Tournament: Who's missing from the Band-Aid Boy list? Your vote will help decide…

Thanks to everyone who voted in last week’s tournament to decide the players who you believe no longer deserve to be saddled with the dreaded Band-Aid Boy label. You can see the poll results and comments here. Now it’s just up to Dobber to decide how many of these players to actually remove from the current list…….

Tournament #2 – Choosing New Band-Aid Boy Players

The good news is that – in a first for Cage Match – as one tournament ends, a new one kicks off! This week you’ll be voting on which players to add to the current Band-Aid Boy List.

I thought it would be easy to find dozens of unfortunately well-deserving candidates; however, I’ll tap my stick to Dobber, as there were fewer “no brainers” out there than I’d have envisioned. Of course that’s not to imply there aren’t worthy candidates, as I managed to come up with just under 50 for you to consider and vote on.

How the Candidates Were Selected

Deciding players to include was more difficult than I thought, mostly because of there being no easy resource (at least not one known to me) to check on games missed due specifically to injury. With netminders, there’s the added issue of lack of games played possibly being due to a goalie share or just normal rest. Similarly, young players or less productive players might have missed games due to being a healthy scratch, rather than as a result of injury. And of course, there are also non-injury explanations for players missing games (such as suspension, illness, visa issues, personal reasons, holdouts, etc.), which are hard to recall after the fact.

Apologies in advance if I dropped the ball in including undeserving players, or perhaps in omitting some who should’ve made the cut. Be sure to let me know (either in the comments to this column or by posting in the polls) if you think there were other players who should have been listed among the voting choices for any of the positions.

In assembling the list, I toyed with not including those who have concussion or other head injury issues. Yet in the end I did keep them in, since, like Dobber says as a lead-in to the actual list, it’s not about how or why players missed games due to being hurt, only that they did miss them.

Voting Guidance

You’ll probably be tempted to vote for bigger name players, since in their cases injuries negatively affected fantasy teams more. But it’s important to remember, the label of Band-Aid Boy is only about a player’s injury track record, not how much that track record happened to impact fantasy teams. After all, for every Evgeni Malkin, Pavel Datsyuk and Taylor Hall on the current list, there’s also a Chris Higgins, Tuomo Ruutu, and Brooks Laich. Long story short – be sure to judge players by their injury history, not by how many times they happened to burn your fantasy squad.

There’s also the issue of recent history bias. Don’t let it sway you too much if a veteran happens to be currently hurt or was last season. Focus instead on his overall body of work. However, for a younger player, recent history is more meaningful, as it represents a larger percentage of his overall career.

How Voting Will Work

There’s one bracket for each position, with the names in alphabetical order. And in an effort to find a true “team” of new Band-Aid Boys, you should cast your votes as follows:

• Vote for three forwards in the forwards bracket
• Vote for two defensemen in the defensemen bracket
• Vote for one goalie in the goalies bracket

Next to each player (other than goalies) I’ve listed the number of games he played in each of the past six seasons, starting with the 2014-15 campaign and working backwards. I’ve labeled the 2012-13 lockout season to help prevent it from being misinterpreted. For younger players, I listed only the games played since they became NHL regulars, which means in some cases players will have fewer than six seasons worth of data shown.

Okay – with all that out of the way, here are the brackets, along with the links to where you can cast your vote(s) for each bracket.

Forwards Bracket – Vote HERE For THREE Forwards

Artem Anisimov – 52, 81, 35 (lockout), 79, 82, 82

Josh Bailey – 70, 77, 38 (lockout), 80, 70, 73

Aleksander Barkov – 71, 54

Patrick Berglund – 77, 78, 48 (lockout), 82, 81, 71

Nick Bjugstad – 72, 76

Alex Burrows – 70, 49, 47 (lockout), 80, 72, 82

Joe Colborne – 64, 80

Blake Comeau – 61, 61, 42 (lockout), 74, 77, 61

Brett Connolly – 55, 68

Logan Couture – 82, 65, 48 (lockout), 80, 79

Lars Eller – 77, 77, 46 (lockout), 79, 77

Ryan Getzlaf – 77, 77, 44 (lockout), 82, 67, 66

Zemgus Girgensons – 61, 70

Adam Henrique – 75, 77, 42 (lockout)

Boone Jenner – 31, 72

Patrick Kane – 61, 69, 47 (lockout), 82, 73, 82

Clarke MacArthur – 62, 79, 40 (lockout), 73, 82, 81

Michael Raffl – 67, 68

Jaden Schwartz – 75, 80, 45

Tommy Wingels – 75, 77, 42 (lockout)

Defensemen Bracket – Vote HERE For TWO Defensemen

Johnny Boychuk – 72, 75, 44 (lockout), 77, 69

Trevor Daley – 68, 67, 44 (lockout), 79, 82, 77

Jason Demers – 81, 75, 22 (lockout), 57, 75

Simon Despres – 75

Ryan Ellis – 58, 80, 32 (lockout)

Alexei Emelin – 68, 59, 38 (lockout), 67

Cody Franson – 78, 79, 45 (lockout), 57, 80

Jason Garrison – 70, 81, 47 (lockout), 77, 73

Eric Gudbranson – 76, 65, 32 (lockout), 72

Dougie Hamilton – 72, 64, 42 (lockout)

Travis Hamonic – 71, 69, 48 (lockout), 73

Kevin Klein – 65, 77, 47 (lockout), 66, 81, 81

Alec Martinez – 56, 61, 27 (lockout), 51

Adam McQuaid – 63, 30, 32 (lockout), 72, 67

Marc Methot – 45, 75, 47 (lockout), 46, 74, 60

Jake Muzzin – 76, 76, 45 (lockout)

Dmitri Orlov – zero, 54, 5

Kyle Quincey – 73, 82, 36 (lockout), 72, 21, 79

Michal Rozsival – 65, 42, 27 (lockout), 54, 65, 82

Jacob Trouba – 65, 65

Goalies Bracket – Vote HERE For ONE Goalie

Jonathan Bernier

Sergei Bobrovsky

Brian Elliott

Jonas Gustavsson

Jonas Hiller

Robin Lehner

Ondrej Pavelec

Carey Price

James Reimer

Where to Vote

The links are above, but I’ll post them again – vote here for forwards, here for defensemen, and here for goalies. All polls are in the Hockey Hockey Hockey Hockley area of the DobberHockey Forums and will remain open until Monday December 16th. Remember – unlike last week, you’re voting for the players in each bracket who you think are currently most deserving of being added to the list of Band-Aid Boys.

Next week will be tournament #3 – where you’ll help decide which four (or more) current Band-Aid Boys deserve the honor unfortunate accolade of being named a Band-Aid Boy Executive. You won’t want to miss that, so be sure to check back here next week.