The Fantasy Hockey Geek of the Week is back!

Note from Paul, AKA FHG:

I’d like to publicly thank Terry Campkin for the years of awesome work he put into the Geek of the Week column.  He consistently did an incredible job of highlighting how the numbers and the real value of players don’t always agree with the narratives around a player.  Thanks, T!

It’s finally time for fantasy hockey to start up again! Well, almost…but it’s never too early to start preparing for the season. We’re now less than a month away from opening day and the diligent fantasy hockey poolies should be assembling their draft strategies and formulating their plans. An important part of a poolie’s arsenal is targeting underrated players who will provide great value relative to their draft position. Over the coming weeks, I’ll be identifying these kinds of players and much more. This week, I’ve decided to take an in-depth look at Dougie Hamilton.

Billed as an all-situations, heavy-minute logging defender when he was drafted, Hamilton has shown quite a bit of offensive upside. Ever since entering the league in the 2012-13 season, Hamilton has scored at least at a .38 point-per-game pace every season. Tallying a career-high 43 points last year, you’d think there would be much more talk about the 23-year-old Calgary defender. However, rated only 110^th overall by Yahoo, Hamilton appears to be flying under the radar.

One reason for this may be the fact that even though Hamilton has produced at a great rate, he hasn’t got into a lot of games over his career so far. Only having played four seasons in the NHL, two of those were also significantly below 82 games. In his first season, Hamilton scored at a .38 point-per-game pace, 31 points over a full season. Good numbers for a 19-year-old defender, but having only recorded 16 total points (in 42 games) may have led to a much less appealing season at first glance. And a similar thing happened in the following year, where Hamilton slightly improved on his numbers but managed to only get into 64 games.

But even with his first two seasons having less games played, poolies definitely started taking notice of Hamilton in his third season with the Bruins. After taking on more responsibility for the team and registering 42 points in 72 games, Hamilton looked like he could become a consistent 50-point defenseman. And that’s one of the other main reasons why Hamilton might be underrated this year. After such a stellar year in Boston, Hamilton was traded to the Calgary Flames. Even though he still tallied 43 points in his first full year, poolies only saw a decline in production and less opportunity now that he was stuck behind T.J. Brodie and Mark Giordano. And not to mention there is still the memory of Hamilton’s horrendous start, which saw him score only five points in his first 24 games.

Their loss may be your gain though, considering Hamilton should provide lots of underrated value this season. Using the Fantasy Hockey Geek tools, we can see what Hamilton’s projected value will be next season (using Dobber’s projections and an average 12 team Yahoo! H2H league measuring G, A, PPP, SOG, Hits, W, SV%, GAA, SO).
 

In a standard Yahoo fantasy league, defensemen are usually rated very high, but Hamilton provides the 22^nd most fantasy value out of all skaters. Just behind Shea Weber and John Carlson, Hamilton is actually projected to do better than even Johnny Gaudreau! Not to mention he easily outpaces Shayne Gostisbehere, the Flyers’ rookie sensation that took the league by storm last year.

But what really sets Hamilton apart is his value in comparison to his Yahoo rank. Even though he’s projected to do very well, Yahoo has him ranked only at 110. Shea Weber and John Carlson are projected to about equal his value yet are ranked over 50 spots ahead of him. Instead of drafting a guy like Carlson or Weber, you can wait a few more rounds and get about the same value in Hamilton. To see how Hamilton measures up in your league, head over to FHG and run the numbers specific to your league.

Take Dobber's Draft List to another level with the Fantasy Hockey Geek draft kit!