Geek of the Week – Kevin Bieksa

Terry Campkin

2014-10-05

Kevin Bieksa

The Geek explains why Kevin Bieksa has a tonne of upside in PIM leagues.

We've spent a lot of time in recent weeks reviewing draft strategies/outcomes and how Fantasy Hockey Geek can help you to maximize your value at the draft table. For my money, that's the biggest value that FHG provides but FHG is also very good for looking at steady veterans and finding those who may be undervalued amongst your peers. Today we will look at one such player: Kevin Bieksa.

At the age of 33 and with 9 years of NHL experience, Bieksa should be a fairly well known commodity in fantasy circles, which makes me wonder why he is currently being drafted 166^th overall as the 94^th defenceman in Yahoo! leagues, slightly ahead of Ryan Murray and well behind the likes of Nik Hjalmarsson and Marc-Edouard Vlassic. I can think of a few reasons why this may be: people may question his durability, people may be down on the Canucks in general and people also might question his consistency. All three of these are legitimate concerns. Look at Bieksa's point per game average since he became an NHL regular:

From the chart above, you can see that Bieksa's production has been quite sporadic, ranging from 0.3 to 0.6 points per game. Over the past two seasons he has averaged only .32 points per game.

Here's the thing though: even at 0.32 points per game Bieksa still has value. Let's take a look at what his value was last year in a Yahoo! standard league (G, A, +/-, PPP, SOG, PIM)

Rank	Name	Pos	G	A	+/-	PIM	SOG	PPP
82	Brent Seabrook	D	7	34	23	22	149	9
83	Kevin Bieksa	D	4	20	-8	104	167	8
84	Jakub Voracek	RW	23	39	11	22	235	23

In a Yahoo! standard league, Bieksa was ranked as the 83rd most valuable player, right around a couple of players who are being drafted considerably higher than him.
So what makes Bieksa so valuable? The answer is easy: he racks up SOGs and PIMs at a rate that is very uncommon amongst defencemen. His 24 points last season are a disappointment to be sure, but he did offer some production and a good portion of what he provided came on the powerplay. The FHG math shows that his high end output in PIM and SOG make up for what he was lacking offensively. Essentially, FHG tells us here that vs. Seabrook, Bieksa’s additional 82PIMs and 18shots are approximately equal to the three goals and 14 assists that he is giving up.
Looking ahead to the coming season, I loaded the Dobber projections into FHG and Bieksa came out around the same area (87th most valuable). This makes sense, given that Dobber isn’t forecasting a major swing for Bieksa.

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