November 26, 2014
Dobber
2014-11-26
Lots of goalie talk and tips in today’s Ramblings, plus Atkinson, Klingberg (again) and more …
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Cam Atkinson is completely snakebitten. He’s getting the shots and opportunities, but he’s either missing the net or it’s getting stopped. But hang in there Atkinson owners, it will come. After all – the guy has 36 shots in his last eight games, and that includes just one last night (and about 10 net misses). With Matt Calvert back in the lineup, Atkinson played with Anisimov and Gibbons. He’ll get going when Brandon Dubinsky returns.
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I get the feeling that Jacob Trouba is starting to shake off the early season doldrums. Although three assists in his last three games is too small a sample to know for sure, and five points in his last 11 games is nothing to write home about – we did see this last year. I get the sense that maybe he’s just one of those guys who needs to settle into the routine and regiment.
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Colin Wilson has five points in his last five games with his pair of assists last night. He’s playing with Craig Smith. The streaky Wilson is on a hot one – and he was just dropped in my league a few days ago (and in many leagues, I’m sure).
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Oh boy. We know John Klingberg is on fire right now (I said this last ramblings, and I’ll keep saying – a must own, in all formats). But this goal is ridiculous. And it’s not like the Oilers needed a big neon sign saying “we need a goalie”, right? Here:
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Love fantasy hockey, if only for the subtle changes that have massive impacts. Trevor Daley was a shoe-in for a big year. Probably 50 points. He was hot down the stretch last year and when Alex Goligoski stumbled to start this season, Daley was picking up the PP slack. His ascension was assured – there was a big enough sample size to go by – 13 games and 10 points this year, and 23 games (season and playoffs) with 18 points to end last year. That’s 36 games and 28 points. Good enough for me, especially when the hot young defenseman was sent to the AHL for what looked to be a year of experience similar to Sami Vatanen in Anaheim a couple of years back. Boy, has that ever changed. Now Klingberg has been called up and is this rookie phenom with eight points in eight games. He logs a ton of minutes and is on the top power play. Which means Daley is off it. In the last eight games, Daley has one point and is minus-6. Wow – I had a lot of interest in Daley before Klingberg. Now I have next to none. You don’t see stuff like this coming and you can’t plan for it. Sure, you can plan for it on a macro level – you knew all about Klingberg because you bought the Fantasy Prospects Report (wink wink). But on a short-term level, no way anyone saw it coming after he had been sent down to Texas. Fantasy hockey…
Interesting here about Brendan Smith. During his fight with Nick Foligno, he had cut his hand on Foligno’s teeth. The hand got infected and swollen, and doctors had to clean it up. Smith is probably not going to play tonight, but should be back this weekend. Here is that fight, if you want to see it:
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Craig Anderson‘s last two so-so games is costing him some starts in the foreseeable future. Lehner has started three of the last four and just like that I can’t believe the two are close to a 50-50 split so far. But Anderson will get his little hot run in and then down the stretch he’ll see the bulk of the starts. Provided, that is, Ottawa is still in the playoff hunt.
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Brian Elliott left last night’s contest with an LBI. Yes, the door has opened wide for Jake Allen owners.
Just two points in six games for Vladimir Tarasenko…
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I’ve taken your suggestions for the Frozen Pool player profile page and will be implementing a lot of them. I think some of these can be put in quickly (i.e. within two weeks), but some may take a bit of work – so time permitting, we’re looking at February. But I’m pretty excited about what these pages will look like. Ideally we’d have “end-of-year pace”, pictures, age, team, full game-by-game logs, line combos from last game as well as the current year-to-date, and career stats. Right now, we’re working on fixing up the goalies – because all goalie pages are broken.
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If you didn’t see this, take a look – Bo Horvat is told that he’s in the NHL for good: