Fantasy Hockey Analysis

Fantasy Hockey Scouts: The Fantasy Five - Week 8

#1 Give 'em a Look

Tomas Fleischmann had made a nice steady rise up through the Capitals organization as he was one of Coach Boudreau’s favourites during their time in Hershey and he had improved his point totals during his first three full NHL seasons (30, 37 & 51 last year). But he seemed to fall out of favour this season and had been relegated to a lot of 3rd line duty and was a healthy scratch on two occasions. We has dealt to the Avs this week and while some may see it as a downgrade, Colorado is actually a higher scoring team so far this year and the PP is very strong as well. Fleischmann is expected to line up with Stastny & Hejduk on the Avs top line in his debut and with the way that Joe Sacco seems to get a lot out of new additions (think Peter Mueller last year and Kevin Shattenkirk this year), we wouldn’t be surprised to see Fleischmann get hot very quickly.

Others worth a look: David Jones (Col – LW), Marc Savard (Bos - C), Alex Pietrangelo (StL – D) and Semyon Varlamov (Wsh – G)

We’re giving you mixed signals here as when Anton Babchuk was traded to Calgary a few weeks ago we said to pick him up as we thought he’d be featured on the PP in Calgary a little more but eight games into his Flames career and he has no points, only eight shots and isn’t seeing much PP time (2:09/gm)… so this has turned out to be a bad move for him and he’s not good enough for you to bother being patient.

Others worth a boot: Shawn Horcoff (Edm – C), Brendan Morrison (Cgy – C), Kurtis Foster (Edm – D) and Antti Niemi (SJ – G)

Things were going so well for Chris Stewart so far this year as he was on pace for a monster season (around 90 pts, 100+ PIMs & 200+ shots) but maybe things were going too well and karma caught up to him last weekend as he broke his hand during a fight and is now out for 4-6 weeks. He may shy away from fighting when he returns but hopefully he’ll regain his scoring touch… but you’ll need to find an alternative for the next little while.

There’s the beginning of a little controversy in the Blackhawks net lately as Marty Turco has been pretty average all year and has only won two of his last eight starts while Corey Crawford has started five of the past eight games and has won them all. Crawford had been outstanding having not allowed more than three goals in a game yet this season until Tuesday night when he gave up five to the Blues but still managed to pull out the victory. Coach Q is never afraid to ride the hot hand so expect more starts from Crawford as long as he is giving them their best chance to win.

Not really a fantasy related link but The Pipeline Show is heaven for hockey fans, especially those that love the prospects. Dean Millard & Guy Flaming do a great job covering a bunch of levels of hockey during their twice weekly radio show, which you can listen to online, and their blog will introduce you to players that most fans have likely never heard of.