Fantasy Hockey Analysis

Fantasy Hockey Scouts: The Fantasy Five - Week #11

#1 Give 'em a Look

In his second season in the NHL (2005/06), Joffrey Lupul managed 28+25=53 & 296 shots for Anaheim and looked well on his way to stardom in the NHL. Well it's never gotten better than that for Lupul as those are all still career highs four years later. Lupul has been around the block but is back with the Ducks this year and while he had a bit of a slow start, he's come on lately with four goals in three games since returning from a bad back. He's found some chemistry with Getzlaf and Perry on the top line and has played more in the past three games than he had in any game all season.

Others worth a look: Chris Stewart (Col - W), Kyle Okposo (NYI - W), Lubomir Visnovsky (Edm – D) and Andy Greene (NJ – D)

We featured Ottawa's Alexei Kovalev in this space last week and it seems that his malaise is contagious and has been contracted by Jason Spezza. This is a guy who's averaged a point-per-game over his NHL career but he just can't seem to get it going this year without Dany Heatley and is currently on pace to finish below 50 points. He's 2+4=6 & minus-6 in his last 15 games and he just doesn't do enough in the other categories to justify a spot in your lineup. If dropping him outright is too drastic for your taste then at least bury him deep on your bench and pray for a revival.

Others worth a boot: Trent Hunter (NYI – W), Cam Barker (Chi – D), Steve Mason (Clb – G) and Manny Legace (Car – G)

We may have jinxed all goalies last week when we said that they seem to be pretty healthy this year... Philly's Ray Emery is the latest to go down. He's been dealing with an abdominal injury for a while now and the decision was made this week that he'll have surgery to fix the issue and he's expected to be out six weeks. Now, if you're big on the Flyguys and are buying what Peter Laviolette is selling then you might want to grab Emery's fill-in, Brian Boucher, but that could be risky business.

In the 10 games before Nikolai Khabibulin got hurt he was 2-7-1 and had seen his gaa puff up to over 3.00. In the 10 games since he's been out with a bad back, Jeff Drouin-Deslauriers has gone 6-3-1 and posted a respectable 2.80 gaa & .911 sv% while winning his last four in a row on the road. Now Khabibulin has an insanity driven four-year big-money contract so he'll still be the #1 when he gets back healthy but he's rarely healthy and JDD has probably earned himself a bigger share of the starts with his fine play lately.

Are you familiar with blatant self-promotion?... good, cause we'd like to tell you about a new feature over at Fantasy Hockey Scouts where we dive into the Crease Conflictsa> of every team in the league to help you take advantage of those goalie situations that are about to flip. Its like the Crease Conflicts section above, except 30 times better.