I was very high on Anders Lee as a sleeper coming into the season but in the early going it was Brock Nelson who was getting all of the good minutes and seeing some early success with 12 points in just ten October games. My Anders Lee bet wasn't looking great, so I did what any good degenerate would do and I doubled down on my bet. In one of my leagues, I actually owned Nelson in November and I flipped him for a pick and then promptly snagged Lee for free off waivers as he was available in almost every league. I still had a feeling that Lee could come through although I admittedly wasn't sure. One thing I was fairly sure of though was that Brock Nelson wasn't going to keep it up (so much so that I even wrote an article about it) so I wanted to make sure I was able to cash in on his hot start. The moves have been paying off ever since.

Since that time, the two have been trending in opposite directions: Nelson's production has fallen way off with only 27 points in his next 59 games after Halloween and only nine in 23 games post all-star break. Lee, on the other hand, has been on fire, with 37 points from November on and a whopping 20 points in 23 games post all-star break.

So what does it all net out to? At the end of the day (actually at the beginning of the day, as I write this on Friday morning before the Isles play) Nelson sits with 39 points and Lee 38. One might conclude that the two players are interchangeable. Let's run my league through Fantasy Hockey Geek to see how the two really compare:

You can see from the above that for the entire season, Lee is ranked 84^th in my league while Nelson is way down at 100^th and this despite the fact that Nelson has had six more games in which to accumulate stats!

What makes Lee even better than what I laid out above though is the fact that I touched on earlier: he's performing way better now than he was at the beginning of the season. If he is ranked this highly despite not having even played in the early going, how highly is he ranking now that he is spending quality minutes with superstar linemates and getting powerplay time? With FHG it is simple to pull up more recent data for any timeframe that you select. I'll arbitrarily pick January 1 and run an FHG analysis to see how the players' values look since then:

Incredible! Anders Lee has been the 17^th most valuable player in my league in calendar year 2015. He's sixth in goals over that period while chipping in with a very impressive 2.8 shots and 2.5 hits per game. Those are Chris Kunitz type numbers; in fact those are better than Kunitz' current numbers, they are more like Kunitz of a year ago and we all know how valuable he was to have on a fantasy team.

Interesting to take a peek at Brock Nelson at the same time and notice that he's way down at 237 since we rang in the New Year. Most people don't realize this, but the guy isn't even worthy of a roster spot in most leagues any more. His early season hot streak is masking what has been some really lousy production for a few months. A total of 12 points in 32 games while firing less than two shots per contest are David Booth type numbers.

Anders Lee is here in fantasy hockey and he will be a great multi-category guy to own for many years. With the help of Fantasy Hockey Geek, I was able to take a look at two seemingly similar players and identify the one who would truly help my team and the one who I would be best to sell. I gained a pick out of it and a player who I could potentially keep. Sign up for Fantasy Hockey Geek today to help make some similar moves for your team!

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