KL Week in Review: Week 4

The standings as of the end of gameplay, Monday October 28:

1	Powder Rangers	128
2	Fylanders	127
3	Mackhawks	126
4	G-Phil's Flyers	125
5	Moilers	122
6	Los Samjawors Kings	119
7	Winter Claassics	118
8	Schizzarks	117
9	Milan Micahleks	117
10	Dicklas Lidstroms	112
11	Patrik Stefans	109
12	Teeyotes	104
13	Joshfrey Krupuls	103
14	Vanrooser Canicks	97
15	Quebec Rordiques	96
16	W-Benham/Scranton Parkers	94

At risk of sounding trite, things are more or less as expected, with the broad exception of the Los Samjawors Kings, who continue to reap the benefits of Niemi and Crosby.

Also of note, the Powder Rangers, who sat 10 points back of the Fylanders and temporarily seized first place (I say temporary because I am writing this on a Wednesday and I happen to know that the Mackhawks had a huge night and are sitting in 1st presently). 

Looking Ahead
There have been a few moves both in the KL and in the NHL this past week and teams will be looking to see if they pay dividends. 

The Fylanders and the Teeyotes look to benefit in a huge way from the Moulson-Vanek trade, as Vanek will be playing top line minutes with John Tavares. If they click, Vanek could hit 50 goals and Tavares should be a shoo-in for 100. Are the Fylanders now the clear favourites to with the KL?

Stick-tap of the Week
Congratulations to the Winter Claassics, who finally got a goal from Chris Kreider!

Transactions

I have a few to catch up on here. 

10/22/2013 Trade

The Quebec Rordiques send:

Dustin Brown, Brendan Smith, 2014 6th round draft pick

to the Dicklas Lidstroms for:

Drew Stafford and Michael Del Zotto

The Quebec Rordiques noted, correctly, that they "needed a D with Boyle going down and [their] D being a mess generally." Clearly Del Zotto is struggling early but in most other years would be competitive for a keeper roster slot. 

In exchange the Rordiques had to part with Dustin Brown, who could challenge for a scoring roster spot. Stafford, despite early struggles, is no slouch either, being barely removed from two consecutive 50 point seasons.  Perhaps there might be some chemistry with Matt Moulson? 

10/26/2013 FA pickup

The Los Samjawors Kings drop Ryane Clowe and add Mike Santorelli

Ryane Clowe sucks. I hate his name. Mike Santorelli is the hot hand right now. Has a much better name. Fun Fact: I learned, in adding this trade, that there is a dude named "Michal Macho" drafted in 2000 by the Sharks. He has not played an NHL game and is not a goon, both of which are disappointing.

10/28/2013 Trade

The Los Samjawors Kings send:

Ben Bishop and Tyler Myers

to the Teeyotes for:

Evgeni Nabokov and Brent Seabrook

Rumours have suggested that the busy Los Samjawors Kings have been trying to move Ben Bishop for some time - and for good reason. Bishop has seized the starting job in Tampa and has posted very good numbers. The Teeyotes - in desperate need of any goalie period - had to give up Brent Seabrook to get him. Look for the surprisingly engaged Teeyotes to attempt to shore up their defence corps if they wish to be a playoff team this year. 

Seriously I am so excited to see Teehan make a trade.  

Transaction - Six player shake-up!

The Wilkes-Benham/Scranton Parkers send:

Tim Thomas + Timonen + Matt Read + a 10th round 2014 pick + a conditional pick (see below) 

To the Fylanders, in exchange for:

Mike Smith + Nikitin + Tatar + a 7th round 2014 pick + a conditional pick (see below) 

Condition: If Matt Read makes the Fylanders Scoring Roster (or otherwise would if Fy trades him or add/drops him) an additional trade takes place (my 6th round 2015 pick for Romany's 10th round 2015 pick).

Analysis:
Two old fashioned hockey trades in a row??
 
Pretty easy to read between the lines here - the Fylanders are blessed with one excellent goalie in MAF (in fantasy hockey anyways, but I digress), which made Mike Smith expendable. The Parkers needed a goalie - any goalie - in a huge way, because otherwise they have a pretty solid team so far.

The cost to get Mike Smith was Kimmo "There's no I in" Timonen "at least not where you'd think". In classic Fylanders fashion, they also managed to extract Matt Read, who has high end scoring potential but has disappointed since his rookie season. 

Tomas Tatar makes more sense on the Parkers young team than the Fylanders. 

Transactions (first trade of the season!)

Two transactions to report.

Add/Drop
10/19/2013 Powder Rangers drop Kyle Palmieri and add Jiri Tlusty

Hilariously, the day the Patrik Stefans dropped Jiri Tlusty, he found his scoring touch, potting 2 while playing on the top line with Semin and Staal. The Powder Rangers almost immediately picked him up. Get your side bets going on Tlusty vs. Arcobello! (hint: Tlusty will score more points than Arcobello this year). 

Trade

10/22/2013 
The Dicklas Lidstroms send:

• Drew Stafford
• Michael Del Zotto 

to the Quebec Rordiques for:

• Dustin Brown
• Brendan Smith 
• Rordiques 6th rounder in 2014

A good old fashioned hockey trade.

The Rordiques have lost Boyle for at least a while and are generally weak at that position. Del Zotto should fill a need now and in the future as he may make the Rordique's keeper list, assuming he (and the Rangers) bump their atrocious start. In exchange he traded from a position of strength - his fairly deep set of forwards. Dustin Brown was expendable for the Rordiques. Stafford may or may not be an impact player for the Rordiques this year - if not, he will be a mere filler to make the trade happen.

On the flipside, the Dicklas Lidstroms have defence depth to spare, and in the words of the Lidstrom's GM, "drafting Enstrom made [Del Zotto] expendable." Brown should flesh out the scoring roster a bit and at least provide some stability in one of those final two scoring roster slots.

Add/Drop
10/22/2013 Dicklas Lidstroms drop Brendan Smith and add Sami Salo

Related to the above trade, the Lidstroms couldn't resist Sami Salo's 5 points in 7 games. The guy finally - finally - had something close to a full season last year. Injury threat aside, Salo should give the Lidstroms some much-needed veteran depth on a team featuring Jared Spurgeon, Patrick Wierciock and Ryan Murphy as top 4 scoring roster d-men.  Not a bad set of young defencemen, no doubt, but they have 230 NHL games combined (Spurgeon is the most experienced with a career high of 23 points).

KL Week in Review: Week 3

So I got busy yesterday and forgot to take a screenshot. I also have some transactions to announce. However, this is the way the standings ended up yesterday (points include Monday night):

Name	TTL
Fylanders	103
Mackhawks	98
Powder Rangers	93
G-Phil's Flyers	92
Moilers	91
Winter Claassics	89
Los Samjawors Kings	87
Milan Micahleks	86
Dicklas Lidstroms	83
Teeyotes	81
Patrik Stefans	79
Schizzarks	77
Vanrooser Canicks	75
Joshfrey Krupuls	74
W-Benham/Scranton Parkers	72
Quebec Rordiques	70

The Fylanders remain atop the standings for the 2nd week in a row. I keep telling myself that there is simply no way MAF is going to break the modern-day KL record for goalie points, and that there is no way Joe Pavelski, Nicklas Backstrom, JVR, Sean Monahan, Brent Burns, and Michael Grabner are going to all be PPG+ players this year, but so far they've proven me wrong.

Rising:
The Milan Micahleks. They have gone from last place to a somewhat more appropriate 8th place. 

Falling:
The G-Phil's Flyers. Good production throughout the lineup but just not enough to keep up with the top 3 this week.  Also the Quebec Rordiques, who have fallen from 13th last week to dead last.The KL's newest GM inherited a team that is going to require patience and careful guidance.

Surprises:
The expansion Los Samjawors Kings have moved into a playoff position, having hovered just outside for the bulk of this young season. Is this a plucky young team punching outside its weight class trying to prove the old guard wrong, or is this merely an artifact of a small sample size?

Transactions

A few roster changes yesterday and today (listed with effective dates - as a reminder, your add/drops take effect the next day, not the date the add/drop is made):

10/18/2013 Quebec Rordiques drop Charlie Coyle and add Chris Higgins

10/19/2013 Wilkes-Benham/Scranton Parkers drop Ben Jovejoy and add Marc-Edouard Vlasic

10/19/2013 Patrik Stefans drop Jiri Tlusty and add Mark Arcobello

The Rordiques make their very first free agent add/drop (super adorable, like watching a baby take its first steps), snapping up Chris Higgins. Higgins has looked quite good under Tortorella and is getting quite a bit of ice time in various situations. He isn't going to lead the Rordiques in scoring but should be an upgrade on Charlie Coyle. Reminder: Charlie Coyle is available for pickup notwithstanding his age (born in 1992) because he was dropped from a roster. 

Wilkes-Benham/Scranton Parkers GM, Romany Benham-Parker, has picked up the red-hot Marc-Edouard Vlasic. They have dropped Ben Lovejoy, who with only three syllables all season clearly does not fit into the team's long-term naming scheme. 

The Patrik Stefans have once again dipped into their inscrutable SYSTEM to pull up yet another player no one has ever heard of in Mark Arcobello. Jiri Tlusty (who the Stefans kept from last year) goes to the scrap heap. In fairness, Arcobello has 8 assists in 8 games playing with Eberle and Hall.

KL Week in Review: Week 2

So, we have completed the second full week of competition. Here's the standings:

Early surprises

Of course, we are still in the early days of the season and its hard to draw too many conclusions. However, subject to a couple surprises, generally speaking the teams are shaking themselves into their expected positions (I'm not sure this is a good thing - perhaps that is something the new Commissioner wants to address? Feel free to post ideas for increasing parity).

1) The Winter Claassics in 5th place (though my projection does suggest Claassen will finish in 6th). This may well be the first year in KL history that the Claassics GM does not advocate for dissolution of the league ("seriously guys, its not because my team is terrible.")

2) The Milan Micahleks and the Schizzarks in last place (aka the "expansion slots"). I projected them in 3rd and 4th respectively. Why? Well, injuries to Rick Nash, Vincent Lecavalier and James Neal certainly don't help, but a few extra points from those players wouldn't bump them out of the dregs. Slow starts to depth players is killing them. Note that the opposite is also true: hot starts for the top teams have artificially inflated point totals (The Fylanders will not get 223 points from M-A Fleury, nor will Mathieu Perreault score at a PPG pace for the Flyers this year).

3) The Los Samjawors Kings are somehow tied for 9th place despite being the only team remaining with zero point players on their roster (both Dmitry Kulikov and Erik Gudbranson play tonight, so c'mon Panthers!). Why are they not in last place? 10 points from Niemi, a little fella named Sidney Crosby and a PPG pace from Grabovski (fuck).

Projections

Its really early in the season, and already I can feel panic rising amongst bottom-feeders. I also hear that Fy (currently #1) has been seen already spending his expected 1st place winnings around Victoria.

Some of you may know that this year I decided to spring for Dobber's Guide as my primary source for projections. Time will tell whether that was a good move or not, but one of the benefits of the package is that you get the projections in a nicely organized, sortable, filterable spreadsheet. Taking a cue from the Patrick Stefans GM's playbook, I thought it might be interesting to create a spreadsheet that inserted the projected points of each of our players and count up the top 9/4/1 to see what the end of the season might look like. 

The results are interesting:

1	G-Phil's Flyers	931
2	Moilers	862
3	Milan Micahleks	852
4	Schizzarks	820
5	Dicklas Lidstroms	810
6	Winter Claassics	803
7	Powder Rangers	793
8	Joshfrey Krupuls	790
9	Fylanders	786
10	Mackhawks	778
11	Quebec Rordiques	778
12	Teeyotes	750
13	Patrik Stefans	743
14	W-Benham/Scranton Parkers	741
15	Los Samjawors Kings	734
16	Vanrooser Canicks	712

I don't think a top 5 finish like projected above would surprise anyone. Obviously the Flyers are the favourites to repeat. The Moilers have been very good recently and a good draft may help. The Micahleks may finally taste a money spot, and both the Schizzarks and Dicklas Lidstroms have been competitive.

But seriously, what the fuck are the Winter Claassics doing in 6th place?? 
Let's look a bit closer at the projections for their season:

D	P.K. Subban	62
D	Mike Green	59
D	Matthew Carle	41
D	Raphael Diaz	35

The top 4 projected D are where he makes up the bulk of his points, with a huge season for Subban, a rebound season for Green, and good performances from Carle and Diaz. The rest of his forward group are all good (not great) fantasy performers - what the Claassics lack in top end talent they make up for a group of bottom forwards that will be above average across the board. I think this reinforces the general consensus that the Claassics GM did a fine job at the draft this year (Erat aside, but who saw that coming?)

Also, the Fylanders in 9th? 
Dobber predicts declines across the board from the Fylander's aging forward group, with no single player scoring at > PPG. That said, the Fylander's roster rarely looks the same at the end of the season as it did at the start, so who knows what might happen here.

WTF happened to the Vanrooser Canicks? 
This, folks, is what happens when you lose your franchise forward to the KHL. I am told that Canicks GM Nick Roos and NJ Devils GM Lou Lamoriello have been seen together poking pins into dolls and filling Matryoshka dolls with their tears. 

General observations 
Top 4 Total Defence Points

League Average: 164.625 points
Best: G-Phil's Flyers at 203. Second, Claassics at 197 (Subban and a bounce-back from Green). Third, Moilers at 195.

Worst: Los Samjawors Kings, with 134. Rordiques, Teeyotes, and Canicks all with less than 150 points on the back end.

Top 9 Total Offence Points

League Average: 542.93 points

Best: G-Phil's Flyers, by a wide margin - 630. Shizzarks in the 570 range. Moilers and the Joshfrey Krupuls in the 560s.

Worst: Canicks, by a mile, with 480. Wilkes-Benham/Scranton Parkers with 507, the Patrick Stefans with 508. 

Questions? Comments? Want to see the spreadsheet? Let me know.