Roos Lets Loose

This week's fantasy hockey cage match: Anisimov vs. Matthias.

Post-hype sleeper is a term you don’t hear often in fantasy hockey (it’s more of a fantasy baseball term) but I feel like it’s a term every poolie should get acquainted with regardless of his fantasy sport of choice. The reason is that the post-hype sleeper is quite possibly the best bang for your buck you can find. For instance, if you were patient or savvy enough to acquire any of Sam Gagner, Nazem Kadri or Jakub Voracek you’d have landed yourself a player far exceeding his projections and his draft slot if only because some of the shine had worn off because of exposure. These guys pop up every year though – after disappointing us for years they finally “get it” and produce. Joffrey Lupul and Blake Wheeler were two fine examples from last year and if you still aren’t convinced that the post-hype sleeper is a real thing well then I guess you can just keep on hitting the snooze button. This week’s Cage Match features two such post-hype sleepers, Artem Anisimov vs. Shawn Matthias.

At this point in the season, several players are still scoring at a pace that’s well above their career high in points. Of course the question is whether their current jump in production will continue down the road, or just amount to a blip in the radar once we get to next season and beyond. This is a big issue, since in some cases it could turn a fantasy unworthy player into someone you'd want to draft or pick up, or it could help convince you to take steps to acquire a player (through the draft or by trade) that might already be on your fantasy radar. With these things in mind, we'll look at four forwards who have seen a big increase in point production pace this season, and I’ll issue a “Final Verdict” on what point production you should expect from that player in the coming years.

Rick Roos looks at the five biggest mistakes you can make at the trade deadline...

What’s really interesting – but often overlooked - about the trade deadline is how it can cause even smart fantasy hockey GMs to make easily avoidable errors or to exercise poor judgment. Knowing this, I’ve put together a list of the five biggest mistakes to avoid making during and after the trade deadline.

This week's Cage Match investigates the fantasy value of... Parise vs. Ovechkin

Lists make for great internet reading. They are usually tightly structured and easy to follow. Bleacher Report has built and entire website around the concept of lists. My favourite lists have to be Jeff Angus’ annual Top 10’s. If you aren’t reading those then you are missing out. As much as I love reading lists, I hate writing them because it’s way too easy for dinks (like me) with a keyboard and a modem to read a list and start poking holes. For instance, in Angus’ Top 10 Left Wingers piece he ranked Zach Parise ahead of Alexander Ovechkin. My head nearly exploded.

Taking a look at players 30-plus who stand a good chance of hitting career highs in 2013-14

The column from last week (about players who are under 30 but have already peaked) got excellent feedback, so I figured why not also focus on the flip side – players who will be age 30 or older at the start of next season but still will be candidates to achieve a new career high in points in 2013-14.

Roos goes out on a limb - and gives you six young players who have already peaked

It’s never easy to convince yourself to “get out on top”, mostly because it’s almost impossible to know things have peaked until it’s too late. It happens in real life with dating, stocks, trips to the casino, and has even been used as a humorous plotline on TV. And of course it happens in fantasy hockey too, where one of the hardest things to do is realize when a player’s point production has truly peaked, never to be exceeded again. After all, were any of you smart enough to trade Brian Gionta or Jonathan Cheechoo after the 2005-06 season? Probably not, since when one of your players achieves a career high in points while still young (Gionta was 27 at the time, Cheechoo was 25), the natural tendency is to believe it’s only the beginning of even better things to come, when in truth it can often be the beginning……..of the end.

Rookie Tournament results - best fantasy value - Galchenyuk vs. Yakupov, Huberdeau vs. Tarasenko

So it’s here. The final matchup of the Cage Match Rookie Tournament is finally upon us. Only two remain. Are they the best rookies? That’s debatable but according to you as of right now they are. Only time will tell the rest as we push forward there is still another half of a half-season (which is normally a quarter but not this year) to be played so there is still time for these rookies to make an early impact and to change their narrative. Of course, for the purposes of this tournament time has run out for 14 competitors. Let’s see who remains:

Investigating the success rate of big players versus small, and whether "small, skilled" is trending

We’ve heard the old adage “you can’t teach size” to explain why teams from all pro sports are always eager to draft, trade for, or sign big/tall players. And one need only look back to the last lockout-shortened season of 1994-95 to remember all the hype surrounding Philly’s Legion of Doom line of Eric Lindros, John LeClair, and Mikael Renberg, who all finished in the top 10 in scoring and averaged 6-3’ and about 235 pounds. On the heels of that, every NHL team wanted their own giant forwards, and except for outliers like 5-6’ Theo Fleury the points scoring leaders also reflected this emphasis on size in the years that followed.

Yakupov, Galchenyuk, Huberdeau and Tarasenko move onto the semi-finals

The quarterfinals of the Cage Match Rookie Tournament were supposed to up the ante and bring some really tight matchups. It didn’t necessarily work out that way but it was nevertheless a huge success as reader voting has never been higher. You guys have opinions on this stuff and you want to make them heard so who am I to argue. Here are the blowout results:

Fifteen signs that your team is not going to win your league this year

Don’t look now, but the 2012-13 season is nearly half over. At this point some fantasy hockey teams are doing great and others terrible, but most probably are somewhere in the middle. But as painful as this might be to hear, many of those teams in the middle have little to no realistic chance to actually win their league.  What makes that situation even worse is when those GMs finally wake up and realize their inevitable fate, it’ll be too late to try to take steps (like trades) to help put their teams in a better position for next season or down the road.