Another Trade

November 20, 2011

This morning, the Milan Micahleks traded Gabriel Landeskog, Cam Fowler and a 2012 3rd round pick to the Winter Claassics for Patrick Marleau and Kyle Quincey.

Analysis: According to the Milan Michalek's GM, "this trade was a difficult decision for our organization, but we knew we had to give value to get value." He denied allegations that the Fowler trade was intended as a wake-up call for teammate Ryan Getzlaf. Coming over in Landeskog's slot is Marleau, "a keeper without hesitation." Marleau went in the 3rd round of the inaugural KL draft last year. He's been over a point-per-game in three of his last five seasons, and he's the model of reliability, missing, on average, just two games a year over his 13-year career. At 32, he still has a few good seasons left on a top team. Quincey is not a keeper on this roster but he's having a great season and should fill the 4th d-man slot nicely.

The Winter Claassics get younger, faster, and sexier. The jury is still out on whether 2nd overall pick Landeskog is "elite" enough to be a superstar. Fowler is either experiencing a sophomore slump or it looks like he is because his whole team is in a protracted slump. But both players have lots of upside: Landeskog is 4th in the league in shots, for example. We will re-examine this trade in a few years and there will be a clear winner - and that winner will likely be Claassen.

Breaking: Blockbuster Trade

Our first in-season trade just transpired. It took nearly a week of protracted negotiations, some name-calling and some blackmailing with compromising photos, but finally the GMs of the Powder Rangers and Patrik Stefans reached a blockbuster deal.

To the Powder Rangers: Niemi, Leino, Gudbranson, the Patrik Stefans' 3rd rounder in 2012

To the Patrik Stefans: Mason, Couture, Ekman-Larsson, the Rangers' 6th rounder in 2012

Analysis:

The fifth place Powder Rangers are led by two top-ten (I’ll admit it now) franchise players in Kopitar and Stamkos, but plagued but underwhelming early performances from a number of should-be scoring roster forwards (Okposo, Grabner, Cole and Havlat all sit below eight points). So newly acquired disappointment Ville Leino should fit right in. Gudbranson, despite Wittman’s attempt to sell his fantasy potential, is a slot filler in this trade and Regehr is well aware of that. This is a bit of a gamble as the P-Rangers are only carrying five defencemen this year – a serious injury to the top four would spell trouble. The real driver for this trade was the P-Rangers’ issues in the crease – Hiller is not cutting it as a starter and Mason isn’t playing well enough to be a fantasy backup keeper, never mind an NHL starter. Niemi shores up the P-Rangers’ goaltending for the foreseeable future. However, as he slots into Mason’s roster spot, his impact will not be felt until he overtakes Hiller as the scoring goalie – eight points to make up.

The 12^th place (but only 12 points behind fifth) Patrik Stefans have handed the starting goaltender duties to a young Corey Crawford. He’s played well enough to earn it, but Wittman acknowledges the serious risk he is now exposed to should an injury occur. When you think about it though, very few teams in the KL have two legitimate goaltenders that keep pace with each other for the whole season such that one could replace the other if injured. It’s a risk we all take and one history has shown we are prepared to deal with when it arises. Mason provides some diamond-in-the-rough potential, but probably less than the Stefans gave up in Leino. Ekman-Larsson solidifies a strong core of young and old on defence (Kulikov, Wisniewski, Gonchar, Pronger). He’s potentially ripe enough to keep next year (or at least have trade value) and provides injury insurance this year. Couture will start two points back of the scoring roster in Leino’s spot and should be contributing within a week or two. Long-term, we all know Couture is good, but the jury is still out on whether he’s actually good or just or Setoguchi-good. Or worse, Cheechoo-good.

Recognizing a slight imbalance, the GMs agreed to swap 3^rd and 6^th round draft picks next year. That makes things pretty close in my mind. But it’s more fun if we pick a winner and loser. I have to give less value to any draft picks Regehr acquires because this year he took Chris Kunitz in the first round – so I’m declaring Stefan the winner, but by decision, not knockout. 

Unrelated news - a summary of free agent acquisitions to date:

date             team                     drop             add

10/17/2011 Dicklas Lidstroms D Girardi  MA Bergeron
10/23/2011 Schizzarks M Sheifele  M Michalek
10/23/2011 Patrik Stefans J Caron  M Read
10/26/2011 Joshfrey Krupuls M Zibanejad  J Lindstrom
10/28/2011 Powder Rangers A Stewart  C Higgins
10/29/2011 Moilers A McDonald  M Hanzal
10/31/2011 Winter Claassics J Leopold  K Quincey
11/2/2011 Milan Micahleks J Hudler  D Desharnais
11/7/2011 GPhil's Flyers S Elliot  C Potter 

The Perfect Night and Other Musings

The Perfect Night

It's too early in our league's history to tell, but the Teeyotes' 22-point performance last night may go down in history with Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point game or any of the all-too-common perfect games in baseball. In one night of incredible fantasy hockey, the Teeyotes earned more points than the Moilers, St. Jewish Blues and Winter Claassics did all week. The Bruins' 7-0 rout of the Leafs played a big role, as Teeyotes Thomas, Lucic and Bergeron combined for 11 points.

Schizz asked if this might be a record. I could only scan the previous blog posts, which went up Sundays and thus show the "points last night" from all the Saturdays last year. Saturdays almost always have the most games scheduled, so while it's possible but unlikely that someone would have earned more points on a different day, we can safely assume that 22 points is a new record. The previous best was 20 points from the Mackhawks last November; there were also a couple of 17 point nights. Of course, those scores a from a different era - one where shutout wins were worth 7.

Fy also had a pretty big week.

At This Time Last Year

• 51 points separated 1st from 15th, compared to 59 at present. 
• The Krupuls, Schizzarks and Teeyotes, who finished 1st, 2nd and 3rd, respectively, were in 11th, 10th and 14th. 
• G-Phil had just written a post, noting, "this has been a weird year with obscenely hot starts from okay players, and no production at all from previously consistent stars." 

Other Musings


On that note (this being a "weird year"), I thought it was worth sharing some excerpts from a sort-of impromptu fantasy hockey support group of five people that are GMs in the KL and members of a few other fantasy hockey leagues / gambling websites. I've left the names out, but you can probably figure it out. Warning, NSFW language:

I'm disgusted by how the first month of the season has played out.  

The Avs, Oil, Panthers, Stars, Coyotes, Leafs, Wild -- ranked 30th, 28th, 27th, 26th, 25th, 23rd, and 21st respectively by one of my power ranking sources pre-season -- have combined to go 50-22-10 to start the season.  That's the record of a potential President's Cup winning team.  The Sens have a better winning percentage than the Canucks.  Boston is the second worst team in hockey.  It's all absurd.

And don't get me started on individual players.  I guess we see it every year, with the Kessels and sorts who set out to more than triple their pre-season projections.  But even so, we're not just a week in right now, but about 15% of the way through the season, and some players who got out to hot starts have stayed on form.  While we all know about Kessel, who the fuck saw Lupul and Michalek on pace for 100?  Sure, that's not actually ever going to happen and I say neither breaks 60, but they're both already more than halfway to where I had them finishing originally.  And at the other end of the spectrum, while Pominville and Vanek are surging, Derek Roy has 4 points in 11 games, Ville Leino has 2 (FML - fuck my leino).  And that's not just a sobering sabering phenomenon.  Henrik needs to be Betterberg than 4 points, Eric's Stalled on 5, and Matt's Douching it up with 6.  On the blue-line, Marc-Andre Bergeron is on pace for more points than either Sedin, and even Buttfuck-Who-Corey-Potter has 8 points [Micah: I would have went with Corey Potter and the Deathly Hall-Nuge-Eberle Powerplay He Piggybacks On].  Also, who is Jason Garrison and what the fuck is he doing playing 25 mins per night in Florida and quarterbacking their PP?  Sure, regression to the mean will exert its force sooner or later, but you can't help but shake your head with some of this stuff from October.

I said I wouldn't do this, but I have to air my grievances about my shit luck with some players. I've already alluded to the horrid start of one Ville Leino, and I know you guys would say you're not all that surprised by the sluggishness of Iginla and Heatley, but I'm understandably disappointed that NOT ONE of my gambles are panning out.  Loktionov, Butler, Zuccarello, Caron, and Gudbranson... there's a good reason you still haven't heard of them, and won't until at least next season.  At least I flipped one for Matt Read who is due for another 4 point night, right?  And at the back, though my top 4 are in the overall top 20 for PPG for defensemen, off course Chris Pronger's dream start was too good to be true (I'm sure he's texting Bryan Berard on their brail-equipped Androids) and Wisnieski's anticipated start was truly just a dream.  

And a reply:

Thesis: Nikolai Khabibulin is #1 on the TSN NHL player rankings right now.  Enough said.

But not really enough said, because my fantasy hockey existence right now is much like a linesmen trying to hold Cal Clutterbuck back - I worked hard, put my time in, and got punched in the face anyway, twice.

Keepers: I think my D are probably exactly where everyone would have expected, my forwards are starting to finally show some life, but my goalie situation right now is embarassing with Optimus Reim injured by Decepticons and Carey Price looking like a young Roberto Luongo in October.  I'm fairly convinced the ship will right itself some, but I don't like being in the basement.

What the H?: I'm with you on this year.  I like the leafs and the oilers, but if you would have told me they were the two top teams in the NHL even 12 games into the season, I would have taken a dump on your living room carpet.

Individuals: Have I mentioned how ugly Phil Kessel is yet today? And i'm pretty sure Erik Karlsson hangs out behind KFC's banging everyone's sisters.  Eric Staal is a shocking -12 in addition to his abysmal play.  Derek Roy seems to not even be able to get a shot on net most nights (and playing on a line with Drew Stafford who is starting to look like he was a flash in the bed pan). Anaheim should sign Selanne to a 10 year contract right now, kidnap his children if they have to - he is involved on every goal that team has put up this year.  Kris Versteeg is on pace for 80+ pts which I think we all saw coming frankly.  Oh and Luke Adam has more points than Steven Stamkos and Ovechkin if anyone was wondering, as does Brian Campbell.

A final thought: Toronto players are #1 and #3 in points right now.  Ottawa players 5th, 13th, and 17th.  This shit just ain't right I tells yeah, it ain't right.  Except for Josh Harding, aren't we all glad to see him turn his career around?

There you have it. It's been a strange year so far, but maybe every year seems like a strange year, at least in November. If everything was predictable, fantasy hockey (and regular hockey, for those who care) wouldn't be as captivating. Leafs fans start talking about making the playoffs and Kessel for the Hart. Then they lose 7-0 to the Bruins. Canucks fans panic after a mediocre start. Then they beat the Blackhawks 6-0 (prediction).