Ramblings: Top Frozen Tools Searches – Fox, Gregor, Trenin (June 13)

Ian Gooding

2020-06-13

The 2020 Fantasy Prospects Report is now available! Inside, you'll find team-by-team listings of prospects, as well as fantasy hockey profiles of 2020 draft-eligible players – everyone from Alexis Lafreniere to Alex Laferriere. (By the way, a story seems inevitable about how a noob in someone's league accidentally selects Laferriere instead of Lafreniere … I can't believe how alike the two names are.)

Keep in mind that with the draft likely still months away, the FPR is still a work in progress. Sections such as the mock draft won't be completed until after the draft order is set. Of course, you'll be able to download an updated copy. Even without that, there's still a ton of information to pore over. Get yours by clicking this link!

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Late Friday, a report surfaced from the Las Vegas Review-Journal that Vegas has been confirmed as a hub city for the Stanley Cup Playoffs. The announcement is expected sometime by June 22. Not the least bit related to hockey (but perhaps of interest if you've been to Vegas at least once), MGM Resorts-owned hotels that are nongaming and nonsmoking have been requested by the league. T-Mobile Arena is co-owned by MGM Resorts. I’m not surprised at all that Vegas would be the first choice, given the sheer volume of hotels and Nevada’s relatively relaxed COVID-19 restrictions.

The second hub city is still up in the air. According to Sportsnet, whether it is a Canadian city will depend on how the Canadian government will enforce the 14-day quarantine for anyone entering Canada. Toronto was mentioned as the "preferred" Canadian destination, which I can understand from its proximity to league headquarters and broadcasting networks. However, the COVID-19 situations in both British Columbia and Alberta are more favorable than in Ontario (in other words, far fewer cases even per million), with the premiers of both provinces pushing Vancouver and Edmonton as destinations. I really don’t know which way this will go.

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Earlier in the day, the Boston Bruins announced that a player tested positive for COVID-19 earlier this week. However, two follow-up tests returned negative results, while the player has been asymptomatic.

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My now-usual Saturday feature:

Interestingly enough, all three of the players that I'll be covering this week made their NHL debuts this season. This obviously isn't the case for all of the top 10 Frozen Tools searches, but there is more of a natural curiosity of what a younger player could bring to a fantasy team. In addition to being able to click on the player's name to view their Frozen Tools profile, you will also be able to view the Dobber Prospects profile for each player at the bottom of the player's section.

Adam Fox

I'm not surprised Fox is in the Top 10 searches, as I've noticed that Fox has been mentioned a number of times in Dobber articles since this offseason started. I also could have sworn that I've also seen a writer or two mention that Fox is a preferred option over Tony DeAngelo. I might need to keep looking, or maybe someone reading this has noticed something that I haven't.

For now and to me, DeAngelo > Fox. Basically, DeAngelo is the one with the first-unit power-play time, and he's made the most of it (19 PPP). DeAngelo should also still be considered the Rangers' top offensive option from the blueline, considering his 50+ point breakout after what seemed like years as a top prospect. That shouldn't be a slight against Fox at all, as he had a fine rookie season with 40+ points of his own. In fact, Fox would probably generate more Calder Trophy attention if not for Quinn Hughes and Cale Makar. In the June 2 Ramblings, Mike Clifford presents a great argument as to why Fox should be mentioned in the same breath as the other two.

The fact is that both DeAngelo and Fox are young defensemen with tremendous upside, which makes this situation fluid as far as PP1 goes. Maybe the Rangers decide not to fit RFA DeAngelo in long term, which would be a prime opportunity for Fox. Either way, the Rangers will extrapolate the exceptional value of $925,000 for two more seasons of Fox. Needless to say, it's a situation worth watching. Even without first-unit power-play time, Fox will still be worth drafting in 12-team leagues that require four d-men per team.

Dobber Prospects profile – Fox

For the next two players, when Dobber speaks, everyone listens, which means they go to Frozen Tools.

Noah Gregor

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In case you missed the latest Monday Ramblings authored by Dobber, he examined top players for points/60, hits/60, and shots on goal/60 after December 31. Gregor and Trenin (more on him below) both made the top 40 for this list, which he created if you are looking for players that you don't know about that could make an impact in the hits category next season. Dobber also briefly mentioned both Gregor and Trenin, which resulted in the high volume of the Frozen Tools profile visits of each.

In run-of-the-mill single-season pure scoring leagues, Gregor wasn't appealing overall (five points in 28 games in 10 minutes per game). However, Gregor does possess some long-term scoring upside. He scored 43 goals and 88 points in just 63 games in his final season in the WHL, as well as 19 points in 25 games in his first AHL season. More recently, Gregor recorded four of his five points over the Sharks' last seven games while his most frequent fourth-quarter linemates were Logan Couture and Evander Kane. Two of those points were on the power play, where he saw action on the Sharks' second unit.

Due to playing just 28 games, Gregor was well down the list in terms of total hits among Sharks' players this past season. Yet in terms of overall hits/60 among Sharks' players who played at least 10 games (using Dobber's criteria), Gregor was third with 10.7 hits/60. If you change the minimum games played to 20, Gregor was first on the Sharks. In case you're wondering about the usually positively-correlated-to-hits penalty minutes category, Gregor has never had a high PIM total in his career and only received 8 penalty minutes in his first season as a Shark.

Deep keeper leaguers that count hits could keep an eye on Gregor for next season. Given his most recent production and deployment, there's a chance he could find himself in the Sharks' top 6 next season. However, he still needs to battle with a handful of other young-ish Sharks forwards for a spot in the lineup next season.

Dobber Prospects profile – Gregor

Yakov Trenin

Trenin was a similar type of player to Gregor last season, a hard-hitting forward who recorded six points in 21 games in just under an average of 10 minutes per game. Unlike Gregor, however, Trenin ended the season ice cold, as he didn't record a single point in his last 10 games. This in spite of ending the season on a line with Viktor Arvidsson and Kyle Turris. Trenin was over a point-per-game scorer in each of his three seasons in the QMJHL, and he also reached a point per game in his 2019-20 AHL time (35 points in 32 games).

Trenin is also down the list in terms of overall Predators' hit totals with 46 hits overall. Plugging in Dobber's criteria for hits/60 (minimum 10 GP), Trenin was tops on the Predators with 13.5 hits/60. That didn't register in the top 30 league-wide among hits/60 with a minimum 10 GP, but then again Nashville wasn't a hard-hitting team overall (30th in the NHL).

Trenin's penalty minute total wasn't significant in the NHL (9 PIM in 21 games), but he was a near PIM/GP player in the AHL (29 PIM in 32 GP). Included in those nine penalty minutes was a five-minute major resulting from a fight with the two decades older and much taller Zdeno Chara (even though Trenin isn't short at 6-2).

Trenin is one tough cookie if he can nearly knock over Chara like that! His chances of sticking in the NHL seem promising, since he's established himself as a two-way player in the Nashville system. He's a player you could treat similarly to Gregor in that he's worth keeping an eye on in deeper bangers leagues.

Dobber Prospects profile – Trenin

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For more fantasy hockey information, or to reach out to me, you can follow me on Twitter @Ian_Gooding.

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