I absolutely love me some fantasy hockey. There is nothing quite like beating your buddy and talking trash while doing so. While it provides the opportunity to pay attention to multiple teams throughout the league, opposed to only your hometown or favorite teams, it also allows you to know who is doing well and who are performing below their expected caliber. With the season being half over, here’s a list of some duds in this year’s fantasy pools.
Jason Spezza of the Ottawa Senators: Before you start disagreeing why Spezza, who has a point per game production this year, is even on this list, hear me out. Spezza is an excellent player and he has excellent numbers. But, he is injured all of the time. Less his rookie season and this season, Spezza has missed 83 games over 8 seasons. Yes, he has missed a whole season, an average of 10 games a year. For an Assistant Captain, I would expect him to be, well, playing more. Spezza is out this year with back surgery, which you would like to think did not creep up on him. That being said, he should of addressed the issue in the off-season.
Scott Hartnell of the Philadelphie Flyers: Hartnell Down is quite accurate. He’s a great player with a ton of heart both on and off the ice; it pains me to even include him on this list. In 13 games he has only 5 points. Last season he ended with with a career high of 37 goals and 30 assists for 67 points. He averaged 0.5 goals and 0.4 assists a game. This year he is only averaging 0.2 goals and 0.2 assists a game. On the bright side, for fantasy owners, he does have 43 penalty minutes. Unfortunately people did not draft him for penalty minutes alone, they drafted him for the whole package.
Marian Gaborik of the New York Rangers: Rumors are starting about him potentially being traded, and why wouldn’t you think that? Gaborik was the team last season, scoring 41 goals and adding 35 helpers. He also had 276 shots on goal. This year is anything but the last. In 27 games he has only 8 goals and 7 assists and 85 shots. He is down on average of 0.2 goals, 0.1 assists and 0.3 shots a game. Whatever has him not producing better change because I made a trade for him expecting him to have a better second half.
Tyler Myers of the Buffalo Sabres: Poor Buffalo, not doing well and firing Head Coach Lindy Ruff. While they did not make the playoffs last year, they were not as bad as they were this year. I am a firm believer that the product on the ice is a combination of the player and the coaching, but when it comes to the Sabres, I think it is more of the players. Myers, there 23 year old defenseman who is expected to be a player to build your franchise around is just not playing well. He is not a large point producing player, but at just 1 goal and 3 assists and a minus 6 rating in 26 games played, it is hard not to notice how awful he has been this year. You can overlook the points, but the minus rating needs to be better. Most would say that it takes longer for defense to get good in the NHL, so hopefully the Sabres and fans can conclude it is only that.
Brian Elliott of the St. Louis Blues: In 11 games played the netminder has a 3-6-0 record. That equates to a little less than a quarter of the games started last year but 4 more losses away from matching last year’s numbers. Think about that for a second. To match his last year’s loss count, if there were 26 games remaining, and if he was to start every one of them, he could only lose 4 more games to match last year’s numbers. His 3.65 goals against average and .851 save percentage is drastically different than last year’s 1.56 goals against average and .940 save percentage. How a player can change that much in one season I do not know.
