It feels like it’s been forever since I’ve written daily notes. I guess being stuck inside due to a blizzard will do that. It was great to be able to watch the NHL on Tuesday night with a massive slate of games. He didn’t have the biggest game of the day, but Erik Gustafsson can be a huge difference maker that impacts the vast majority of fantasy leagues. Gustafsson scored a goal and added a power play assist in the 4-0 win over the Rangers. This is notable because John Carlson is out “long term” after taking a puck to the face last Friday against Winnipeg. It seems like an eternity ago, but Gustafsson did have 60 points with Chicago four years ago with 18 coming on the PP. It’s his top unit to run now, and the minutes have been decent even before Carlson’s injury. The blocks are okay and the hits are below average, so in those formats he’s still on the fringe, but without them, I think he’s a no brainer hold. He’s available in over 90% of leagues right now, so open another tab, put a claim in for Gustafsson, and then come back and see what else happened on Tuesday night!
Antti Raanta – 24 save shutout in the 3-0 win over the Blackhawks. All indications were that Kochetkov was going to be back and start, but alas, we received a Raanta revenge game instead. Raanta is a good streamer in all matchups with how well Carolina is playing.
Darcy Kuemper – 32 save shutout in the 4-0 win over the Rangers. After a really tough start, Kuemper’s GAA and sv% are right in line with last season in Colorado. The wins are down, and the volume is a bit lower because of how well Lindgren has also played, but Kuemper is a bottom end #1 in fantasy.
Conor Sheary – Goal and an assist with two shots and two PIM. Sheary remains on the first line, but second PP unit. He’s a middling streamer.
Drake Batherson – Two assists with two shots, six hits, and two blocks. It is crazy that Batherson is one point off a point per game, but also -23. In H2H, I’d just roll with it without hesitation, but he’s on the fringe in roto.
Ilya Sorokin – 20 saves on 21 shots in the 5-1 win over the Penguins. There’s a few goalies that stand out over others so far this year, but Sorokin has been the best of the bunch as we approach the midway point.
Josh Bailey – Goal and an assist. Bailey’s days of fantasy relevance are over.
Brock Nelson – Two assists with four shots. Nelson is up to a point per game, which I never expected. He’s only one assist off last season’s total despite playing half of the total games to this point. The goal scoring is at a sustainable rate now. Nelson is a clear top 100 player now.
Anders Lee – Two goals on four shots. Lee does enough across the board that I think he’s an easy hold. He’s a net positive in every category.
Mathew Barzal – Two goals on five shots. It’s not the most exciting stat line, and after Barzal’s rookie season, I expected his fantasy numbers to be better at this point in his career. That said, it’s an easy hold.
Calle Jarnkrok – Goal and two assists with two shots. Solid player in real life, but Jarnkrok is stuck as a bottom end streamer in Toronto.
Roope Hintz – Two goals on five shots. Two straight two goal games for Hintz, who has taken his game to another level. The shot rate keeps him from fantasy superstardom, but he’s damn good.
Jamie Benn – Goal and an assist with three shots. Benn now sits on a six game point streak. I would lean towards hold which is a remarkable turnaround for Benn, who hasn’t been a hold in four seasons.
Filip Gustavsson – 31 saves on 32 shots in the 4-1 win over the Jets. The Jets are depleted at the moment, but that doesn’t take away from a strong game from Gustavsson. He’s on the fringe but I lean towards holding given that his workload has become more stable.
Mats Zuccarello – Goal and an assist with two shots and two PIM. Zucc now has seven goals in his past six games and he’s quickly erasing his terrible plus-minus. He’s still showing no signs of aging at 35.
Jared Spurgeon – Goal and an assist with four shots. Unless you’re in a blocks league, I would leave Spurgeon on the waiver wire unless your league has 14+ teams.
Frederick Gaudreau – Goal and an assist with three shots. Bottom end streamer.
Sam Steel – Two assists. Steel is up to a middling streamer while on the first line, although I can’t see it improving with his shot rate in the doldrums.
Stuart Skinner – 46 saves on 47 shots in the 2-1 win over the Flames. Skinner has been a godsend for Edmonton with how bad Campbell has been. He’s playing like a #1 goalie right now so ride Skinner in all matchups.
J.T. Compher – Two assists with five shots. Compher has a massive role with all of Colorado’s injuries. He’s in the solid streamer range now.
Cale Makar – Goal and an assist with four shots. I doubt you can buy low on Makar, but I’m still all in on him going forward. The shot rate is excellent, the Avs can only get healthier, and he’s still hitting all of the categories extremely well.
Lawson Crouse – Goal and two assists with four shots. Crouse has found another level the last two seasons that I didn’t think he was capable of. I would actually hold him in hits leagues, and he’s a solid streamer otherwise.
Jakob Chychrun – Three assists with three shots. Chychrun has been an absolute monster since returning. It’s to the point where I’m not sure a trade would even help his fantasy value.
Clayton Keller – Goal and an assist with two shots, as did Nick Schmaltz. Keller is a bottom end hold while Schmaltz is in the elite streamer category.
Timo Meier – Two goals, both assisted by Erik Karlsson. It was an ugly night for the Sharks, but it was good to see their two best players perform.
Bo Horvat – Two goals and two assists. Ilya Mikheyev had a goal and three assists, while Brock Boeser scored a goal and added two assists. Suffice to say that the Sharks had no answers for this trio. Dr. Bo is up to 26 goals, tying him with Tage for second most in the league. Remarkable season. Mikheyev is a solid streamer while Boeser is an elite one.
Phillip Danault – Goal and two assists, as did Viktor Arvidsson. Alex Iafallo moved onto their line with Moore injured, and had a goal and an assist of his own. All of these guys are solid streamers, and I would rank them Arvidsson, Danault, Iafallo.
We will do the Three Point Challenge for Thursday’s games. You can’t select McDavid, Draisaitl, Thompson, Robertson, Kucherov, Pastrnak, Kaprizov, Karlsson, Crosby, or Rantanen. I’ll go with Dubois against the Canucks.
That’s all for now guys. I’ll be back on Friday recapping the action of the last two nights. As always, feel free to ask any questions, leave any comments, or give any suggestions below. Thanks for reading, take care!
Update: My next post will be out Friday afternoon. Apologies for the delay, but I’m not feeling well and struggling to stay awake to write. You can still ask questions here, or hold off until that comes out. Thanks guys!
raanta playing that much is good news for f.andersen owners almost certainly. i don’t own any of these 3 CAR guys so won’t affect me. kochetkov when he started up he was either already gone (deep leagues where goalies are stashed for usually years if have prospect pedigree like him) or i was set enough such to not hold him and/or leagues were too shallow to assume a seemingly only called up prospect goalie due to injury (other than streaming).
They’ve had no choice, Kochetkov hasn’t been available to start the last three games. I don’t expect Kochetkov to be a huge workhorse when they have three goalies, but I wouldn’t be excited about Andersen and think he’ll play even half the games, barring other injuries.
didn’t know that, like a lot of hockey related news stuff it often doesn’t get to the player blurbs in the league, sometimes at all (like here i can’t find any note indicating DTD on him since prior to break) other times quite late (anybody know anything about if marchessault is playing tonight or not, and he’s a few hours after most of the other games etc)
Yeah, the sites are generally not great about that stuff. I have a twitter list that follows all beat writers for all of the teams, mostly for DFS purposes, but there’s where I saw about Kochetkov’s injury.
yeah in past year’s (not 100% but far more than now) those updates would’ve made their way to rotoworld. those updates still exist, but rotoworld sold the rights to rotowire, where you can get some pages, but not many, behind that’s the paywall. every day goes by we (humans) are more and more cashboxes for somebody/almost everybody it’s getting. even jon little is getting rid of 3 year poker coaching premium going forward since something like “it’s too good of a deal”. prospectslive in baseball, it’s top 30 by team lists just went from 30 to 10 unless pay membership etc. grey over here, now has rankings come out weeks early if of course, membership/payments that didn’t exist 2-3 years ago (this one not as bad since they still come out later for the same free they’ve been for 15 or so years). cashboxes that breathe, to more and more people every day. oh yeah, ads in the MIDDLE of games, started (pretty sure) at football (if they time them right it’s not a big deal, a LOT of deadtime in NFL games between plays), baseball now too (even more deadtime between pitches/plays). these sports didn’t let this stuff happen though at all say 5 years ago. ads you can’t turn off on web pages, it’s everywhere. we’re more and more cashboxes and the companies are getting more and more used to doing it, the customers haven’t left from this stuff.
stuff like kochetkov being DTD and that’s why raanta got those last few starts didn’t get it’s way to yahoo (which used to use the rotoworld blurbs) nor even fantrax at all (probably at least 20% more updates on stuff like that than yahoo’s ever had; probably a lot more than 20%, esp for lesser owned players (like IDP’s in football)).
dang I was excited that I had waiver claimed anderson but this kills the buzz… I saw Pacioretty will be back soon is he a better stash? Murray is my G2 could also drop cozins for pac also thx v
patches a very good stash but i don’t know anything about league specs, your other goalies besides murray, what goalies are in FA, how many you start, is this roto or h2h, how many owners, the details etc.
on the other hand MAF owners surely won’t like seeing gustavsson not only getting a start in what was not a back to back, but gustavsson himself was the last MIN starter prior to the break, so MAF’s now only gotten 1/3 of last 3 games entirely, so it’s entirely possible he’s on the bad side of like a 60/40 at least right now. only own MAF in one spot where i pulled off the what looks like i’m hacking into other accounts or are otherwise omniscent, somebody dropped MAF (100 FAAB) i had georgiev/ullmark (this year is a GREAT (best for me probably) year for elite/cheap goalies if you hit on the right ones)/comrie and really only weakness i had was goalie 3, so bid 26, won where the 2nd highest bidder was 25, so i paid the literal perfect market price in closed bidding, which is all sorts of rare (outside of bidding 1 and getting by a zero or more, and usually that’s since somebody is too lazy or ignorant to know about the budget (this happens more than you think). honestly i might’ve gone from a top 5 at worst team to a top 3 at worst team for ROS since MAF is a good bit better (esp for floor) than the guys in FA, plus there’s a moves limit (roughly 4 per matchup on average), so just willy nilly streaming that 3rd goalie slot could leave the rest of your roster handcuffed (esp come playoff time) if/when you want to stream the hell out of a possibly losing matchup and/or get injuries.
I would bet on it being as close to a 50/50 split that there is in the league. Always love when you beat the other bid by $1 haha
yeah it’s a minor pat on the back if you win a guy for like 3 over a 2, but bids over 5 are rare in this league, and when seen it’s usually when somebody drops somebody like MAF here or last year kuemper was dropped, i actually stopped and wrote up a post to make sure that was intentional (the team wasn’t good, his other goalies weren’t either, it looked like some sort of collusion, basically the whole league that showed up to discuss it (about 7/12 besides me agreed easily and those showed up to say it same day i typed it) thought similar, it was allowed when owner showed up and gave some goofy explanation that at least proved he didn’t do it to intentionally dump, but that he’s just goofy (he got 11th or 12th later)) and got bid multiple 100’s from those that could use a goalie that good (basically everybody can use a goalie as good as kuemper last year). that league is a keep 7 (start 2 goalies daily) and many owners keep 1-2 goalies and those that didn’t keep 2 draft them fairly high. so not the most hoardy for goalies of any league i’m in, but pretty high level of it. why this year’s not kept or owned guys that i could get ullmark/georgiev is pretty damn sweet and now with MAF too (even if he’s splitting his floor great, on decent team). goals against is a category here (h2h, 4 min appearances per matchup) so sometimes with this group i can get my 4 appearances and just lock up all goalie stats besides wins,and i win those pretty often too
Reinhart for 3
Sounds good!
Matthews for 3 pnt!
Sounds good!
wow, matthews fell to where we can go him, nice.
Viz would you lean Freddy Andersen or Matt Murray this year? Dynasty? I gotta trade for one of these schmucks. Thank you.
i’d think murray for this year for sure, andersen STILL hurt and see above viz thinks he’ll come back to a timeshare. murray also in that but doing really well so far and not hurt.
having said that, andersen might be a lot cheaper right now.
For this year, I think you have to go Murray given how well he’s played and how strong Toronto is defensively. Long term, I’m really torn. Murray is 5 years under and is signed for next season, but he’s also had some major lulls in his play where it’s really ugly. Andersen has had a lot of injury issues, and the main thing is that I have no idea where he’s going to be next season. I think I would still go Murray knowing that he should be good next season in Toronto, and not knowing where Andersen ends up, but at the same time, I kind of like buying low on Andersen, especially if I wasn’t in contention this season in a dynasty, hoping he can get back to a level close to last season.
wouldn’t have thought murray was 5 years younger (or forgot etc), that’d tip it for me (also the currently not injured and doing well part not ignored for me here, older AND currently injured pulls a lot of weight with the bishop/price/rask career trajectories lately, for me anyway).
Hey guys,
wondering who you would drop to activate wilson? I know that he isn’t back yet but it should be soon. What I wanted to do was drop one of my forwards, preemptively grab M.Reilly as a stash on my IR and put Wilson on the bench. standard yahoo scoring
my roster
C-POINT, TROCHECK
LW-J.HUGHES, MARCHESSAULT
RW-TKACHUK, PASTRNAK
D-MCAVOY, EKBLAD, MORRISSEY, BURNS
BENCH-RAKELL, FORSBERG, BENNETT
It can’t really be anyone but Rakell or Bennett, and I think that comes down to team needs as they hit different categories.
Yahoo 12 team roto
Start tonight?
Kuemper v OTT
Murray v ARI
Hellebuyck v VAN
Which two? Thanks!
murray is @ ARI. if murray was in TOR he’d probably be the favorite for sure for me (and the betting favorite for win). these are all good options though, i’d have probably said kuemper (i’m playing him over oettinger @ MIN in the lone spot i have kuemper).
Sorry that I didn’t see this in advance
now i notice it’s not just lately we can go matthews, i did 2 weeks ago, 2 week reset here though so i can and am again
dec 29th: a.matthews @ ARI for 3 pt tues
My tenders are a mess… Igor and Anton Forsberg. I have mcdavid and a super solid offense. Would it be suicidal to accept the trade that was just offered? He sends me Vitek and Boeser for Debrusk and Pettersson. Is it too much offense for Vitek? Is Vitek legit?
I wouldn’t say suicidal, but that is pretty risky given that Pettersson has established himself in the truly elite category, and Vanecek has less of a track record. I might try something smaller scale, but I don’t think it’s that bad if you’re that desperate.
Hey Viz
In a 10 team points league the categories are
G(2) A(1) +/-(1) PIM(0.5) PPP(1) Hit(0.2) Block(0.5)
I got offered Arvidsson for my Lehkonen.
What do you think?
I think it’s pretty even. Lehkonen’s upside is a bit higher because of the PP1 role, but Arvidsson’s median outcome is probably a bit higher. Don’t have a strong preference. If you want to play it safe, make the trade, if you want to roll the dice, stand pat.
Thanks Viz
hey Viz posted above but I think it got lost I’m in a roster crunch and I grabbed Anderson when he was dropped but with ur goalie info on him is he worth holding to use over Murray? Goalies arnt as important in this league and Binnigton Talbot are on waivers so I could always use my g2 to stream.
There are a few good waiver guys also with Max P and Norris leading the IR crew and Duchene sitting there from his early slump along with Tony D. My bottom of my roster is Laine Cozens Erikson ek Forsberg and on D Seider but he is still solid in hits blks and letang just got hurt
should I make any swaps? more long term in mind
thx
At this point, I think Murray is in a similar situation as Andersen with stable playing time, so while it’s not impossible that Andersen is better than Murray by any stretch, Murray is a no doubt hold, but it’s too hard to predict for Andersen what is going to happen going forward. I would probably just hold what you have, but the one debate for me is Pacioretty. We know he can be a monster, but I think JEEK is the only droppable guy on that list, and his overall contributions are quite good, so idk if you can afford to make that move.
I could drop anderson for Patches but I already have a stacked LW haha feels wrong though leaving him on waivers… Eks overall is hard to drop for sure!
Yeah, if you don’t really need him, you might as well hold Andersen for that upside for your specific team.
don’t know league specs but if it’s hits/blocks/faceoffs eriksson-ek is around what trocheck put out in his best seasons pretty close, which is a very valuable player.