Players worth picking up:

• Sheldon Souray – Huge bounceback season underway.
• Sergei Gonchar – Bounceback season.
• Alex Edler – The new #1 blueliner for the Sedins.
• Dion Phaneuf – He is back to form, adjusted to wearing the “C”, and has forwards that can score.
• Kari Lehtonen – The whole team is overachieving and 40 wins isn’t unthinkable.
• Claude Giroux – Apparently he’s for real.
• Marian Hossa – He’s also on a bounceback fantasy season.
• Jaromir Jagr – The point per game pace seems for true.  He’s old but still knows how to score.

Players to drop:

• Ryan Miller – Though he’s off to a slow start, the problem isn’t Miller (who’ll bounce back into form.)  The problem is that Buffalo wants to push into the playoffs with a rested goalie, which means Miller’s days of starting every game are over.  Also, Enroth is playing as HPE predicted: GREAT.
• Jeff Carter – Something doesn’t smell right about him being in Columbus.
• Jarome Iginla – Unless a trade materializes, this looks like the dimming of a brilliant career.
• Eric Staal – An excellent player, he seems to be transitioning into a 60-point player with “great intangibles.”  While this may be good for winning games, it stinks for hockey pools.
• Martin Brodeur – All-time great needs to hang ‘em up.
• Brayden Schenn – This rookie pick isn’t panning out.
• Dustin Penner – Not that you picked him anyway…

In the forward corps, there are several players who should end up with decent (though not yet dominant) point totals: Hall, Eberle, Nugent-Hopkins, Smyth, Horcoff, and Hemsky. This is a massive change from last year.

With defensemen and goalies, the Oilers still haven’t graduated into acceptable fantasy hockey standards. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t bright lights or up-and-comers, it just means that they currently don’t have anyone on the roster who is guaranteed to put up points. Tom Gilbert is currently the most reliable of the bunch, though his point range is modest.

It is worth noting this sea change. It’ll be awhile before the new Oiler wave crests, but
it is clearly heading in an excellent poolie direction.

There is nothing wrong with this team or its players.  They are as likely to score points as players from any other team.

The issue to be cognisant of here is that Winnipeg players will receive a TON of media coverage between now and fall.  They will be given feature articles, photo shoots, TV time, and every other piece of attention worthy of Winnipeg’s big score.  However, this surge in media attention will likely not translate into a surge in 2011-12 fantasy hockey point production for the team’s individual players.

Two things that are normally correlated will be separate for Winnipeg’s players heading into 2011-2012: media attention and expected point production.

Beware of chasing Manitoba players in your 2011 drafts.  Make the decision now not to overvalue these players.

Of course, the opportunity surrounding the team’s move is that others in your pool will be more likely than normal to spend high picks on players like Byfuglien, Pavelec, and Rob Schremp.  By letting them pick up mid-round players with first-round picks, you’ll be free to pick up legitimate first-round players from the other 29 teams who didn’t move this year.

To bait your pool-mates into making bad picks, talk about Winnipeg’s upside potential as much as you like!

Playoff pools are always hard to predict because of eliminations, but this year’s predictions were pretty close to the mark!

HPE predicted a cup final featuring Boston and Vancouver and picked a 12-man roster as shown below.

Eastern Conference:

• C: David Krejci – Tied for Boston’s overall point lead, Krejci needs 2 points to tie Tampa Bay’s Lecavalier for the East’s #1 centerman.  Bingo.
• LW: Alexander Ovechkin – 10 points in 9 games was good enough for 3rd in Eastern Conference LW scoring up until now, though Boston’s Lucic only needs 2 points to push Ovechkin to the East’s #4 spot.  Not the best pick, but not bad.
• RW: Alexander Semin – This was a bad pick.  Washington choked and so did Semin.
• D: Zdeno Chara – His team will keep playing, but Chara has only 5 points thus far.  With an average Finals, he’ll still end up as a top 5  Eastern conference pick or higher.
• D: Thomas Kaberle - Currently the East’s #1 point producing defenseman and still counting.  Bingo.
• G: Tim Thomas – 12 wins and counting.  Bingo.

Western Conference:

• C: Henrik Sedin – Leads all players in points and is still playing. Bingo.
• LW: Daniel Sedin – Leads all LWs in points and is still playing. Bingo.
• RW: Dan Heatley – 9 points in 18 games is sub-par for this former top sniper.  This pick was better than Semin, but not by much.
• D: Nicklas Lidstrom – Lead all Detroit defenders with 8 points in 11 games, but Detroit’s post-season was shorter than expected.
• D: Brian Rafalski - 3 points = a bad pick.
• G: Roberto Luongo – 12 wins and counting.  Bingo.

All told, that’s not bad considering that there were 16 teams starting the playoffs with around 20 players per team.

On the topic of goalies, it turns out that we couldn’t have been more right!

“Top Two Goalie Picks: Note that the only top-4 seeded teams in each conference that have a clear #1 goalie are Boston, Pittsburgh, and Vancouver. Considering the injuries to Pittsburgh’s star centers Crosby and Malkin, the smart guesses for this year’s safest playoff pool goalie picks are Tim Thomas and Robert Luongo.”

So those are some of the things that we hit.  What were our biggest misses?

• Tampa Bay – We didn’t see them going nearly this far into the playoffs.  They were this year’s underdog and nearly pulled it off, taking Boston to a 7th game.
• Dan Boyle – With 16 points in 18 games, he leads all defensemen in scoring by a mile.  You may not like the Sharks, but what’s not to like about Dan Boyle’s playoff performance?
• Detroit – We thought they had more gas left in the tank and would challenge Vancouver for the Western crown.  Instead, it turns out that Detroit’s managers have some serious question marks heading into the off-season.  I’m sure they’re up to the challenge, but there is serious work to do…
• Washington – Looks like their young blue line needs another year to mature and they need a goalie almost as bad as Philly.
• Vancouver’s Blue Line – Ehrhoff and Edler have scored on pace with their regular season #’s and Bieksa has played over his average scoring pace.  Had Detroit played another series the numbers would have been close, but we didn’t give this blue line enough credit.

As for the only unanswered question, our prediction sticks that Vancouver will win the Stanley Cup Finals in 6 games.  Boston’s Lucic & Horton may steal the series, but the 7 game format favours Vancouver’s superior depth.

Regardless of how it turns out, it should be fun to watch!

With 4-5 games remaining on each team’s schedule, let’s see how well TSP’s updates fared for the 2010-2011 NHL season:

1. Oilers Can’t Lose – With 5 games to go, the Oilers are about to clinch last place overall and the fans don’t mind a bit.  The team has turned over personelle and the rookies look better every game.  In contrast, the Flames have played just well enough to almost certainly miss the playoffs and also to miss out on good draft picks, ensuring that they’ll keep on sucking hard for at least a few more years.  The Oilers won big time in 2010-2011, even though they lost more games than anyone.
2. Sharks’ Niemi & Niittymaki – Niemi and Niittymaki split games early on in the season as predicted.  The team lost a lot of games early on too, making these guys terrible fantasy picks.  Things changed midway through the season though once Niemi emerged as the clear-cut starter and the Sharks started winning, making Niemi a good mid-season draft waiver pickup.
3. Carey Price Likely to Start 65 Games – As of April 2nd, Price has 69 starts and is 2nd overall in wins.  Like TSP said, “Price will be an excellent sleeper pick.“
4. Luongo’s Stock Just Rose – Luongo and the Canucks fulfilled TSP’s predictions following the most under-reported news of the season, which was Vancouver’s change of Captaincy.  With 4 games to go, the Canucks have clinched the President’s Trophy for #1 overall in the league and Luongo is #1 in the league among goaltenders for wins. Luongo has also posted the 2nd highest Save % of his career (.927), the 2nd highest # of Shutouts (7), and a career-low Goals Against Average (2.14).
5. Seguin’s Icetime Could Improve – Fellow centerman Mark Savard has only played 25 times this year, creating space for Seguin to shine.  But Seguin dropped the ball, earning an average of only 12:15 of ice-time per game on what turned out to be a cup contending team.  To Seguin’s credit though, he made the Bruins and stuck in the line-up all season.  Still, Boston acquired centerman Rich Peverly in late February to fill the hole they’d hoped Seguin would be ready to fill.
6. Grab John Carlson If You Can – John Carlson ended up as Washington’s top-scoring defenseman plus was 4th in team, +/- trailing only Ovechkin, Backstrom and Semin.  If that wasn’t enough, he was 2nd in average icetime among Caps with 20+ games on the season.
7. Trade Deadline Deals – Several predictions were in this post, so it’s hard to grade the result.  In general, the predictions were luke-warm.  Dustin Penner was a miss, James Neal turned into a shootout hero but never got to play with Crosby, and Thomas Kaberle did exactly what was expected.  As for the non-trades with Philly, Vancouver and Calgary, I guess we’ll never know about those, though Iginla was great down the stretch and proved again that the Flames would be morons for ever trading him.

In sum, here’s how we’d score these results:

1. Check
2. Half Check, Half Miss (though a mid-season update would have made this better)
3. Check
4. Check and Check
5. Check (though Seguin dropped the ball)
6. Check
7. Half Check, Half Miss

All in all, a pretty good run of success for TSP’s 2010-2011 NHL Hockey Draft season!

TSN.ca/nhl is pretty quick on the draw for publishing new trade deadline info, but keep checking other sites too if you’re in a pinch in the pool standings.

Here are a few things to watch for down the stretch:

• If Vancouver trades for a defenseman, he’ll get lots of icetime immediately, then will return to normal minutes as their other players return from injury. Given Vancouver’s power play, there could be some great flash-in-the-pan performances by anyone they bring in.
• Consider picking up any forwards added by Pittsburgh.  If they’re in line for playing with Crosby once he’s back or for filling in Malkin’s injury time, another short-term over-average performance is possible.
• Kaberle…  Depending on where he goes, it could be a good or bad pickup.  His powerplay time can only go down from current levels, but if he lands up on a potent team his points may go up.  So, it’s likely a wash.  However, the hype around him from now until he’s traded (or not) is abnormal, so if you’re in a league with swapping potential, you may want to trade him away for a better player who puts up more points but doesn’t show up in the headlines these days. Cash in on the hype and ride a better horse down the stretch.
• If Penner or Hemsky leave Edmonton, consider a quick pickup. They are both specialists playing on a team that lacks a reliable supporting cast, so they’re both out of their element right now.  If either of these end up on a team where they can fly below the opposition’s radar on a 2nd line within a reliable offensive system, their numbers could jump dramatically.
• In the unlikely event that Calgary sells off their big names, leave them alone unless that name is Iginla. Calgary would be mad to unload Iginla (possibly the entire league’s MVP over the last 10  years), but if they go cold again who knows what the new GM will do?
• If Philly springs for a bonafide #1 in goal, pick him up immediately.  He will win almost every game he plays.

If you’re sweating it out at the deadline, you probably didn’t draft well in the fall. But, if injuries or epic underperformances have put you in a tight spot, quick fingers over the next two weeks just may save your bacon.

There was some uncertainty heading into the season about whether he would play, how much, and whether he could convert minor-league performance into the big league. It is still a long season with many ups and downs yet to come, but there is no doubt that Carlson’s upside is as good or better than many seasoned blue-chip d-men.

The injury to Marc Savard (post-concussion) will allow Seguin to slip into situations the Bruins would otherwise give to Savard, meaning that top-6 wingers and power play minutes may come much sooner than anyone expected.

Hopefully Savard is able to play most of the season (he’s one of our fantasy favourites).

Don’t expect 60 points from Seguin – he still has to make the team. His odds of making it and actually playing just went up though.

Now that the captaincy is off his mind, an outstanding fantasy season is brewing. Handing over the captaincy is a sign of bigger things coming in Vancouver (more wins, and wins when it counts), and frankly I’m surprised to see this happen.

Its not that Luongo was a bad captain or anything. Instead, this is a very good team making adjustments to get even better next season. The entire team seems to be gearing up for a Presidents’ Trophy and then home-rink advantage in their quest for a Stanley Cup.

Why? The Olympics are past, individual goals like the Art Ross have been accomplished, the team tasted another premature playoff exit last year, and I think they’re tired of just being “very good.” This team has only one thing on its mind now: lots and lots and lots of wins.

Which raises Luongo’s stock (the guy in net 65+ times a season) from where it was just yesterday.

Regardless of what you think of Price (I think pretty highly of him), he will get every chance to start 65 or more games this season.

No-one in their right mind will use a top 100 pick on Price, so there’s a good chance Price will be an excellent sleeper pick. How many wins he gets is anyone’s guess, but now that his contract is settled and Montreal has no real backup, it’ll be much more than last year.