Top 100 Roto Players – March 2015

Austin Wallace

2015-03-17

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Check out the top 100 Roto rankings for March 2015.

Roto Breakdown

By Mike McMillan

This is the Top 100 Roto rankings for March 2015. As you already know if you've been following this season, the Roto uses Fantasy Hockey Geek's proprietary formula for evaluating different categories against each other and the Top 100 Roto's category scores and multi-year averages allow for easy and informed evaluation. If your league does not count one of the categories listed here, just remove it from the calculations since all the category scores add up to the overall score.

If you are completely new to this list, we are using 2 categories to gauge how sustainable each players' production is:

Change in 5-on-5 Shooting %: Comparing the players shooting percentage from this season to his previous 3 seasons. An average shooting percentage for a scoring forward is around 10-12%. If a player that has been shooting 10% his whole career suddenly has a month of shooting 20%, we know he's been getting some puck luck and can predict regression moving forward. If they have a significantly lower shooting percentage compared to their career average, we can predict a boost in production. Players in their first 2-3 seasons may not have enough data to make a reliable prediction and players at the end of their careers may be facing a natural athletic regression. But for the most part this will help us know those who will maintain production and those who will fall off.

PDO: Adding on-ice shooting and save percentages. A PDO of 100 means that when a player is on the ice both goalies are letting in shots at the same rate. If your opponent's goalie is letting in shots at a much higher rate, that could be talent, luck, or both, but in most cases it is just luck. For both PDO and shooting percentage, we are only looking at 5 on 5 stats, so different amounts of powerplay/penalty kill time doesn't directly affect things.

Top Performers

Rise/Fall

In the February rankings we talked about how Max Pacioretty has established himself as an elite goal scorer and will continue to rise. He has been living up to this over the last month with nine goals in his past 14 games since the last Roto. His 34 total goals is fourth best in the league and he has risen up to the 15th spot. James Neal has been in a free fall in the Fantasy rankings due to the struggling Nashville Predators. Last month he held a spot in the top 15 but this month he fell to 38th. Neal has only three goals in his last 30 days (14 games played) and should see an increase in production to finish the year but it's clear now that his value has taken a significant hit compared to last season in Pittsburgh.

Alex Steen has fallen 23 spots this month because he has not scored a goal in the last 30 days on 28 shots. He does have two games with four assists over that time so he is still contributing offensively and the goals should come soon. Jonathan Toews has risen 24 spots in the rankings thanks to 10 points, six goals in the last 12 games since Feb 15th. His play has been strong since the loss of Pat Kane due to injury and is now even more essential to Chicago's success. Andrew Ladd has jump up into the Top 25 this month. The Winnipeg Jets captain has been solid all year in every category with no reason to slow down. Troy Brouwer has been getting on the score sheet lately, so adding some points to his already valuable hits, PIMs and shots on goal boosts him up to 32 overall. Making him the biggest riser of the week, up 55 spots.

Stay away from all Maple Leafs for the rest of the year if possible. James Van Riemsdyk is shooting the exact same shooting percentage as last season (10.8) but, similar to the rest of his teammates, is shooting the puck significantly less resulting in the lower offensive production.

Top 100 Newcomers

Matt Beleskey makes his first appearance on the Roto this month. He just made his return to the Ducks lineup after missing 12 games to injury. Belesky will be back on the top line with ether Ryan Getzlaf or Corey Perry, and if you’re a Belesky owner, hopefully both. Justin Faulk debuts at 95 on the Roto this week. He's been having a breakout year with 44 points (13 goals, 31 assists) but is limited on a struggling Hurricanes team. Islanders forward Anders Lee makes a strong debut at 73 while thriving on a line with John Tavares and Josh Bailey. He has been producing at a point-per-game pace over the last 30 days and also brings big value in his shots on goal (55) and hits (42).

Pick up the Rankings in their free PDF form here.

If you prefer something more malleable that you can customize you can also download the Rankings in a free Excel file.

UPCOMING GAMES

Dec 27 - 19:12	DET	vs	TOR
Dec 27 - 19:12	BUF	vs	CHI
Dec 27 - 19:12	CBJ	vs	BOS
Dec 27 - 19:12	N.J	vs	CAR
Dec 27 - 20:12	DAL	vs	MIN
Dec 27 - 20:12	STL	vs	NSH
Dec 27 - 21:12	UTA	vs	COL
Dec 27 - 22:12	S.J	vs	VGK