Rambling about that bum Chris Kunitz; a bold call on Crosby; giving up on projecting Mike Hoffman; more …

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So I’m stuck with Chris Kunitz, as are many of you. I had rather low hopes for him to begin with. I mean 43 points (as per my Guide) is pretty horrible. But I own him in two keeper leagues – full keepers – and obviously I can’t drop him. Couldn’t trade him in the summer. I put feelers out there. I didn’t want to shop him hard because I didn’t want to come off as desperate. So casually mentioning him here and there, slipping him into the odd counter offer. But nobody in either league was interested. Smart competition in those leagues. So my hope was for him to get five points in his first four games or something nice like that – and then shop him hard.

So much for that plan. Five points in four games? How about five points in 25 games! Can you do that maybe, Chris?

In all seriousness you won’t see him finish at his current pace of 12 points. But a Dustin Brown-like sudden decline in production is obviously happening here. Which to me means around 27 or 28 points. He’ll get going when Crosby gets going.

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Speaking of Sidney Crosby, I will stick my neck out and say this and hopefully it will reassure you. Next summer you will be able to look back on this season and find a 40-game snapshot in which Crosby gets at least 45 points. The only caveat being his health.

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Forbes came up with their valuations for each NHL team and ranked them.

The Top 4:

NYR $1.20 B

MTL $1.18 B

TOR $1.15 B

CHI $0.93 B

The Bottom 4:

FLA $190 million

ARI $220 million

CAR $230 million

CBJ $230 million

Best value, if I were a billionaire – Tampa Bay Lightning, with a valuation of $260 million. I could really do well promoting a team like that.

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On an unrelated note, anyone want to buy DobberHockey for a billion dollars?

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The Sharks signed Dainius Zubrus to a two-way contract. What a steal. I don’t think highly of him these days, but the bottom line is that he was signed to be a depth guy. A spare part, and a versatile one at that. He can play on any of the bottom three lines at any forward position. Or he can sit in the press box without complaint, because he was pretty much doing that anyway. Or he can go to the minors. Not an earth-shattering move by the Sharks, but a nice little sly one that could make the difference in a game or two this season. Zubrus is 37 and his career high was 57 points a decade ago with Washington.

On a side note, I’m old. He’s 37 …yet I was still in my keeper league back when he was 18 and the “youngest player in the NHL”.

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 And speaking of young players in the NHL, Nikolay Goldobin is no longer one of them. Because of this signing, Goldobin was returned to the AHL.

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Here is an update on Tyler Johnson and Jonathan Drouin. Looks like Johnson is close. I’d expect him back next game. Drouin may be several games away yet.

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James Reimer left practice yesterday with an injury. The team and Reimer are playing down the injury, but his start this weekend is questionable. This happens to Reimer all the time – whenever he’s on fire, he suffers an injury. Then the other goaltender – from Jonas Gustavsson through Jonathan Bernier – comes in and gets hot. By the time Riemer returns from injury, he has trouble getting starts and when he does, he is out of his rhythm.  If he is indeed hurt, I can see Bernier getting his mojo back.

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So Reimer is hurt (possibly). And Kari Lehtonen is hurt too. Lehtonen got into last night’s game after 20 minutes when Antti Niemi got the hook. But after facing three shots, Lehtonen was hurt. Here is the clip. They talk a lot about his head and neck, but at first I wondered about his left knee – that one angle showed it twisting weird. But he walked to the dressing room fine, so it’s pretty clear that it’s a possible concussion:

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And to conclude the little section on goalies missing games – Frederik Andersen missed last night’s game with an illness that also cost him Saturday’s game. So Anton Khudobin was in and got the hook, and guess who made his season debut? Just like that – John Gibson is in the house! Gibson stopped 19 of 20. And suddenly, I think the Ducks will get that goaltending controversy that they thought they avoided when they acquired Khudobin and planned on keeping Gibson in the AHL for the full year. If Gibson keeps winning games, how can coach Bruce Boudreau deny him? The playoffs are a huge question mark for them, given the hold the team buried themselves in to start.

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Alright, back to goaltenders. This is the reason why I put so much emphasis on satisfying my goaltending. If it’s a Keep 12 league, I’ll make sure I keep two goalies and I’m perfectly fine keeping three of them (like I did last summer). Because it’s so unstable. In another league I have Halak and Anderson as my main guys, but I was very uncomfortable with Elliott as my No.3 and even with Stalock as my No.4 I didn’t like the situation. So I draft Talbot early. And looking at my five goalies you can see my problem. Every time I turn on a game with one of my goaltenders playing in it – I can tell you which goalie is in net.

The Blues have a shutout in the third? That means Allen is in net.

Oilers are down 5-1 in the second? Could only be Talbot in net.

Sharks up 1-0 with a minute left? Jones is in net.

Islanders losing 5-4 in the final frame? Halak.

I don’t even have hope anymore when it comes to those five teams. Whatever good thing can happen, will happen to the other goalie. Whatever bad thing can happen, happens to my guy. You can set your watch to it. In that particular league, it’s going to be a long season…

Anyway, this story is a preamble to last night’s games. I flipped on the Ottawa game a few minutes into the third and…thank goodness. Anderson has allowed just the one goal. After watching for 15 minutes, that “one goal” quickly changed to “four goals”.

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Thanks to that empty-netter, Mike Hoffman had his third two-point game in four contests. He now has 18 points in 17 games. I was shocked last year when he put up the offense that he did – and I’m more shocked this year. Every couple of years there always seems to be that one guy who I think won’t translate his offense from other levels to the NHL – and then he does. Hoffman is that guy. And if both he and Mark Stone stay healthy, then Stone will drag his points upward to a level he wouldn’t otherwise reach. I still consider Hoffman a high-50s player, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he topped 70.

I wanted to get into specific numbers with Hoffman and Stone, but just when I got to this point in my writeup – my Internet went down. Thirty minutes on the phone with my provider…not looking good…

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With three points last night, Jamie Benn is back atop the scoring race (tied) with Patrick Kane…

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Now I’m looking at the box scores on my phone so I can go through the Anaheim/Calgary game, type it on my computer, save it on a flash drive so I can take it to my in-law's house in the morning to post…

This outage happened just when I was getting to the big news of the night – the awakening of Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry. Five assists for Getzlaf, three points for Perry. The fact that this surge of success took place with Rickard Rakell on their line is no small detail. Rakell will obviously get more time on that line and is a huge short-term buy if he’s still on your waiver wire.

Sami Vatanen has eight points in his last eight games. He had three in 14 before that. How cheap could you have acquired him two weeks ago? Window – closed.

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Alright – Internet is back up! I can get into Hoffman and Stone after all. That’s the good news. The bad news is I was just about to hit the sack, we’re closing in on 2am here so I’ll be brief…

Hoffman has yet to go two consecutive games without a point this year. Fourteen of his 18 points have come with Stone on the ice, so indeed his production ties in with Stone. On the second line without Stone, he’s good for what I figured – somewhere in the 50s. On the third line he’d be low-40s. But playing with Stone, Hoffman is the second coming.

Can you tell I think highly of Stone? Well, he has 72 points in his last 74 games. Officially a proven point-per-game guy…

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In Dobbernomics I moved up to 13^th worldwide and got my team value up to $52.50M. Yes, not many are playing but while this game is in Beta mode I’m trying to see how high I can boost team value. Whoever can boost their team value up the most by Christmas I’ll give you $50. Interested? You can create a team now. Buy and sell your players to help move the ‘stock’ market, and get your portfolio up there. If the top team can get to $58 million by Christmas I’ll make it $100!