Eastern Edge

Being only one week away from the trade deadline, it’s easy to get antsy about speculating which players might find themselves in a new home and what the residual fantasy value will be. Ryan Ma has put together a nice recap of Western Conference players and below we will take a look at players who may be on the move in the East.

It’s no surprise that the Tampa Bay Lightning are strong second half performers, as a team. More specifically, Martin St. Louis and Steven Stamkos, who are usually paired together, really pave the way for significant fantasy outputs. This year there’s something a little different going on in Tampa though. Sure, the team is poised for another strong late season push, but this time St. Louis and Stamkos are split apart. Let’s take a look at the net result.

A Potent Threat – Mikhail Grabovski - A season ago, NHL fans were introduced to the lethal synergistic line combination of Mikhail Grabovski, Clarke MacArthur, and Nikolai Kulemin. While expectations were high in 2011-12, Joffrey Lupul and Phil Kessel began to steal the spotlight. After a rocky first half of the season, the secondary scoring in Toronto is once again flourishing, thanks largely in part to the efforts of a pending unrestricted free agent – Mikhail Grabovski.

With the buzz of the NHL All Star game wearing off, we enter the final stretch of our fantasy hockey seasons. Since themost talented players in the game were just showcased, I’ll stick with that theme and take a closer look at some of thehottest scorers since December 25.

By this point in the season, fantasy GM’s should be focused on the playoffs. If you’re in contention, you want to make sure you’re building a team that has the best possible chance to win. To do so, it’s important to not just look to get the “best” players, but really focus on your weakest statistics. Last week we took a look at some goal scorers who might be helpful additions, and this week we’ll look at some assist-heavy performers.

Let’s say you want some goal scoring infused into your lineup. One quick look at the top leaders in the Eastern Conference and you’ll see some of the usual suspects – Stamkos, Kessel, Gaborik, etc. Simply looking at standard goal totals might not actually help your squad though. Each year players get hot, cold, go on long stretches of strong or poor performance, or perform differently based on the situations around them. This week I’ll take a deeper look at goal scorers in the Eastern Conference and I’ll follow up with the same analysis in terms of playmakers next week.

Just a few short years ago, Kyle Turris was ranked as the top North American skater heading into the 2007 NHL draft. Taken third overall, Turris was still perceived to be a bit of a project, but one who would ultimately pay hefty dividends. Fast forward to today and it’s safe to say that Turris has had a rough start to his professional career.

Greetings from Philadelphia! It was just two days ago that we saw legends from both the Philadelphia Flyers and the New York Rangers take the ice. Eric Lindros was welcomed back to Philadelphia with style skating with Bobby Clarke, and Bernie Parent received a standing ovation for his five-minute performance. Mark Messier and Brian Leetch reminded us how talented they are, and  Glenn Anderson scored the lone goal for the blue shirts.

Last week I wrote about how the NHL realignment will affect the Eastern Conferences goalies and it is important to note that the realignment will affect some teams much more than others. For example, the existing Atlantic Division teams currently play the other four members 24 times throughout the year, which will not change. Washington and Carolina however, will now face three of the Southeastern Division teams (WPG, FLA, TB) only six times a year instead of the 18 they are accustomed to. In contrast, they previously faced the five teams that make up the Atlantic Division a total of 20 times, but will now face them 30 times. This translates to a more mild transition for someone like Claude Giroux than Eric Staal.