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Fantasy: Keeping your eye on the prize

October 20, 2016, 2:27 PM ET [33 Comments]
Lucas Neilson
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The fantasy world can be a harsh one at times. Starting off with a Quick injury in one pool, Crosby concussed in another, and now Letang banged up in the same pool I have Quick hurt in. That’s the way she goes, and really it’s not going to hurt me in the long run, here’s why.

When you have a grasp on prospects and the depth of organizations you should always have your eye on a few different players. Rookies, sophomores, veterans and potential break-out players exist on each team, it’s up to you to decipher whose worth scooping up and who’s just riding a two or three game hot streak.

For example, when Quick went down, I quickly realized I’m going to need a replacement for him. I wasn’t completely sold on Zatkoff, so I scoured the wire to see who was available. Quick being my second round pick, I knew I was going to need someone of quality, and with the slim pickings that were available, I ended up scooping Vasilevskiy and Niemi. A couple 1B goalies will have to do the trick until something better possible comes along, or I make a trade if my goalie categories are killing me each week.

So Letang is likely on his way to the IR+ slot (which is great), it allows you to put an injured player on the injured reserve, before they actually are officially on the IR. I’ve seen players sit DTD for much too long and I am pleased with the addition of the IR+ slot in our yahoo pools.

Unfortunately, it’s one of those 1.5 week fantasy matchups since the NHL begun on a Wednesday night. With that being said, I have no moves left on the week (4 maximum), and will have to wait until Monday before I toss Letang on the IR+ and scoop someone up. This gives me a larger sample size of games at least, and I will be able to grab someone who’s hot out the gates and hope they can help chip in until Letang is back from his injury.

These types of moves you want to look at maximum production. So what I could do is look at next week’s schedule and check to see if there are any teams that play four games, maximizing the possibility of any points being output. Obviously a player of the same caliber who plays two games has less chance than someone playing four games, simple logic.
If you like the way your team looks and figure you won’t need to use any of the other moves, by all means try to maximize that slots output (Letang) and try to find a team that plays Monday/Tuesday and then perhaps another that players Wednesday/Thursday, and so on. Perhaps you can get six or seven games out of that slot with three moves; there are times I’ve done this and have gotten a number of points, likely more than the player would have output themselves.

It’s all about planning and predicting, looking at matchups and looking at hot/cold streaks. The more research you do, digging deep will end up with better results vast majority of the time.

Of course this approach works best in head-to-head matchups and you wouldn’t want to burn all those games if you are in a rotisserie setup.

Starting Goalies:
(bold is starting, italics is probable)

New Jersey (Cory Schneider) vs Boston (Tuukka Rask)
Anaheim (John Gibson) vs Philadelphia (Steve Mason)
San Jose (Martin Jones) vs Pittsburgh (Marc-Andre Fleury)
Washington (Braden Holtby) vs Florida (Roberto Luongo)
Colorado (Semyon Varlamov) vs Tampa Bay (Ben Bishop)
Arizona (Louis Domingue) vs Montreal (Carey Price)
Toronto (Jhonas Enroth) vs Minnesota (Devan Dubnyk)
Los Angeles (Peter Budaj) vs Dallas (Kari Lehtonen)
Carolina (Eddie Lack) vs Calgary (Brian Elliott)
St Louis (Jake Allen) vs Edmonton (Cam Talbot)
Buffalo (Robin Lehner) vs Vancouver (Jacob Markstrom)

Carey Price, Louis Domingue and Jhonas Enroth will make their season debut's tonight.

Best of luck in your fantasy tonight,
Thanks for reading!
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