Shallow Frozen Water

Dub’s Warriors

Jana emailed about a possible review of her team.  she plays in an 8 team H2H league where everybody makes the playoffs.  she’s in 3rd and she absolutely smoked her opponent last week.  she’s one of the elite teams in this league and it’s always wise to position yourself for the playoffs.  she only has 3 losses on the season but unfortunately 2 of those losses were to the 1st place team.

Jana’s league has the following settings for skaters: Goals (G), Assists (A), Plus/Minus (+/-), Penalty Minutes (PIM), Powerplay Points (PPP), Shorthanded Goals (SHG), Game-Winning Goals (GWG), Shots on Goal (SOG), Faceoffs Won (FW); and for goalies: Games Started (GS), Wins (W), Goals Against Average (GAA), Saves (SV), Save Percentage (SV%), Shutouts (SHO).  that’s a lot of categories but it should be noted that this is an 8 team league so it’s not as hard to find good goaltending to handle so many cats.  every team is going to be loaded though.

let’s take a look at the Warriors.

C Henrik Sedin VAN - the scoring race leader and i’ve heard all the arguments that he can’t keep this up.  why can’t he keep this up?  he’s playing great.  that doesn’t mean that you ignore all trade requests for him because you can’t ignore the right deal in a sell high situation.

C Jonathan Toews CHI - he does everything and he’s extra good at it.  he’s very much underrated as a fantasy option, particularly if your league also factors in FW like yours does.

LW Alexander Ovechkin WAS - he’ll be MVP again.  yawn.  he’s just so dynamic on the ice eh?  he’s one guy that i don’t look to trade in any league that i have him in, at least i’d have to be getting everything the other guy has and he’d have to throw in an autographed stick or something.

LW Bobby Ryan ANA - he’s young and in any keeper league he is a consideration to be kept.  within 2 years i see 50 goals a year out of him.

RW Marian Hossa CHI - he gets lost in all the offense in Chicago but he anchors their 2nd line scoring.  i like how many of your guys are purposefully pulled off of young high scoring offenses.

RW Patrick “sugar” Kane CHI - he’s already the best purely offensive option on the Hawks, and i say that already knowing that i’ve expressed some nice futures for Toews and for Hossa.

D Duncan Keith CHI - quite possibly going to win the Norris trophy this season, his first of what could be a long line of them.

D Tobias Enstrom ATL - right now he’s 5th in D scoring and quite frankly i saw him falling back to earth and Bogo picking it up.  that didn’t happen and it’s looking like he’s definitely the D to own in ATL for the next several years.

D Alex Goligoski PIT - i had to choose between Goli and Drew Doughty earlier this year in another fantasy discussion and i’m more than pleased to have picked Doughty.  that doesn’t mean that Goli isn’t a good option, not at all, he’s just further down the pecking order in Pitt than Doughty is in LA.  the fact that he’s young and Gonchar might very well be moving somewhere else in the near future bodes very nicely for him though.

D Stephane Robidas DAL - it is really underestimated what value Roby provides to an NHL team or to a fantasy team.  he’s hard-nosed, gets a ton of ice time and he makes solid choices for transitioning the puck out of the zone.  he’s now the man in Dallas from the back end and that isn’t likely to change anytime soon.

G Cristobal Huet CHI - he’s the starter on one of the best teams in the league but he still can’t shake the concept that he should be replaced.  he should be fine for this year … i hope.

G Tomas Vokoun FLA - his best fantasy asset is the fact that he sees more pucks per game than any other starter in the league.  he’ll get 30-some wins on the season, keep the ratios decent and he’ll make more saves/game than anybody.

BN Pekka Rinne NAS - i like him to be the Preds best option but lately they’ve been relying on Dan Ellis a lot more.  in the end he’ll be the better tender but Ellis (who looks like a hobbit) will steals some starts and some wins.

BN Eric Staal CAR - wow, he doesn’t even qualify as one of your starters that’s how far his value has sunk this season.  he’s still a great talent and you do NOT want to give up on him.  he’ll be fine and a decent option for goals and SOGs.

BN Andy Greene NJ - the Devils have been without Paul Martin and Johnny Oduya for good chunks of this season so into that gap has stepped Greene.  he’s a solid NHL option although he has never been nor will he ever be a star.  it was good that you capitalized on his situation this year, good pickup.

BN Scott Hartnell PHI - i love this guy in multi-cat leagues like yours because he contributes in goals while throwing in a nice dose of PIMs.  he can be  pretty streaky but when he’s on he puts up stats like the best of them.

BN Kurtis Foster TB - he’s been hurt for a lot of years and i’ve got to say i don’t have him on a single one of my teams.  now having said that he’s been great for the Lightning of late and he’s fitting in very nicely as a PP option for them.  i don’t see him as a long term option for them but for this year he’ll produce plenty for them.

BN Mason Raymond VAN - wheels galore and he’s REALLY blossomed into some nice promise this season.  i could see 30 goals out of him for a lot of season in a row.

you have the best offense in the league and i think you carry 1 too many D for my taste.  ideally i’d like to see you trade a D in a package in order to get an extra C/RW so that you can get more FW without hurting your total offense.  you also have a 50 transaction limit of which you’ve used all your waiver moves for the season (you realize the season’s only half done right?).  i wish you had saved some move for your fantasy playoffs actually, it would’ve been nice to have about 10 moves or so for streaming over 4 wks of playoffs.  in case you’re not familiar with the concept streaming is dumping a guy who’s not playing that day so that you can roster a guy who is playing that day or perhaps more games that week than the guy you’re giving up.  you don’t stream your good guys but but you can choose your worst player and stream him for a couple weeks.  anyway sorry, you don’t have that option.

Waiver Wire Options

since you’ve used up all 50 of your transactions this season that’ll mean that the only way that you can pick up a guy off the wire would be to offer 2fer1 trades but tell them they need to pick up so-and-so and then trade that guy to you in this deal.  that’ll mean that you REALLY complicate your trading discussions if you want to do that.

at any rate, here’s a handful of names on your wire that i like, in the order i like them.

Martin Havlat - ok, i really don’t like him at all but also he can be a real gamebreaker.  he looks to have found some chemistry with Guillame Latendresse and he’s a really streaky scorer to begin with.  if you can acquire him through trade then you’ll need him to go on a monstrous goal scoring streak … which he has the gifts to do.

Tomas Vanek - i realize this is an 8 team league but he has the sort of pedigree for 40 goals in a season during most seasons.  this year has been a bad one for him but you’re going to need some significant things to go your way in order to win this league anyway.  this bears watching.

Patric Hornqvist - right now he IS the Preds offense.  the Predators seems to latch on to 1 really good option up front and then run their attack through their significant D corps.  sometimes the significant forward is Jason Arnott, sometimes it’s JP Dumont or Martin Erat and right now it looks like it’s Horny.

Kimmo Timonen - actually i think you have 1 too many D right now anyway but Timonen has a history of significant D scoring.  i actually like him a sliver more than Greene who you already roster but maybe something could be done to roster him.  by the way, i loved Timonen in The Lion King.

Tim Connolly - he’s a C with a absolutely brittle history but this season he’s stayed healthy and he’s been a pt/game (ish).  you already have some significant C’s but one never knows what could happen during the course of a season.

Trading Options

these trade ideas are only suggestions, they may blow up in your face or the other guy might absolutely love the idea.  they’re intended as a starting point and the negotiations can begin here.  i’m completely willing to discuss trade ideas by email and that’s part of the point of doing this in the first place.  i want you to know that you can ask whatever question you want and i’ll do my best to answer as quickly as i can.

trade Stephane Robidas and Mason Raymond to Got Milk? for Brian Rafalski and Nik Antropov -  Milk has some trouble on his team at LW and you have a slight hole to fill at RW.  you’d be taking a chance by adding Rafalski and Antropov to the mix because the Wings might not bounce back and the Thrash may trade Kovalchuk which would deflate Antropov’s value.  let’s be serious though, this is a reasonable chance to take since i fully believe that the Wings are going to respond in the 2nd half and much of the reason will be because of Rafalski and Lidstrom; and the Thrash would be highly stupid to trade Kovalchuk, plain and simple.  Antropov provides offense and some extra FW, which you need and you’re offensive cushion doesn’t take much of a hit here.

trade Andy Greene to Digital Bruisers for Chris Stewart - DB needs a 5th D and Greene is a more solid option than the guy he’s playing as his 4th D (Marc Andre Bergeron).  you need another RW and have an extra D to spare. 

trade Henrik Sedin, Tobias Enstrom, Kurtis Foster and Tomas Vokoun to Team Sweden for Joe Thornton, Zdeno Chara, Tomas Fleischmann and Miikka Kiprusoff - Team Sweden has been loading up on Swedes all season so you offer him 2 Swedes and 2 other guys that you could argue could sound like Swedish names (Swedes spell Curt with a K right?).  there’s no way that this trade works in a hockey sense but even if you whittle it down so that the goalies are dropped out of the deal then you get the RW help you want and you balance out some other stuff that could actually work.  just point out that Fleischmann is a Czech and Kiprusoff is a Finn so he doesnt want them anyway.  who knows?  it might work.

Conclusions

you’re solidly positioned in 2nd in your league and your only real loss of the season (twice actually) was to the guy in 1st.  that’s the team to beat by the way and your situation is worsened a little by the fact that you have no transactions left for your playoffs.  you have a solid shot at it however. 

your team is strong and your only weakness is that you have a bit of depth problem at RW while you have one extra D that you don’t need.  you’ll also need your goaltending to hold up and there is a bit of concern about that too. 

the only way to improve your team at this stage is by trade and actually i’d start by looking at Team Sweden for some help there.  it’s obvious that Sweden is trying to lock up Swedish players only so why not offer up a couple Swedes to see if he’ll bite on the proverbial apple.  if you can get that deal done then you still might need to look at another RW option better than Fleischmann but not necessarily.  if that won’t fly then i’d go talk to the other 2 trade options to see who might jump at your offer first.

don’t get me wrong, if you do nothing your team’s going to be just fine too.  it’s not like you’re life and death on the border of missing the playoffs and in H2H once you get to the dance, anything can happen in the playoffs.

well, all the best Jana.  your team is solid, not much to worry about at all.