FHG digs deep on the early season fantasy darlings on Long Island

The NHL season is going full tilt and there is some great hockey being played, some of the best of which is happening on Long Island. The Islanders have been primed for a breakout for a few years now and it looks like it may finally be happening. Not only are the Isles ascending in the standings, but they are also are becoming a great source for fantasy assets and they have already brought two players from fantasy obscurity to fantasy relevance in very short order. As a fantasy GM in the early season, determining which breakout players are the real deal and which are just a flash in the pan can be the difference between winning and losing your league. There are always those players who jump out to a hot start and then fizzle out after we have all rushed to get them on our team, but there are also those players who show us something early on and are able to sustain value for the whole season. Determining which is which can be very tough. Today, I use Fantasy Hockey Geek to help put a long term value on the Islanders' early season breakouts Brock Nelson and Johnny Boychuk. Spoiler alert: one of these guys is for real and one is going to disappoint fantasy GMs this year. So which one is the bust? Is Brock a "Half" Nelson or is Johnny a "Fallout" Boy?

Here is how Boychuk and Nelson look when I run the FHG numbers for the season to date (as of Oct 17th) in my keeper league (12 team Yahoo! league measuring: G, A, +/-, PPP, SHP, SOG, Hits)

It's probably not a surprise to find both Boychuk and Nelson are providing top 20 value in this league so far but what may be surprising is that Boychuk is calculated as the #1 most valuable player thus far.

Without reading this article or opening FHG, we all know that Nelson and Boychuk are providing great value this season and we also all know that it won't keep up at this rate. So these two are going to be better than we originally thought but not as good as they have been through four games – so where exactly will their value lie? Being able to understand the true value of players like this before the rest of your league is what is going to allow you to take advantage and make the right moves early on. So let's take a deeper look inside each player to see what we have here:

Brock Nelson

With seven points in four games, Nelson has started out gangbusters and is probably the most added player in every league in the early going. I see some red flags with him though:

SOG: The main problem with Nelson is his shots on goal. With only five shots in four games, Nelson is on pace for just over 100 shots in an 82 game season which is a putrid pace. Even if Nelson keeps up his torrid scoring pace (he won't), his low SOG total will continue to drag his value lower than other players with lower production but higher shot totals. Chris Kunitz, for example only has four points in the early season but his FHG value is already 8 positions better than Nelson. Nelson has only exceeded one SOG in one game this season.

Shooting %: This issue is even bigger. As of Friday morning, Nelson is converting 80% of his shots into goals (4/5) which is obviously not going to keep up. A league average shooting % is somewhere around 10% and even the best players in the luckiest seasons rarely approach 20%. Put simply, Nelson has been pretty fortunate so far this year and he should likely have one goal right now instead of four. If his shot totals remain low and his shooting % trends back to a league average, his scoring will dry up quickly.

Situation: Nelson has amassed his impressive output while being given all of the opportunities in the world to excel on the Island. He is a mainstay on the second line and being given top PP time along-side John Tavares. While I have no reason to believe that this will change, the risk is that there is only one way for his situation to go and that's down. The Islanders have a plethora of talent that they could truck out onto that top PP if Nelson goes cold and if that happens then Nelson's value will fall off the map. His output is far too reliant on other players and other factors such as PP time.

Based on the factors above, I think that the best case scenario for Nelson the rest of the way is to play at a 40-45 point, 120 shot pace. Given that he has already banked some good production, I personally see Nelson's full season upside as this:

Below, we will put my projections through FHG to see what it would mean for Nelson's value, but first let's take a deeper dive on Johnny Boychuk

Johnny Boychuk:

Similar to Nelson, Johnny Boychuk has burst onto the scene with the Islanders with some massive production that has been propelled by his performance on the Islanders top powerplay. Boychuk has a few things going for him that make his value greater than Nelson's already: