Geek of the Week digs into Jamie McGinn’s sneaky fantasy value.

Last week, I offered up Johnny Boychuk as an example of a player who is widely available and ready to help you make a push towards your league's playoffs. Today, I am going to take a look at another such player: Jamie McGinn.

Jamie McGinn is currently only 5% owned in Yahoo! leagues and based on the data I pulled from Fantasy Hockey Geek, I would say that ownership level is justifiable:

You can see from the above that for the season, McGinn is only the 217^th most valuable player in a league of this format, making it easy to understand why he isn't on many fantasy hockey teams. With 26 points in 56 games and only 5 on the man advantage, McGinn isn't offering up much in terms of offensive output. McGinn isn't as bad as he could be though because he does shoot and hit at a decent rate. Look how that impacts his value compared to somebody like Nick Spaling who has similar offensive output but lacks in peripherals: McGinn is almost 200 slots higher!

I find that differentiating players like McGinn and Spaling is what makes FHG so valuable. I would probably know just by looking at the numbers that McGinn was the more valuable own, but I probably wouldn't have guessed that the gap was so big. FHG can calculate the exact value gap between these types of players and help to decide which players might be worth adding and which are better left on the wire.

As a personal aside – McGinn is one lower-end players that I keep on my radar as a weekly stream because he contributes pretty well in shots and hits for a player who is usually un-owned. In a head to head league, I will often add a player who happens to fit well into my schedule for a short period of time to put me over the top in these two categories for a matchup, and I typically target shots and hits because they tend to be more reliable over a short sample size like a one-week add. McGinn can be particularly helpful next week (March 10^th) when Colorado plays four games on off nights (Mon, Wed, Fri and Sun) so I know he won't just be sitting on my bench.

Back to some more FHG goodness: there is way more with McGinn than his yearly production numbers. Recently, he has been seeing some good PP minutes with O'Rielly, Parenteau and Matty Duch which is a situation that is sure to help any players' value. Take a look at his how McGinn's value has shot up since Jan 15^th:

Over that 13 game stretch, McGinn has been the 85^th most valuable player which is a number that makes him worthy of at least a short term pickup if not a full time roster spot. His shots per game are up to 2.3 over this stretch (compared to 1.9 for the season) and three of his five powerplay points have come in this time ; more precisely, they have all come in just the past six game. I have seen McGinn go on runs like this at times before when he is given additional opportunities. His first 17 games with the Avs in 2011-12 comes to mind, when he scored 13 points while firing off over three shots per game. He had a similar stretch in Feb of last year as well with 9 points and a whopping 47 shots in just 12 games. McGinn has proven before that he has the ability to go on hot streaks and FHG shows that when he is streaking, he is a pretty valuable guy to own.

Jamie McGinn is a guy who is probably sitting out on your league's waiver wire right now just waiting to help your team make a final push.

The FHG data shows us how McGinn's value is really starting to spike now that he is being utilized more by the Avs, particularly on the man advantage. To cap it all off, McGinn has a favorable schedule coming up of home games on off nights, making him a perfect add to help propel your team at the most important time of the year.