April Flowers
This week I will follow the lead of my Western Conference counterpart and take a look back at the season that was.
Lucic vs. Burrows
Welcome to Cage Match, a new article series pitting the fantasy merits of players up against each other and seeing what shakes out. The first rule of Cage Match is you definitely do talk about Cage Match. Spread the word, I love the attention!
Devil of a Draft
The New Jersey Devils walked away the big winners at the 2011 NHL Draft lottery, moving from the eighth spot to fourth. How does this change the complexion of the Draft?
April Flowers (2011)
With the end of the regular season in sight, it's time to take a look back at how your Western Conference fantasy players have fared this season and hand out some April flowers.
2011 DobberHockey Playoff Challenge
The 2011 NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs are set to begin only a few short days from now, and what better way to celebrate than with the 2011 DobberHockey Playoff Challenge! The fine folks over at ArmChairPools are hosting the pool this spring, and it is completely free to enter! Playoff pools require quite a bit of luck (or intuition, whatever you may call it) to win compared to regular season pools, thanks to the fact that the success of the players you pick is heavily dependent on how long their teams stick around.
40 Wins to Freedom
With another season in the books, are you surprised to find that not a single goalie notched 40 wins? I’m not. More prospects took advantage of more opportunities, while many of the elite workhorses played less. In my opinion, this is a visible change in the workload paradigm that will continue to shift as the clock ticks towards your next fantasy draft.
DobberHockey’s Expert Panel – First Round
Here are the individual and averaged predicitions for the first round of the NHL playoffs from Dobber, Angus, Bugg, Ma, Miller, and more! The panel's consensus picks boast an impressive 42-18 record over the past four seasons! But, the panel was a very un-expert-like 8-7 last year, a dissapointing spring after posting a solid 12-3 record the year before. On to the picks...
(Join our free Playoff Challenge HERE and win a free jersey!)
Toffoli Tearing It Up
Tyler Toffoli not only led the OHL in scoring this season with 108 points in 68 games but he also scored more goals than any other player in the CHL with 57. Five of those came in the final week of the season (four in the season finale against the Sudbury Wolves), earning the Ottawa 67’s right winger CHL Player of the Week honours.
Saturday’s Picks – April 8th
After successfully picking all six winners in my last column, I’m on quite the roll hitting my picks at nearly a 70% clip over the past two months. Hopefully I can keep it rolling in the last full Saturday Evening slate of games for this 2010/2011 regular season. I hope you’ve enjoyed this weekly piece (and have been riding my hot streak since the last month). This weekend will surely play a role in helping you determine which players you will be targeting in your playoff drafts early next week.
2010-11 Prime Cuts: The Defensemen
The thinking process that goes in to selecting the Prime Cuts roster is similar to Pierre McGuire’s “Monsters” team on TSN (I promise that is the first and only time I will compare my thinking process to Pierre’s). Since this is a fantasy hockey site, the selection process favors players that have had strong seasons on the score sheet, obviously. However, not just goals and assists are weighted – perhaps a player has started to shoot the puck more, or play better defensively. Intangibles like heart, grit, and determination factor in to the selection process as well. It is far and away my favorite article to write each year, and I hope you will all enjoy reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it.
The first part of the series will focus on the six defensemen.