Thoughts on Kirill Petrov; Bishop vs. Crawford; Isles goalie of the future; Jeff Petry and more…

***

Wow – another year has passed. And so, for the ninth consecutive year, I have released the Fantasy Prospects Report. The release was Monday, but I already gave it an update.

Yesterday’s update consisted of fixing a few minor errors (the wrong arrow in front of some player names, etc.). But I also did three new profiles, bringing the total to 489 prospects profiled. Kirill Petrov (NYI), Maxim Letunov (ARI) and Eetu Laurikainen (EDM). I also moved two of the profiled players into a new UFA section because their teams did not re-sign them and they go back into the draft – Brendan Burke and Chris Clapperton.

*

Usually when I do these documents, I walk away having learned a lot. And then I ramble about a couple of my bigger revelations. Last year I went on and on about Anthony Duclair and Chris Tierney, and to a lesser extent Tristan Jarry. Duclair and Tierney helped more than one fantasy owner – hell, I took Duclair myself and cashed him in as part of a nice little trade package. This year the goalie who caught my interest was Stephon Williams. I ranked him 11th in my Top 25 goalies there (fewer than five NHL games played). But I really like his outlook – as well as his team. And that’s important. Team. Both talent and depth chart. The Islanders are still on the rise and seem to have the depth to sustain it for a good decade. Jaroslav Halak is only there for another three years. So four years from now – well, that’s about the time a guy like Williams gets ready to make the jump. And he’d be, ideally, ready to be backup the season prior.