Reading Tom Collins article on Top 10 disappointing goalies was fun.  I still firmly plant my flag in the goalies don’t matter group so we’ll see if that changes at the year chugs along.   I’m benefiting from the otherworldly play of Jaroslav Halak in Boston who continues to thwart off Tuukka Rask’s starts.   Two other goalies that Tom touches on Matt Murray and Sergei Bobrovsky are also not living up to their ADP.  Imagine having that extra defender or another skilled winger instead of these guys?  Granted you might end up with Mike Smith – but at least your skaters will be fun to watch.

Using Corsica’s expected goal totals I think at this point it is interesting to see who is underperforming models versus who is over performing:

Thus far the players with green points have been unlucky as they have at least one goal that have not been credited with.  The players in the upper half with red dots are players who are over performing the models approximation of the number of goals they should have scored thus far.   Elite scorers can beat this model, it’s good to keep this in mind when you see Ovechkin’s name highlighted.   Taylor hall would be considered an elite scorer yet his name is someone who has not benefited from the luck of the puck thus far.  I’m keen on acquiring him if possible. 

Add Sam Reinhart to the list of players to target after a very slow start.  Fifty-point rookies don’t grow on tree’s they tend to go up quickly. 

Top 3 lines in the East at 5v5:

John Tavares, Mitch Marner, Zach Hyman – The line has scored ten times this year and has only allowed four goals against.  They have been expected to score 8.5x thus far.  It’ll be interesting to see if Hyman can use this as a spring board to fantasy relevance.

Brad Marchand, David Pastrnak, Patrice Bergeron – Surprisingly even though this line has scored ten times this year, they have also let in seven goals.  They are controlling play with 58% Corsi and continue to be one of the top teams in the league.

Micheal Ferland, Sebastian Aho, Teuvo Teravainen –  This line was hot to start the season, however Carolina as a whole has not been able to translate their impressive CF into wins, this line while productive has been giving up a lot of goals.  Ferland could be a casualty of line shuffling if the lack of wins continues.   Interestingly enough Ferland is still on pace for over 300 SOG.

A lot has been made of Michael Ferland’s hot start in Carolina he’s leading the forwards on his team for a SOG pace.  However he’s been pointless in 3 of his last four games – given his start and the line he is on its worth monitoring his deployment.  Take this more as a public service announcement that if Ferland’s name pops up in a trade offer to you that it may be worth delaying the response for a couple games.

Claude Giroux – Giroux is on pace for 82 points this year, I suspect you’re not terribly disappointed if you drafted him in Yahoo! Leagues with the dual eligibility. His shot volume at 5v5 is up almost an entire one SOG/GP against his three year average. 

Thomas Vanek – Vanek is out for the next two weeks but thus far Vanek is down .25 pts/game compared to the last three years, this moves his pace down to 37 points. Vanek is going to have to come back strong if he expects to break the 50 point barrier.  

Mark Stone and Mathew Barzal both are seeing their 5v5 production dip this year.  Fortunately both skaters are being inflated by an increase in power play points.  Given Ottawa’s surprising success this year on the power play I’m more worried that a tank job in Ottawa will impact Stone’s value moving forward.  Barzal has shown a willingness to shoot more in the last couple days, hopefully that is a trend that can continue.

Max Domi has been lights out in Montreal this year, granted he is shooting 24%, has 81% IPP, and a positive PDO.  Domi success will likely dissipate, start looking to sell before it’s too late.  It’s not surprising that Domi ended up as a player highlighted in the G- ixGF evaluation.

Alex Ovechkin’s summer of madness looks to have made him even stronger.  He’s scoring at a higher rate at 5v5 than he has over the last three years! His shot volume has slightly decreased at 5v5 which has caused a spike in his shooting percentage.  I suppose that could be worrisome – shot volume going down with a projected pace of 321 SOG.  If he shoots his average 13% we’re looking at 41 goals in total and if he dips to even a respectable 11% we’re looking at 35 goals.  Volume is king for Ovechkin owners, hopefully 8 can start shooting the puck a little more.

Top 15 SOG Pace in the East (Dougie Hamilton is super human):

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