20 Fantasy Thoughts: It’s time to consider dropping Matt Duchene

The Flames made in nine in a row, Morgan Rielly won it for the Leafs in overtime and Ottawa topped the Avalanche.

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. Brian Elliott continues to be one of the best goalies since the all-star break. He’s on a league-bending run. Hopefully you held on to him as he struggled mightily earlier this season, or you were able to grab him after an impatient owner dropped him. With a 31-save shutout Saturday, Kid Ells has now posted back-to-back shutouts and eight consecutive wins. In fact, if you look at the top 10 goalies for the past month, Elliott is tied for the lead in wins to go with a 1.80 goals-against average and a .938 save percentage. The Flames have won nine in a row.

2. A player that you might have to consider dropping as the season gets shorter and the games get more important is Matt Duchene. The Avs’ centre has now reached 10 games without a point, which is the longest drought of his career. With a minus-3 on Saturday against Ottawa, Duchene has now reached a minus-28 for the season. His fantasy owners had better hope that he is traded somewhere this off-season, since no one on the Avalanche is having a good season fantasy-wise.

3. Sven Andrighetto has three points in four games since joining the Avalanche skating mostly with Duchene and Mikko Rantanen. That deployment would be more enticing were Duchene not mired in that horrible slump.

The Avs hope to find the next hidden gem by grabbing other team’s castoffs. It’s a move that seems be used a lot in the cap era by building teams (Vancouver and Carolina do it all the time). This time it’s Andrighetto who is their project. This is his audition for next year. If he does something with it then he’s fantasy relevant in 2017-18.

4. With all respect to Dustin Byfuglien, who is a wrecking ball on skates, and an extremely productive one, Jacob Trouba is the best defenseman on the Jets. He’s a fantasy hockey asset waiting to pop on a new team. We don’t know the full extent of Trouba’s trade demands from earlier this year but if he really just wanted to be dealt somewhere that he could play on the right side then a Morgan Rielly for Trouba swap has huge potential. Until Trouba is elsewhere he’ll remain only a secondary play, which is a shame.

5. With his 28th goal of the season on Saturday, David Pastrnak now has goals in back-to-back games and and eight-game points streak. We might just have to get used to him being a streaky performer, as he had scored 19 goals at mid-December and a seven-game pointless drought and a 17-game goalless drought after that. In spite of the peaks and valleys, Pasta owners should be happy with the overall return.

6. So far life in Boston is working out for Drew Stafford. With his buzzer-beating goal on Saturday, Stafford has now scored four points (2g-2a) in four games as a Bruin. He is clicking on the second line with Pastrnak and David Krejci, giving Boston the kind of secondary scoring they have lacked all season. Stafford’s always been inconsistent but this is a good opportunity, especially with Krejci picking up steam. Krejci has 15 points in 17 games since the all-star break, once again proving that it’s never too late for proven veterans.

7. In a lot of ways, Alexander Wennberg fits the profile of a Nicklas Backstrom lite. He is a pass first, second, third type of player. A big reason that the Blue Jacket PP was so successful was because of Wennberg’s work from the half wall. You can imagine that they’ll be good again next season, but perhaps without the crazy split between first-half and second-half success rate.

Wennberg has steps to make if he’s going to get to Backstrom’s level. Having an Ovechkin-like option would certainly help but he needs to improve at 5-on-5 and add a little bit of goal scoring. We saw from Evgeny Kuznetsov early this season what happens when a player’s teammates can’t score. It wasn’t until Justin Williams finally showed up that Kuznetsov started producing like a star. Relying on assists means volatile production.

Wennberg is probably getting 60 points this season but for him to even match that total next year will require improvements. He’s worth betting on but I don’t know that he’s a slam dunk to improve.

8. Corey Perry has not been the same star player we are used to and has slid down the lineup. Thursday night, for example, he skated with Ondrej Kase with either Logan Shaw, or Nate Thompson at centre. Yikes. Perry has just eight points in 17 games since the break. He is 31 years old and shooting the puck at a similar rate as usual but from farther out, driving his percentages down. He’s also lost his top PP unit spot. I wonder if we are seeing signs of serious decline. His 5-on-5 scoring has dropped in each of the past four seasons.

9. Rickard Rakell had been slumping out of the all-star break with three points in 10 games but he has scored six goals in the past seven games to bump his shooting percentage back above 20 on the year. Rakell was definitely teetering on the edge of getting dropped in a lot of formats but this rush is well-timed for fantasy owners.

10. Henrik Lundqvist will miss the next 2-3 weeks with a muscle strain in his hip. Antti Raanta usually would warrant a pickup but if you’re looking ahead to head-to-head playoff matchups, you may want to look elsewhere. In fact, it wouldn’t be out of the question to drop Lundqvist completely in single-season leagues.

Over the last two weeks of the season (March 27 through April 9), the Rangers have a brutal schedule as one of three teams to play fewer than seven games (New Jersey and Winnipeg are the others). The six games feature matchups mainly against high-scoring teams, including San Jose, Pittsburgh (twice), Philadelphia, Washington, and Ottawa.

[relatedlinks]

11. Shayne Gostisbehere is finally showing positive signs. He has seven points in the last nine games. His latest goal on Friday was his first even-strength marker since late November and just his second goal since then overall. This is huge since the Flyers have struggled so mightily at even strength.

12. Jannik Hansen made his Sharks debut on Thursday skating 15 minutes on the top line with Joe Thornton and Joe Pavelski. He even notched an assist! This is intriguing. I figured Kevin Labanc had that spot locked up but in a shocking turn of events, Labanc was sent to the minors. Colour me skeptical of Hansen’s fantasy value but anything can happen in a short span of games. The opportunity is there for some scoring.

13. Elias Lindholm has 24 points in his last 28 games. But it’s worth mentioning that Lindholm has scored just six points in his last 12. The bulk of his scoring from that 28-game stretch referenced came back in January. Lindholm certainly has merit but don’t force him into your lineup just because Carolina has five games next week.

14. Prospect Kyle Connor for dynasty leagues? I don’t think you can find a scout that doesn’t appreciate Connor’s game. He is as close to a slam dunk as you’ll find. He has torched every level that he has played at short of his 18-game NHL cameo earlier this season. He has 19 goals and 32 points in 40 games as a 20-year-old rookie in the AHL, showing all the signs of being a future stud. Not to mention he plays the type of speed game that is so successful in today’s NHL. I am rarely this bullish on prospects but Connor is a gem. The only question is where he fits in a Jets lineup with a loaded top-six.

15. Henrik Zetterberg is cooking since the All-Star break, with 22 points in 17 games. He’s only been held off the board in three of those games. With that kind of production, you can understand why Jeff Blashill might still have delusions about making the playoffs.

16. The Petr Mrazek rollercoaster ride is going to throw a lot of people off his scent for next season, which could make him a sleeper, but that’s a year away. In the meantime, I would steer clear of Detroit goaltending. If you must, taking a shot at Jimmy Howard seems like the best bet, even after nearly two months off. Howard did play well in his AHL conditioning stint.

17. Nick Bonino has had a poor season, especially after a dynamite playoff run. I thought he might challenge for 50 points if he continued to click with Phil Kessel and Carl Hagelin. It hasn’t happened but Bonino has six points in his last five games. You won’t find many Penguins available for waiver pickups but Bonino is available in 97 per cent of all Yahoo leagues. Considering the Penguins have one of the best schedules for fantasy playoffs, he could be worth picking up, but please grab Conor Sheary – available in 56 per cent of Yahoo leagues and a dual eligible winger – first.

18. Sheary, by the way, has been back for five games and has six points, continuing the roll that he was on pre-injury. Sheary might go for a point-per-game, or close to it, the rest of the way. That’s league-altering potential sitting there for free in over half of all leagues. Right now I’m treating Sheary, in my own fantasy league, as a 65-point player with potential for 75…but with one major concern: health.

19. The Blues signed their first-round draft pick Tage Thompson to a three-year entry-level contract this week. He then signed an AHL tryout contract so that he doesn’t burn a year of their rights to him. Thompson is 6-5 and he had 19 goals and 32 points in 34 games for Connecticut and because he played college hockey and not junior – he’ll either be AHL or NHL next season. The Blues usually bring their prospects along slowly, but as things fall apart for this team you may see things change and the prospects get more of a chance.

20. Last year, Jordan Weal was a victim of the “don’t want to lose him on waivers, so we’ll keep him up even though he’s not ready” game. And that’s a game that usually destroys a prospect (see: Stanislav Galiev, Frank Corrado, Kevin Connauton, Adam Clendening, Joe Morrow, the list goes on, and on, and on). I see no reason why Weal will be any different. The odds are certainly against him. But I’ll be pulling for him. He’s only 24 and is a top AHL producer (has 47 points in 43 games this year).

When submitting content, please abide by our submission guidelines, and avoid posting profanity, personal attacks or harassment. Should you violate our submissions guidelines, we reserve the right to remove your comments and block your account. Sportsnet reserves the right to close a story’s comment section at any time.