs. Better than even, say 60-40. But I still wouldn’t have done it. Not this month, anyway. I’d wait and see if he makes it to February without getting hurt. If he doesn’t, I’m sure he’d take the same deal in January as he did in August. Right now, the only track record we have are his two NHL seasons. One healthy, one injured. I would just, as a general manager, be as certain as I possibly can with each move that I make. And if waiting until January can give me the same result but increase my comfort level, then that is what I’d do.

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HC Geneva (Swiss), which signed Lennart Petrall last week, is apparently closing in on a deal with Matt Lombardi.

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This is fantasy hockey, so I think I can stretch that definition to news about Paulina Gretzky. No? Too bad, we’re hurting for news. So Paulina Gretzky is engaged to be married to golfer Dustin Johnson. Fantasy Impact: Now when you ‘fantasize’ about her, be sure to include the engagement ring on her finger.

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I generally don’t answer emails that ask for advice because I get so many of them and I find that if I answer one, I almost always get a follow-up question to clarify something I say. Which means I’m answering two emails for each one written to me. So about four years ago I was pretty much forced to stop answering altogether or it would be all I do. But this one caught my eye recently and I answered him. He had a team owner leave his pool. The team was near the bottom and had several very high picks. Apparently, replacing the owner is not an option.

Well, stop right there – why is that not an option? I don’t understand that. Auction off the guy’s team and give the proceeds to the owner who is leaving. Or sell it for a price set by the guy leaving. Or just give the team away. But don’t dissolve it! Anyway, I digress…

Okay, so he can’t replace the owner, he has to dissolve the team. For some reason, some of the other owners in the league figure that the guy’s players go back into the pool (okay) and his draft picks just disappear (what?). So you have a guy picking third who suddenly moves up to second because a pick disappears, even though he finished third-last. Other owners feel that it would be unfair to do that. There is also an argument over how to disperse the players.

Here is how I would solve:

Dispersal Draft. In the reverse order of finish, so the worst team gets the first pick in both the Dispersal Draft and the Entry Draft. Make the draft picks available in the Dispersal Draft as if they were players. So the second overall pick would be a highly-valued asset, perhaps good enough to be grabbed with the top dispersal pick. Run through the draft until either everyone has passed or the entire team has been taken.

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Take a lesson from this. Put a process down in your constitution about an owner quitting. Have it outlined before it happens so you avoid this kind of mess.

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The Leafs still haven’t signed Cody Franson or Nazem Kadri. They have less than $5 million in cap space for players that should probably combine for $7 million or more. I’m guessing they would prefer to sign Kadri if they had to choose, which means Franson would be traded. A Franson trade would really help TJ Brennan, who as of now would be in tough just to stay in the lineup. But I don’t see any other way this could go down

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Jose Theodore is rumored to be close to signing with the Boston Bruins. The deal is supposedly for the minimum. This really sucks for fans of Chad Johnson (like me), who paid his dues in the minors and is more than capable of backing up in the NHL. Especially behind a quality team like Boston. To me, Theodore is actually a cut below Johnson in talent these days. But he has the experience and name power to easily win the job and that could be it for Johnson’s shot at an NHL job, as he’s 27 years old now.

It’s tough, but when a guy like Theodore agrees to play for under a million bucks, then there goes the dreams of an AHL or European goaltender. Same thing will happen again if Tim Thomas does this, or Ilya Bryzgalov. If one of them decide to play for $800,000, then Thomas Greiss… or Alex Stalock… or Al Montoya… or Scott Clemmensen… or Ben Scrivens… or Eddie Lack… or Carter Hutton… is off to the minors, possibly for good.

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Every year I have three tiers of rotisserie hockey competition organized where readers have the opportunity to move up from the entry tier to compete against the pros… and then from there move up to compete against the experts. I made the decision in March to end my role in this wonderful tradition. But I decided to sit on it, and chew on it until the last possible minute to be sure. A decision like this should be made after careful thought, since there are two or three dozen people who absolutely love the leagues and the format and are excited to continue the challenge of moving up – and dozens more who failed to get into this competition in prior years, but were hoping that ‘this would be the year’. But five leagues for me has been too much and I’m cutting it to three. Since I’m in three keeper leagues, the two one-year leagues have to go – the DobberHockey Expert one and the Yahoo Expert one. It’s tough to walk away, since I have a reputation in the industry that I need to protect. But for now, at least until my kids get older and I have more spare time (they are two and four right now), I have to make cuts. So I’m out.

Does this mean the entire three tiers and six divisions need to shut down? Not necessarily. But Jeff Angus is off to school in September and that’s a key organizer to lose if there ever was one. So I’m out and Angus is out. That’s a tough blow. But I know that there are a few guys in the DobberHockey community who are excellent organizers and perhaps they keep the pro and expert leagues going. I’m sorry for the trouble – and in some cases, for the letdown.

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Over at DobberProspects, Rich posted a helpful ramblings yesterday with some ‘names you need to know’, focusing on Carolina prospects.

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Nazem Kadri’s 2013 season, some beauty highlights here: