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Assessing your fantasy roster – December

December 6, 2016, 11:32 AM ET [3 Comments]
Lucas Neilson
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Now that you have had some time to settle into the season with your fantasy rosters it’s time to kick it up a notch and take over with some aggressive tactics. A winning strategy is one that is constantly on the ball, picking up hot free agents and dumping players who are struggling. Of course sometimes that can come back to bite you in the behind, such as life.

It’s important in fantasy hockey to know which players are going to excel and for how long. Meaning is this player the spice of the week or are they the real deal moving forward? Of course it can be tricky, but when you consider factors like how many injuries the team has, what line this player is on and how much power play time do they get if any. Many factors have to be considered and more often than not when you put in the time to research the player and their team’s roster you can put two and two together. It can be tricky reading between the lines, and sometimes players who should be doing great hit a rough patch, it happens.

If you have your eye on a player, track them, see what kind of ice time get on most nights, see what their shot total is each game and log how much PP/PK time they get and perhaps you will be able to gauge their worth moving forward. You don’t have to wait to see their performance; you can look at their games played as of late and see how they contribute each game. Remember, someone else may be eyeing this exact player so don’t take too long, sometimes you have to go with your gut and drop a player you didn’t think you’d be dropping. At the same time, sometimes you have to hold onto a player who should be getting quality stats but isn’t.

For example, Krug started the season terribly slow, as did Bergeron.

Well, you know these guys have been production horses in the last few seasons and its likely just a matter of time before they burst out with production. Krug has begun to chip in, but Bergeron is still not the plus minus fiend that he usually is, with the points to follow. It happens, and it just so happens that after the Christmas break you may see Bergeron catch fire and end up with a point per game pace from there on out.

There is risk in every trade or transaction. It’s up to you to know if the risk is worth it or not.

Sometimes having an injury can be a blessing in disguise. For example, I had Jonathan Quick go down to start the season, game one. It was quite the hit to take since that was the player I drafted in the second round. Nevertheless, life goes on and you just have to make due the best way you can.

After flopping around between goalies to fill in, I rode Greiss for a bit as well as a few random back-up’s here and there just to get my games in. I’ve found myself with Calgary’s Chad Johnson and he’s been quite the pleasant surprise. It was obvious the Flames were struggling with Elliott, so I took a chance on Johnson expecting to play him one game and then drop him for a good backup matchup one night. Well, after seeing how well he played that game, and since, he seems to have found himself a home on my roster for the time being. Quite possibly even longer pending how injuries and performances go as the season progresses.

At this point in the fantasy season you should have a pretty good idea of where you stand in your pool(s).

If you are at the bottom and it’s not a keeper, it may be time to look at some trades and see if you can’t catch lightning in a bottle making a trade with someone near the top. They may be willing to trade you multiple players for one stud. In which case they may win the deal by getting that great player because they have so much depth, but this could also change your roster enough moving forward that the depth helps push you to victory each week.

Players worth considering if available:

Mikko Rantanen
Sam Bennett
Patrick Maroon
Ryan Dzingel
Matthew Tkachuk
Scott Darling (Crawford hurt 3-4 weeks)
Justin Schultz
Connor Sheary
Bryan Little
Viktor Arvidsson
Sam Gagner
Marian Gaborik (back from IR)
Kris Versteeg
Jiri Hudler (back from IR soon)
Kevin Fiala (deeper leagues)

Starting goalies: (bold is confirmed starting)

Edmonton (Talbot) VS Buffalo (Lehner)
Vancouver (Miller) VS New Jersey (Schneider)
New York Rangers (Lundqvist) VS New York Islanders (Halak)
Florida (Luongo) VS Philadelphia (Mason)
Montreal (Price) VS St Louis (Allen)
Colorado (Varlamov) VS Nashville (Rinne)
Detroit (Mrazek) VS Winnipeg (Hellebuyck)
Arizona (Smith) VS Chicago (Darling)
Calgary (Johnson) VS Dallas (Niemi)

I’ve come out the gates slower this year in terms of blogging for fantasy but it’s all part of the game plan to push hard with a mid-season/end of season push to help my readers win their NHL pools.

I’m currently in first place in two pools, second in another and still enjoying the gutter in my 45-man keeper team as the rebuild is still underway.

Any questions or thoughts about my blogs, including trade thoughts. Feel free to contact me or discuss in the comments section.

Thanks for reading.
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» Mid season: Fire up the Free Agency
» Fantasy: Working the waiver wire & who to grab
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