Roos Lets Loose

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.

Granlund vs. Galchenyuk, Huberdeau vs. Conacher - and more in the Cage Match Rookie Tournament

It is now Week 3 of the Cage Match Rookie Tournament and we are already off to the second round. Things are moving fast up in here! Week Two brought a lot more excitement to the table than Week One, likely because the Ovechkin Bracket was the deeper of the two brackets. Let’s see what went down.

Taking a look at Face-off Win % and Power-Play Points

In last week’s column I highlighted the “Category Killers” (players who drag your team down by doing major damage in at least one category) for Hits and Blocked Shots.  This week I shift to two other secondary categories – faceoff percentage and power play points – where it is just as hard (if not harder) to notice the effects of a category killer but where the effects can be just as bad (if not worse) to your team.  Once again I examine the full season results from 2011-12, and then see if any of the players are on pace for improvement based on their 2012-13 numbers so far.

Welcome to Week Two of the Cage Match Rookie Tournament. Week One saw the opening round matchups in the Selanne Bracket. Why the Selanne Bracket you might ask? That’s why. There were few surprises in Week One, as all of the top seeds made it through to the next round. Here’s how they got there.

Category Killers - Part 1 (Hits and Blocked Shots)

If you read my Frustration Meter column from last week, one of the types of frustrating players I highlighted was the Category Killer, which is someone who drags your team down by doing major damage in at least one category. Sometimes it’s easy to tell when you have a category killer, like if he’s doing poorly in something major like goals, assists, or a widely reported category like plus/minus. But most leagues nowadays count one or more secondary categories, where it might be harder to actually notice the effects of a category killer.

Steve Laidlaw takes a look at the NHL's best rookies.

During the lockout I’d hatched this fantastic scheme – if the season were to be cancelled I would put together the first ever Cage Match Prospects Tournament. There were a ton of fantastic prospects tearing apart their respective leagues. Following a strong 2012 draft class as well as several of the best international prospects having waited a few years before coming to North America there was an absolute glut of talent waiting to break into the league. That tournament would have been bananas but instead we have to suffer through this shortened NHL season and one of the best rookie classes in memory. Thanks a lot, Bettman.

So in lieu of the first ever Cage Match Prospects Tournament and in celebration of this fantastic rookie class we shall instead have the first ever Cage Match Rookie Tournament. For simplicity’s sake and because of my bias towards defensemen (I really hate those fickle bastards) the field has been limited to just forwards. Now before you go and cry yourself to sleep in your Justin Schultz jersey I have to acknowledge that Schultz is my personal favourite to win the Calder this year, which is all the more reason to lock him out of the cage – that’s right, another lockout, suck it defensemen.