The Wild West

Following the footsteps of my Eastern Conference counterpart, here’s a list of some of these Western Conference under-achieving veterans from last season. Many of them were simply injured and could be seriously undervalued heading into your draft this year.

Let’s revisit the end of the 2004 campaign, which was the year before the lock-out. The Blackhawks, Capitals, and Penguins finished the year ranked 28th, 29th and 30th respectively. The Blue Jackets finished 27th followed by the Coyotes at 26th, so to make things a bit easier let’s just say they were essentially in the same boat four seasons ago. Following that campaign and a few subsequent years, the Capitals revamped with Alex Ovechkin and Niklas Backstrom. The Penguins revamped with Evgeni Malkin, Sidney Crosby, and Jordan Staal. The Blackhawks followed a similar path and picked up a few studs in Cam Barker, Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane. The Blue Jackets added Derrick Brassard and Jakub Voracek, while the Coyotes haven’t been too bad as they followed suit by drafting a few doozies in Kyle Turris, Mikkel Boedker, and Peter Mueller. So the main question on my mind is - why has Washington, Chicago, Pittsburgh and  Columbus essentially improved themselves into Stanley Cup contending/winning franchises, while Phoenix is still floundering?

It boils down to optimal playing time. A top-line player will get the best of everything, while a top-six player will receive decent even strength/second unit power-play ice-time. A bottom feeder will most likely receive checking line ice-time and less optimal scoring ice-time, which will hamper their scoring ability during the season. Their big break will only come if there are injuries or big sophomore slumps from their team’s top-six. There really isn’t a sense in projection 80 points for a player who isn’t even on a team’s top-line let alone top-six.

Note: Take the line combos with a grain of salt. They are just arbitrary and are used primarily to separate a team’s top-six from the bottom-six. I really don’t want to get into arguments about how Bobby Ryan is going to line up alongside Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry instead of Joffrey Lupul.

It boils down to optimal playing time. A top-line player will get the best of everything, while a top-six player will receive decent even strength/second unit power-play ice-time. A bottom feeder will most likely receive checking line ice-time and thus less optimal ice-time, which will hamper their scoring ability during the season. Their big break will only come if there are injuries or big slumps from their team’s top-six.

What it boils down to is optimal playing time. A top-line player will get the best of everything, while a top-six player will receive decent even strength/second unit power-play ice-time. A bottom feeder will most likely receive checking line ice-time and less optimal scoring ice-time, which will hamper their scoring ability during the season. Their big break will only come if there are injuries or big sophomore slumps from their team’s top-six. There really isn’t a sense in projection 80 points for a player who isn’t even on a team’s top-line let alone top-six. Note: Take the line combos with a grain of salt. They are just arbitrary and are used primarily to separate a team’s top-six from the bottom-six. I really don’t want to get into arguments about how Bobby Ryan is going to line up alongside Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry instead of Joffrey Lupul. Anyways, onto the good stuff.

The Stanley Cup Final is over, so I guess it’s time to finish off the final part of this series. We’ll do a quick assessment of the Red Wing players with fantasy significance and take a look at what could be in store for them next season following their valiant loss to the Penguins in Game Seven of the Stanley Cup Final.   

A couple of weeks ago in my Projections column, I mentioned something which was commonly known as the “magical fourth year”. This week I plan on de-bunking or confirming the myth with stats to see if there really is such a thing as the “magical fourth year”.

Last year I wrote a column regarding seven dreams that I had prior to this past season, I hit exactly ZERO of them... so why not do the same thing and hopefully come up with a better hit ratio this time around? Dobber and I had a great side bet last year that if Jaromir Jagr were to sign with the Caps he’d rename Dobberhockey to Mahockey. I’ll throw down the gauntlet once again to make Dobber shake in his pants a little.

The Stanley Cup Final is well underway as it appears that the Red Wings are looking like they will repeat as Stanley Cup champions once again. We still have some unfinished business to take care of, so we’ll do a quick assessment of the Blackhawk players with fantasy significance and take a look at what could be in store for them next season.