Every Sunday this season, we’ll share 20 Fantasy Thoughts from the writers at Dobber Hockey. These thoughts are curated from the past week’s “Daily Ramblings” on DobberHockey.com.
1. Tomas Plekanec has been an absolute dud and I don’t see him turning it around. Plekanec used to be a top power-play option but he has ceded those duties to Alex Galchenyuk. He is down almost a minute and a half of ice time from last season and most of that lost ice time has come on the PP. Plekanec will frequently see zero power play time over the course of a game.
Plekanec probably still has the skills but he doesn’t have the role, and at 34, he doesn’t have the skills to overcome a bad role. He is still relevant in certain deeper formats but I wouldn’t be expecting more than 40 points out of him at this point.
2. What if I told you that Mitchell Marner, who is a few months older than Auston Matthews, could be the stronger Calder Trophy candidate at season’s end? This is nothing against Matthews but Marner has stood out in the Leafs games I’ve watched. I think Marner is an elite player in the making, even though he doesn’t receive as much attention from the Toronto hype train as does Matthews.
3. I wouldn’t be using Jesse Puljujarvi beyond daily fantasy. As good as he has looked, everyone looks good with Connor McDavid but no one sticks. Jordan Eberle and Milan Lucic are going to see the most looks with him, think 60-70 per cent of the games. Everyone else gets cameos here and there but nothing to rest your cap on. Maybe in a couple of years, Puljujarvi will get a shot but I think that Eberle is so one-dimensional as a scorer, he is always going to keep getting looks with McDavid to help spark the goal scoring.
4. Jaden Schwartz has regularly been injured throughout his brief career but his 0.84 points per game since 2013-14 places him in the company of Nikita Kucherov and Filip Forsberg over that same stretch. If he can stay healthy for an entire season, that’s 70-point potential.
5. Regarding Chad Johnson: some folks thought that I wasn’t giving him enough credit. Maybe not. Johnson has been solid as a backup throughout his career. But Brian Elliott has been solid as a starter throughout his career and the Flames stink. To think that Johnson’s going to overcome those obstacles to start 50-55 games while giving you fantasy relevant numbers would be heading into the dominion of the unicorn. I can’t ignore the possibility of its existence but I don’t actively believe in it either.
6. Michael Cammalleri has been been arguably the league’s hottest player over the past five games. He scored two goals on Saturday which gave him seven goals and four assists over that stretch. There’s a good chance that he was dropped in your league back in October or early November, as he failed to score a goal in his first 10 games. Things have averaged out for Cammalleri, who sits at a relatively normal (for him) 15.6 shooting percentage. Another 25-goal season is well within reach.
7. Some Nathan MacKinnon owners are worried that he’s never going to break through but we seem to forget that he just turned 21. He’s going to be just fine.
8. Bo Horvat demands your attention. Not only is he on a four-game point streak but he also leads the Canucks in both goals (7) and points (15). I know – not saying much. But he’s on pace for 55 points. If you don’t think he can do it, consider that he’s been scoring at that rate for the entire calendar year of 2016 (45 points in 66 games since January 1).
9. With another goal on Saturday, Rickard Rakell is already up to eight goals in just 13 games. That includes four goals in his past five games. So although his season didn’t start on time, he could be on the verge of that breakout some of us predicted. Getting on that top line with Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry has been key.
10. Artturi Lehkonen was back in the lineup for the Habs Saturday, playing on a line with Andrew Shaw and David Desharnais. With the Canadiens still rolling, the rookie probably won’t be back in the top-six in the near future like he was early in the season, especially with Alexander Radulov and Galchenyuk scoring at the pace they are. And yes, the Russian and the Belarusian-American are for real.
11. Shayne Gostisbehere scored on Friday. He had gone five games without a point and you can toss in a healthy scratch to boot. Some growing pains for the 23-year-old. Between the slump and the emergence of Ivan Provorov, Ghost owners have been panicking. But if that post he hit in the seventh game of the season went in and that brilliant setup on the power play in game 12 was tapped into the net instead of wide, then his current pace would about match what he was doing last year. That’s the impact that two points has when you’re just 20 games into the season. Two points too few, and you’re in a sophomore slump and have fantasy owners panicking. Two points too many and you’re on your way to a massive breakout.
There’s no question that Gostisbehere will be a frequent visitor to the 50-point mark. His upside is tremendous – one of the rare defencemen who can reach 70 points. But this year? I’m torn. A sophomore slump would still mean 42 points, while “status quo” would be 55-57.
12. Mikael Granlund has been on fire lately. Again and again we’re learning that we can give up on, or pigeonhole, a player before he’s 26. A skill guy with upside who gets into the league at 19 or 20 can sometimes make an impact quickly. But if he doesn’t, then that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s a third-liner at best.
13. Granlund, Chris Kreider, Kevin Hayes, Cam Atkinson, Jakob Silfverberg, etc. Not that the above players are slam dunks to do well this year, they’re just off to great starts and showing signs of the promise we were hoping to see last year. Patience pays off.
14. Conor Sheary. Frankly, I think his production is suffering on the Sidney Crosby line, as silly as that sounds. Jake Guentzel, on the other hand, fits just fine with Evgeni Malkin and Phil Kessel. He seems to handle the tough stuff much better.
15. Anthony DeAngelo has points in four straight games and has six in eight games overall. I had cold feet about this guy when he was traded from the Lightning out of the blue like that. I figured there had to be a reason. So I tweaked his ranking and value down. Clearly that was much ado about nothing. At even strength he’s playing with a very defensively-responsible Alex Goligoski and that gives him some freedom to make mistakes and/or take chances. And playing with Oliver Ekman-Larsson on the power play is, of course, fantasy gold. Three of DeAngelo’s points have come on the power play. My opinion? I think DeAngelo is here to stay.
16. Ryan Johansen was off to a very slow start and that’s a big reason why the Preds haven’t been winning. Johansen will get his points every year, you can count on him as long as he’s healthy. He has five points in his last two games and now suddenly he’s just two points shy of where he should be.
17. Matt Carle announced his retirement this week. He had 283 points in 730 career games. His best fantasy season was in 2006-07, his first full year in the league. Talk about a tease! He had 11 goals and 42 points, plus another five in 11 in the playoffs.
18. Coming into this season, I was intrigued to see what Andrej Nestrasil could do for an encore after a hot run last year that was cut short by a season-ending injury. Looking back, I see that he only had 12 points in a 20-game stretch prior to that injury. He did it in limited minutes while skating alongside Jordan Staal, which I suppose makes it impressive but I must have been off my rocker thinking he had done better.
The Nestrasil-Staal combo has not been reprised, as Nestrasil has barely managed to get into games, and he’s been buried by more talented, younger options. What if he had never gotten hurt? Might have scraped together a career. He’s 25 so the door isn’t completely shut but it’s closing.
19. Jakub Voracek is definitely going to score more than Wayne Simmonds but in a standard league, I like Simmonds’ multi-category production a little more. Voracek is no slouch here, mind you.
20. Whenever I think of Ryan Murphy, I think of how long it took Ryan Ellis to cement himself but he was a full-time NHLer by his third pro season. Murphy is already working on his fourth. Moreover, Ellis is just built more stoutly and thus can play a larger role. Not that Murphy is incapable of finding a role, he just has to do it all with positioning.
