The Oilers started the season with Devan Dubnyk and Jason LaBarbera in net and that didn’t work out so well, so GM Craig MacTavish signed Ilya Bryzgalov for the reminder of the sesaon, shipped Dubs off to the Preds, traded HannaBarbera to the Hawks for “future considerations” and traded for Ben Scrivens. After letting the dust settle a bit, Scribbles bubbled up to become the Oil’s starter and that didn’t sit too well with Breezy. With fears that he wouldn’t resign in the offseason mounting MacTavish assured his tenure with the team was rather short and shipped him off to the Wild for a fourth round pick. Hey, it’s better than nothing, right? Wrong! The Ducks quickly turned that fourth-round pick around for the Stars’ Stephane Robidas. Robidas has no fantasy value and that doesn’t change here, so back to the matter at hand. Considering how well Darcy Kuemper has been playing I’d be surprised to see Breezy supplant him as the Wild’s starter, but it may quickly develop into a 1A / 1B situation. If you’re dying for goaltending help and Breezy is available, he’s worth a speculative flier add, but don’t expect much until the situation with him and Kuemper becomes a bit more salient.
To replace Breezy the Oil traded for the Ducks’ Viktor Fasth, who at 32 has just 30 NHL games under his belt but looked good in many of them. Because of the small sample size he’s hard to predict, but his fantasy value does get a minor hike because he’s no longer going to be stuck behind Frederik Andersen and Jonas Hiller. Andersen’s value takes a small hike and stablizes with this deal as he is now the undisputed backup to the oft-injured Hiller. That being said, Hiller isn’t the only oft injured goalie in the mix here, because Fasth seems to be hurt more than he’s healthy. I wouldn’t own Fasth as he’s going to be the backup for Ben Scrivens, who the Oil signed to a two year deal worth 2.3 million a year earlier this week.
And last and least we have Dustin Penner, who took his lazy play to the Caps in exchange for a fourth-round pick. I don’t think this does much for his fantasy value, in fact what little he had might have just gone up in smoke because he won’t lining up with guys like Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry in Washington. That’s not to say there’s no talent on the Caps, who are 9th overall in goals per game (the Ducks are second), but I doubt Penner ends up on the Ovie line, so year. Since he’s a pending UFA this is just a rental for the Caps, so he does have a contract to play for, but I don’t really buy into the whole contract year myth, so, again, I don’t see a big change in his value this season and if anything it may have just bottomed out.
