Fantasy Hockey Analysis

Fantasy Hockey Scouts: The Fantasy Five - Week 13

#1 Give 'em a Look

Dwayne Roloson has to feel like he won the lottery as he was traded from the sad-sack Islanders to one of the best teams in the league, the Tampa Bay Lightning on New Year’s Day. We expect Rollie the Goalie to thrive in Tampa as he goes from a team that gives up over 32 shots a game to a team that is second best in the league by only allowing 27.6 per game. In addition, he’ll finally get some goal support as the Islanders are 27th in the league in goals scored whereas the Lightning are 8th. Things started great for him with a shutout in his first game for the Bolts but then he followed it up by getting smoked by the Penguins last night… hopefully that was just a minor blip.

Others worth a look: Jason Pominville (Buf – RW), Alex Steen (StL - C), Kevin Bieksa (Van – D) and Pavel Kubina (TB – D)

Yikes… Simon Gagne, once a pretty prolific sniper, seems to have lost his touch. Don’t know if the injuries have caught up to him or if he’s still fighting the head/neck injury that he suffered earlier this season but he seems to be a shadow of his former self with only 3+4=7 in 23 games this year and only two points over his last 14 games. Even before this year, he’s seen his numbers steadily decline, his goals have gone from 47 in 2005/06 to 41, 7 (in 25 games), 34, 17 and now he’s on pace for only 8 this year.

Others worth a boot: Marco Sturm (LA – LW), Marek Zidlicky (Min – D), Mike Smith (TB - G) and Mike Leighton (Phi – G)

Rough week for Oilers rookie Jordan Eberle as he suffered what looked like a pretty serious ankle injury on New Year’s Day but it turned out to only be a sprain that will keep him out around 10 days. On top of that he had to have his appendix removed on Wednesday but the timing here is perfect as he’ll probably recover from that surgery and the ankle injury at the same time… kills two birds with one stone.

We’ve been talking about the goaltending situation in Philly quite a bit lately as there’s a lot of value to be had if one guy emerges as the #1 and any of the three goalies could have been the odd man out and sent packing. Well the Flyers ended all the speculation (for now) as they waived Michael Leighton and sent him to the AHL where he’s likely to remain until the playoffs. So now it’s down to Brian Boucher and Sergei Bobrovsky and while Bobrovsky has carried more of the load this season, it’s been Boucher who’s been seeing more action lately as he’s 7-1-1 over his last 10 games.

Janet Eagleson, one of the few women we know that likes fantasy hockey, with her weekly Frozen Fantasy column… this week she urges you to take some risks, gives some over & under-valued performers and hi-lites some sparsely owned players who could be drifting on your waiver wire.