The Dobotomy

(Note - this article is six days old, originally published by The Hockey News)

If you do the fantasy hockey thing long enough, you learn to pick up streaky players when they start to light it up. You’re not going to have a player get you a point each game, but the good ones are generally consistent.

Far and away the Carolina Hurricanes have more goals per game this season than any other NHL squad.

There’s a line that would have had you laughing in September, especially when looking at the talent on the rosters of the Penguins, Sabres, Senators, or the newly revamped Rangers. After all, this is a team that finished 13th in total offense one season ago and the only change they have made to their roster was to bring back Matt Cullen and to add Jeff Hamilton.

Perhaps that was enough. Whatever the reason, if you take a look at the top several teams in your fantasy league right now, you will notice that those squads have the likes of Rod Brind’Amour, Cory Stillman, Eric Staal, Justin Williams and Cullen on them.

Eight games into the season and panicked fantasy owners had a lot of questions regarding Nashville. Alexander Radulov had one goal and four points. Is this the dreaded sophomore slump? Is he a bust?

Chris Mason, after two stellar contests to start the year, suddenly couldn’t win to save his life. Were the Preds wrong in putting their faith in him? Would Dan Ellis become the new goalie?

Everyone’s calm now - Nashville has gone 8-2-1 since then. Radulov has 11 points in 11 games, while Mason has started six straight contests and has not lost in regulation in that span. But wasn’t in funny how crazy fantasy owners were for a couple of weeks?

 

Nothing exemplifies the stock-marketesque up-and-down value of fantasy players more than missing 10 days of hockey almost completely and then throwing yourself back into it full throttle. Despite such a small window, players can bounce from rock bottom in value back to the top – and vice versa.

After missing nearly all things hockey while on vacation, I am finally able to delve back in. I notice some people who were diving off of certain sinking ships are now scrambling to get back on, while some flashes in the pan are suddenly not looking quite so inviting.

Here are some of the bigger changes in value, both good and bad, from October 31 to today…

Ten games into the season and the Penguins are averaging three goals per game. That’s one goal per game less than where they should be, given their talent level.

Think about it. With 10 more goals this season, there would be 25 more points - give or take - to go around. Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin would likely have a few more points each, but the main beneficiaries would be the secondary offense. The fact players such as Ryan Malone, Colby Armstrong, Jordan Staal and Erik Christensen have yet to record their fourth point of the season is the very reason Pittsburgh has 10 less goals than they should.

Having a website dedicated to fantasy hockey that has grown to be quite large over the past year - well, that certainly has it's benefits. 

NHL.com has decided - allegedly under the instruction of the NHL's Board of Governors - to remove their shift charts that were very helpful to poolies, and replace them with TOI charts, which lists the shift length and times, but requires tedious analysis to find out who played with whom. I started an email campaign to get them back, but to no avail. After all, bringing back the shift charts would be fan friendly - and the NHL can't have stuff like that...

Thanks to the resourceful people in the DobberHockey Forum , we have found a source for these charts once again. In fact, it's better than last year.

Everyone believes it is coming. It just hasn’t happened yet.

Jeff Carter was one of the premier prospects in the game and when he made the NHL at age 20 he showed enough flashes of brilliance to convince most pundits that somewhere inside that 6-foot-3, 200-pound frame was a star in the making.