Geek of the Week – Kevin Shattenkirk

Terry Campkin

2014-11-23

Kevin Shattenkirk

Geek of the Week dives into Kevin Shattenkirk’s production.

The time of year is upon us where it is important to step back and take a look at your team to figure out what is going well for you and what isn't so that you can make the appropriate adjustments before it's too late. This past Friday, I sat down to do exactly that with my keeper team and that's how I was able to identify and target my Geek of the Week: Kevin Shattenkirk.

At this point in the season, a look at the standings should give you a pretty good feel for where you sit but let's face it: head to head leagues have ebbs and flows. There is an element of luck, strength of schedule and timing that can play a huge factor in your team's position in the standings. When I want to get a true picture of how my team stacks up, I actually don't look at the standings at all – I look at the full league stats. In Yahoo! it is simple to see this information on the main page and it looks something like this (I have x'd out the team names for fear of public shaming some of my buddies):

Team Name	G	A	+/-	PPP	SHP	GWG	SOG	HIT
xxxx	89	163	46	88	3	10	895	499
xxxx	89	147	27	74	5	14	782	412
xxxx	84	135	10	70	2	15	820	517
The Campkin Cartel	83	106	35	44	4	13	893	502
xxxx	83	154	18	76	4	16	910	477
xxxx	81	152	31	72	3	12	815	401
xxxx	80	124	10	65	2	13	766	468
xxxx	73	131	23	63	7	12	780	502
xxxx	70	134	20	56	1	9	767	344
MITB	69	132	6	67	3	12	706	360
xxxx	65	144	21	62	2	13	774	487
xxxx	64	107	-11	51	3	10	752	467

You can see from the above that my team (The Campkin Cartel) currently sits fourth in the standings but a quick glimpse amongst the stats shows that I am at or near the top of the league in a lot of categories. There are some where I am lacking though. To get a cleaner look, I translate the actual numbers into rankings. This helps me more clearly identify what I need to work on:

Team Name	G	A	+/-	PPP	SHP	GWG	SOG	HIT
xxxx	1	1	1	1	5	10	2	4
xxxx	1	4	4	3	2	3	6	9
xxxx	3	6	9	5	9	2	4	1
The Campkin Cartel	4	12	2	12	3	4	3	2
xxxx	4	2	8	2	3	1	1	6
xxxx	6	3	3	4	5	7	5	10
xxxx	7	10	9	7	9	4	10	7
xxxx	8	9	5	8	1	7	7	2
xxxx	9	7	7	10	12	12	9	12
MITB	10	8	11	6	5	7	12	11
xxxx	11	5	6	9	9	4	8	5
xxxx	12	11	12	11	5	10	11	8

Pretty clear from the above that the Cartel is a fairly well-rounded team for the most part, but there are two glaring holes: Assists and PPP. I wasn't surprised to see that I was low on assists as my tendency to value guys who shoot and score more than playmakers always leaves me short on helpers. My lineup is full of cy young candidates (Nash, Pacioretty, Parise, Garrison). I was however surprised to see how poorly I was performing in PPP although I do think that this could be a bit of a case of just a slow start for a number of my top players like Parise (1), Koivu (2), Nash (4), Pacioretty (3), Stepan (2), Edler (3). Even if my PPP are going to rebound though, they're still too way low. I need to target a PPP guy asap…. queue the Fantasy Hockey Geek analysis.

I edited my league in FHG to show players' values if the only categories were assists and PPP. This is a super simple way to identify players who could meet your needs. My strategy would be to find one of the top players in these two categories who may not be as highly valued when you consider all categories. Below are the top 5 results:

Rank	Player	Team	Position	FHG Value	Games Played	A	PPP
1	Sidney Crosby	PIT	C	204	17	18	13
2	Kevin Shattenkirk	STL	D	166	19	15	10
3	Sami Vatanen	ANA	D	156	21	12	12
4	Claude Giroux	PHI	C/RW	154	18	16	10
5	Jakub Voracek	PHI	RW	154	18	20	9

Ok, so I know that targeting Crosby is out of the question but the second name on my list really caught my eye. With 15 helpers and 10 PPP, Kevin Shattenkik is exactly the type of player I need. He is the player that is the second most valuable in the league when you look at my specific weaknesses. I need to target this guy.

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Before going and trading for Shattenkirk as the second most valuable guy in the league though, I first have to do a check on what his actual overall value is. Yes, he is the second best player in the league to fill my needs, but that doesn't mean that I should pay that high for him. So to get his true value, I run the league with all categories in FHG:

Rank	Player	FHG Value	Games Played	G	A	SOG	PPP	SHP	HITS
39	Kevin Shattenkirk	72	19	1	15	37	10	0	13
40	James van Riemsdyk	71	19	8	8	61	6	1	15
41	Jakub Voracek	71	18	7	20	65	9	0	10

You can see above that when you include all categories, Shatty is still the 39th most valuable in the league so far this season which is a pretty great ranking. I was frankly surprised to see his value calculated so high considering he gets less than two shots and one hit per game. The fact that he only has one goal doesn't help things either. The math shows though, that his elite level assists and (more so) powerplay points coming from the D position give him some pretty solid value. Now I just have to hope that Shattenkirk's current owner doesn't have the luxury of FHG and doesn't understand Shatty's true value like I do.