Ramblings: Ferland in Vancouver; Heinen and Iafallo sign; Jokiharju and Nylander – July 10

 

A very cool development in the fantasy hockey world.

The National Fantasy Hockey Championship, or NFHC, launched on Wednesday. It comes as a sister site for the National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC), National Fantasy Basketball Championship (NFBBC), and the National Fantasy Football Championship (NFFC).

In a nutshell, they’re high-stakes fantasy leagues. I’ve taken part in a couple NFBC leagues on the cheaper end that were $150 USD to buy in. The higher buy-in levels are five figures. Whether that’s the level the NFHC gets to or not, we’ll see. I doubt it will just because of the size of fantasy hockey relative to other fantasy sports, but this is exciting nonetheless.

Who’s interested?

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The Vancouver Canucks continue their offseason of acquisitions by adding Micheal Ferland to their roster. The terms disclosed in that tweet are four years with an average annual value of $3.5M.

You can read Cam’s take on the signing here.

Aside from whatever adjective people want to use to describe his intangibles, it’s important to know that Ferland is a passenger, not a driver. There are things he does well, particularly once the puck is in the offensive zone, but he’s not a guy to start a play, he’s not a guy to lead the transition, and he’s not a guy who can play lock-down defence.

And that’s fine! Not every good player in the NHL is a play-driver. Until recent seasons, Wayne Simmonds, for example, had been a very good NHLer without being that guy. But it also means Ferland absolutely needs to play in the top-6, preferably with