Nick Bjugstad

Geek of the Week with a break down of Nick Bjugstad’s hidden value.

There is no question that draft time is the most important time of year to use tools like Fantasy Hockey Geek to help gauge players' values and rankings in your league(s). In mid-season though, it is also important to stay on top of the trends, see who is hot and who is not and who could be potentially breaking out. GMs who don't actively manage post-draft get left in the dust by those of us who do and are able to find hidden value for our mid-late season push. Today I look at one such player: Nick Bjugstad.

Bjugstad is one of many bright prospects in the Panthers' organization who has always had great fantasy potential (In the guide, Dobber sites Bjugstad's career upside at 85 points). Coming into this season it was hard to tell who would be getting the minutes for the Panthers and which of their young players might be ready to take the next step so when Bjugstad busted out of the gate with a whopping ONE point in his first ten games, it would have been easy for most fantasy GMs to write him off for another season. Since then though, he has quietly amassed 18 points in 20 games.

So how did I stumble across this number? There are so many players in the league and so many games every night and it's not like I am tuning into Panthers' broadcasts on a regular basis. How can you possibly keep up with all of these players on teams you may not see to ensure you don't miss out on a player like Bjugstad whose slow start might be masking a breakout season? The answer for me is easy: Fantasy Hockey Geek.

One of the things I do on a weekly basis is run my league rankings in FHG for only the past month's games. Doing so yesterday showed me the following results:

Rank	Player	G	A	+/-	SOG	PPP	HITS
52	Nick Bjugstad	8	3	0	36	2	30
53	Evander Kane	4	4	0	35	4	41
54	Jonathan Toews	5	7	6	29	4	7

I saw Bjugstad's name up there in the 50s amongst a couple of other fantasy studs and I knew right away that I had to look further. When I opened up his game log I noticed the cold start I pointed out above and then I really started to get excited because it was looking like a real opportunity. Before I get too carried away though, I always do a little gut-check to see whether his amped up production is sustainable:

First, I looked back to the guide and I see that Dobber had Bjugstad as a sleeper for 55 points and that's pretty much the exact pace that he has been on over the past four weeks. Great – the production passes the Dobb-test.