With 2 weeks of the season having been completed (since the opening in London anyway), most fantasy leagues have been thrown for a complete loop.
Of the top 10 pre-ranked players in standard Yahoo leagues, only Dany Heatley is pulling his weight. Sidney Crosby has only 2 assists and is a -2 through 3 games, while Joe Thornton, Jarome Iginla, and Evgeni Malkin are off to similarly rough starts.
If you opted to go for goalies early, your returns aren't much better. Roberto Luongo is sporting a hefty 3.56 GAA and a less than awe-inspiring .883 SVP. Martin Brodeur is still searching for his first win, and Miikka Kiprusoff is struggling at the beginning of the Mike Keenan regime in Calgary. Nicklas Backstrom (3 wins, 0.67 GAA, .971 SVP, 2 SO) is the only of the top tier goalies pulling his weight.
Having said that, it's still early in the season and most of the players will get things going over the next few weeks. I think that, if nothing else, it proves that you need to be a little bit lucky in fantasy hockey, despite what a commenter on my initial post claims.
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I received a couple of questions in my inbox since the opening season, and I've answered most directly. One, however, grabbed my interest and earned some thought and investigation.
Unknown reader writes:
My league rewards both penalty minutes and majors. That being said, Ryan Clowe and Ben Eager would do well on my roster. However, I don't know if I should drop any of my wings for one or both just yet. My wings are: Iginla, Smyth, Cheechoo, Dumont, Stafford, Shanahan.
Well, unknown reader, you're right that both of those players would do well on a fantasy roster with that scoring scheme.
Eager, however, doesn't play a whole lot for the Flyers. From what I've seen, his picking up 4th line ice-time, averaging only 6:35 of playing time per game. Clowe, meanwhile, has rotated through positions on the 2nd and 3rd lines in San Jose, and is playing 13:11 per game, on average.
Given equal ice-time, Eager is more likely to wrack huge PIM totals (with a decent sprinkling of majors). However, with the aforementioned disparity in ice-time, Clowe is the better bet. He comes with the added bonus of being a potential offensive contributor for your team, as well as playing on what should be a superior Sharks team.
As for who to drop, Stafford would the most likely candidate. He's gotten off to a slower start offensively than some (myself included) had predicted, and has seemed to be pressing at times. That said, he is getting opportunities to score, and, most interesting of all, has more PIM's at this point than either Clowe or Eager. Those can be attributed to a fighting major picked up in a scrap against Ilya Kovalchuk.
Neither Eagler nor Clowe has a fighting major to this point.
I think the days of picking up guys simply for their propensity for fisticuffs are gone, as fighting majors are on the decline again in the NHL. What we're seeing now are more fights that break out as a result of legitimate anger/game situations, and less of the pre-meditated goon-on-goon variety.
Best of luck!
As usual, question, comments, and photos of your pet squirrels to
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