The Stars are going to need to trade for a Jeff Zatkoff or something at some point this season, I suspect. Lindback just isn’t an NHL caliber puck stopper in my opinion, and it’s seriously in Dallas’ best interests to manage Kari Lehtonen‘s workload. In the loaded west I’m not sure they can afford 22 Lindback starts this season…

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Mike Smith finally found his form on Saturday, stopping 23 of 24 shots in a Phoenix Coyotes overtime victory over the Florida Panthers. Oliver Ekman-Larsson scored the game winner in overtime for the ‘Yotes, and peppered Roberto Luongo with eight shots on net in the contest (which is pretty valuable output from a defenders slot). Keith Yandle meanwhile had two points (both assists) and seven shots on net, but was a -1 and it was richly deserved as he gave the puck away to Jussi Jokinen on Brandon Pirri‘s goal…

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Luongo stopped 39 of 41 shots and had an excellent fantasy outing in a losing effort. Nick Bjugstad meanwhile managed five shots on goal, while Willie Mitchell blocked nine shots and threw three hits while logging 20 seconds shy of nine minutes of short-handed time on ice on Saturday. Now you know why the first iteration of the Alain Vigneault Vancouver Canucks – pre-Mike Gillis era – was so difficult to score on…

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Philadelphia Flyers forward Michael Raffl had a two goal, one assist, +2 evening which is pretty funny as he led the Flyers past the Detroit Red Wings in a 4-2 win. Meanwhile Michael Del Zotto had two assists and logged over 22 minutes of time on ice, which, yeah he’ll have to do often now that Braydon Coburn and Andrew MacDonald are both out long-term with injuries. Could be worth a desperation look on waivers, though with Visnovsky almost surely still available in your league, you better be real desperate.

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How about Claude Giroux with the assist, five shots on goal, 2 penalty minutes, two blocked shots, one hit and 19(!) face-off win performance? That’s just sick.

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Pavel Datsyuk scored his first of the season and remains a complete freak. Also Riley Sheahan capped off a lovely goal in which he combined impressively with line-mates Andrej Nestrasil and Tomas Jurco to open the scoring. All three of those guys look like serious players.

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This week we’re calling them the St. Louis Flues, but they got back to their usual winning ways by holding off the Chicago Blackhawks in a thrilling 3-2 victory on Saturday night. Jaden Schwartz scored his fifth of the season, while T.J. Oshie finally got on the board with his first point of the season, and Dmitrij Jaskin – who I think very highly of as a prospect – scored the game winner and added three hits and three shots on goal. Pietrangelo had a monster fantasy outing with two assists, a +2 rating, 2 PIM, three shots on goal and three hits.

For the Blackhawks Patrick Sharp had a multi-point game, but no one really had a particularly good fantasy night. Even Jonathan Toews – who managed four shots – didn’t do much else, and finished the game with a -2 rating.

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In the Pittsburgh Penguins’ 3-0 victory over the Nashville Predators Sidney Crosby had a three point evening (a goal and two assists) that is all too familiar for hockey fans and Crosby fantasy owners. He also threw three hits and took a couple of shots.

Meanwhile his line mate Patric Hornqvist has had a bit of a rough week in terms of generating shot volume. After regularly hitting 7+ shots in the first two weeks of the season, Hornqvist’s volume shooting game has fallen off a bit (which, fair enough). He only managed two shots though he did record an assist on Saturday night.

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Christian Ehrhoff has been awesome on a pairing with Paul Martin for the Penguins, but he’s been a huge fantasy bust in the early going. Obviously it doesn’t help that he’s not playing on the first power play unit, but he’s pretty regularly putting up lines like he did again on Saturday night: no goals, no points, one shot, no hits.

He’s playing well, but he’s an odd example of a guy whose hockey value is enormous, but it isn’t showing up in the boxscore. The Penguins will take it, but I’d imagine Ehrhoff owners are getting a wee bit frustrated.

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The Predators trailed the Penguins for nearly 54 minutes on Saturday night and still got outshot. This is why I’m skeptical about the Predators in general, and certainly don’t think they’re in the same class as the Dallas Stars or the Minnesota Wild.

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I’m starting to think that Predators defenseman Ryan Ellis might be worth owning in deeper leagues. He had another three shot outing on Saturday, the fourth game of the season in which he’s done that.

That’s worthwhile from a blue-line slot, and he has a goal and three assists just this week, which I don’t think is a completely unsustainable level of production. If you’re looking for a Chara replacement, I’d honestly go with him or Visnovsky (and then maybe, maybe Del Zotto).

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Evgeni Nabokov is, yeah.

The veterean netminder got chased after allowing four goals against on eight shots faced against the Wild on Saturday night, which enabled big fantasy nights for the likes of Zach Parise (a goal, an assist, five shots on goal), Marco Scandella (a goal, an assist, five PIM), Jason Zucker (2 goals, 2 shots, plus-2), and Ryan Suter (assist, plus-4).

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So Thomas Vanek still hasn’t scored a goal as a Minnesota Wild player yet, and hasn’t recorded a single shot on goal since he appeared to injure his thumb last weekend against the Los Angeles Kings. As a Vanek fantasy owner I’ll admit: I’m enormously worried. At least he had two assists on Saturday…

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Quiet night for Jonathan Drouin after his coming out party against the Winnipeg Jets on Friday night. He didn’t record a point, a shot, or a hit on Saturday in Tampa Bay’s loss to the Wild. Not uncommon for consistency to be the last thing a great young player learns at the NHL level. Perhaps Saturday’s performance from Drouin just emphasizes that (or maybe it’s nothing who knows, he’s had a pretty impressive first week in the NHL).

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Dennis Wideman crushed me in my fantasy matchup this week with three goals (including another one on Saturday night – he has five on the season now). Overall though the Flames began to regress in a 3-1 loss to the Washington Capitals in which they got rather thoroughly outclassed in my opinion.

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Brooks Orpik had a pretty amazing fantasy outing on Saturday night with 10 hits (only one of which was really cheap!), while Joel Ward scored two goals and managed four shots on goal. Alex Ovechkin went without a point, and only managed one shots which is pretty amazing. He now has a total of five shots in his past three games, which is less than the number he averaged in his first four games of the season.

Thomas Drance is a news editor at theScore.