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Post by Deleted on Oct 2, 2014 12:37:19 GMT -5
Okay, so I'm doing my best to get these out, but they take quite a bit of time. I hope to have them all done before the season starts. I'll be doing them alphabetically, and I'm open to suggestions as to what sorts of things you'd like me to cover.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 2, 2014 12:43:45 GMT -5
The Camarillo Kings Last year: 3rd in Whalers Conference, 6th overall in the regular season with 256 points (114-100-28). Lost in the first round to the Québec Bulldogs by a score of 5-6.
Out with the old... LW – Moulson RW – Dorsett RW – Grabner RW – Palmieri D – Ekholm D – Ekman-Larsson D – Gonchar D – Hjalmarsson D – Meszaros D – Murray D – Vlasic D – Spurgeon G – Jones G - Nabokov
...and in with the new! C/RW – Little C/LW – Johansson C – Petan LW – Ritchie RW – Virtanen D – Franson D – Morrissey D – Suter G – Mason G – Kuemper
Team Analysis Forwards: Kopitar and Perry pace the offense for this team, but there is great depth at forward with tons of guys who can put up over 20 goals.
Defense: Fantastic offensive production paced by Doughty and Suter. Lots of guys that can put up elite assist and ppp numbers. from the blue line. The offensive production unfortunately comes with a lack of grit. After Franson, Cowen, and Doughty there aren’t a lot of hits from the defense, and there is a glaring lack of blocked shots.
Goal: Any team that puts out Jonathan Quick each night has a chance to dominate in fantasy goaltending categories. Quick is backed up by the under-rated—though often inconsistent—Steve Mason, who looks to build on his successful year as a starter in Philly.
Why Camarillo will win: If Quick gets hot during the fantasy playoffs, coupled with this team’s elite offensive potential, there will be no stopping the Camarillo Kings from taking the championship this season.
Why Camarillo will lose: Lack of minor league depth could severely hurt this team when players inevitably go down with injuries.
Best contract: Bryan Little at $10 for 3 years is a fantastic deal. Little provides points as well as grit numbers while being eligible to play C or RW.
Worst contract: Though Mike Richards only has one more year left on his deal, his fantasy production is closer valued at the $1-$2 range instead of his ludicrous $30 price tag
ELC player of note: Lots of solid EL players, but C Andrew Shaw and LW Chris Kreider are both top players. Their ability to put up points and lots of hits makes them fantasy stars in the making in our league.
Ugliest Player: Anze Kopitar
Voted most likely: ...to trade for every L.A. Kings player, with Paul declaring “all the Kings are belong to us!,” then laughing maniacally.
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Post by Morweena Reimnoceri on Oct 2, 2014 13:41:10 GMT -5
I love everything about this.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 2, 2014 13:50:14 GMT -5
Caroline Kifekillers Last year: 4th in North Stars Conference, 8th overall in the regular season with 245 points (111-108-23). Missed the playoffs by 11 points.
Out with the old... C – Anisimov C – Danault C – McNeill D – Carlson LW – Raymond RW – Biggs D – Carlson D – Larsson D – Wideman
...and in with the new! C – Garbutt C – Krejci C – Samuelsson C – Turris LW – Ehlers LW – MacArthur LW – Nieto RW – Simmonds D – Phaneuf D – Johnson G – Jones
Team analysis Forwards: Not a lot of flash at the top, but definitely capable of producing solid numbers across the board. This group can be buoyed by young players taking a step forward and by Gaborik playing a full season in LA (or at least until he’s injured). Newcomers Krejci, Turris, MacArthur, and Simmonds are all signed to decent contracts and make this group formidable.
Defense: An all-around solid defensive core that’s only weakness may be Yandle’s +/-. Hard to not love a top 4 that includes Phaneuf, Johnson, Seabrook, and McDonagh. This team is 8 deep on the back-end.
Goal: Niemi and Howard make for a decent dynamic duo, but will their stats allow this team to compete with other fantasy teams?
Why Caroline will win: Solid all-around production with no major weaknesses will make Caroline a tough opponent capable of winning any and all categories each week.
Why Caroline will lose: A little bit of everything, but perhaps no singular strength that will allow Caroline to dominate any one category. What’s this team’s identity?
Best contract: Erik Johnson, who does a bit of everything well and is signed for the next three seasons for only $6? Yes please!
Worst contract: Matt Read for $10 is really, really bad, but at least it’s expiring. Ladislav Smid at $8 for two years? No thank you!
ELC player of note: Mats Zuccarello looks to build on a 2013-14 campaign where he put up 19 goals, 40 assists, and 17 ppp to go with an impressive 116 hits and 41 blocks. It will also be very interesting to see what kind of fantasy numbers Rasmus Ristolainen can put up over a full year with the Sabres.
Ugliest Player: Dion Phaneuf
Voted most likely: ...to find a way of using fantasy hockey to reduce our collective carbon footprints while planting trees, fighting bears, riding moose, and then analyzing everything using a superior knowledge of statistics.
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Post by Moscow Red Army on Oct 2, 2014 14:01:05 GMT -5
Ya, excellent job, Tim.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 2, 2014 14:57:46 GMT -5
Dynamo Atlanta Last year: 4th in Whalers Conference, 8th overall in the regular season with 250 points (112-104-26). Missed the playoffs by 6 points.
Out with the old... C – Krejci C – Grabovski C – Plekanec LW – Greening LW – MacArthur LW – Ovechkin LW – Steen RW – Perron RW – Voracek D – Forbort D – Staal G – Crawford G – Grubauer
...and in with the new! C – Bergeron C – Brown C – Eakin C – Larkin C – Lindholm LW – Roussel LW – Martin LW – Rinaldo RW – Niederreiter RW – Vanek RW – Williams D – Ekblad D – Grossmann G – Miller
Team analysis Forwards: Top heavy with Chicago stars Toews and Kane, Dynamo Atlanta is an extremely tough team that can pummel you into submission. If David Backes were Canadian, Don Cherry would kiss him on Hockey Night in Canada every single week. Backes, the prototypical Don Cherry hockey player, has the ability to do a bit of everything well, and this made him the top scoring player in our fantasy league last year.
Defense: Led by Zdeno Chara, this group is extremely capable offensively. They also project to block a lot of shots and give headaches to opposing teams. Chara, Keith, and Hedman make this a top heavy group, and there’s considerable fall off after them.
Goal: Roberto Luongo and Ryan Miller faced off in the gold medal match of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. Now they're teammates on Dynamo Atlanta. Both will be playing for new teams this year, and if they can rediscover their elite skills of the past, this could be the best fantasy tandem in our league. The flip side is that they could both continue to regress into fantasy obscurity.
Why Dynamo will win: Seriously, this team would be Don Cherry’s wet dream if all the players held Canadian passports. This is a mean, mean team that will grind its way to the championship. I like their compete level and ability to give it 110%.
Why Dynamo will lose: Lots of turnover from last year. Will the locker room be cohesive? If this turns into the year of Blackhawk down, this team will be in trouble. Could trading Ovechkin come back to haunt them?
Best contract: C Patrice Bergeron is a consistently underrated fantasy commodity. Having him for four years at $12 is a great price that should see him maintain a high level of productivity into his age 32 season.
Worst contract: Who the hell is LW Antoine Roussel and why is he getting $9 over three years just for 209 PIM???
ELC player of note: The man with two last names, RW Reilly Smith, put up over 50 points with very little ice time. If his minutes go up, he could be in line for a big year. D Victor Hedman made a huge jump in production last year, but can he maintain or build on it?
Ugliest Player: Zdeno Chara
Voted most likely: ...to bring Don Cherry’s brand of rock’em sock’em hockey to Atlanta. Come to the fights and watch a hockey game break out!
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St. Roch Hawks
General Manager
Doug
Every season is a reincarnation - and nobody does reincarnation better than me
Posts: 2,785
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Post by St. Roch Hawks on Oct 2, 2014 15:25:17 GMT -5
Love the Cherry meme...HA!
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Post by Deleted on Oct 2, 2014 20:30:53 GMT -5
Finnish Flash Last year: 5th in Whalers Conference, 9th overall in the regular season with 237 points (106-111-25). Missed the playoffs by 19 points.
Out with the old... Pretty much everyone...
...and in with the new: Nearly everyone... ...but especially C Crosby, C Tavares, RW Ovechkin, G Crawford, and G Lundqvist.
Team analysis Forwards: Crosby! Ovechkin! Tavares! Add in soon-to-be star Johansen, super grinder Lucic, and a bunch of quality scorers, and you’ve got a formula for dominance. As dominant as the forward group might be, there does seem to be a big falloff with the bottom 5 fowards.
Defense: Erik Karlsson is a machine sent from the future to dominate the NHL. Ehrhoff could have a huuuuuge year if he plays on the top power play unit in Pittsburgh. Great group of offensive defensemen, though a bit light on the grits stats. Brent Burns’ flexibility to play both D and RW allows the team additional roster flexibility.
Goal: Lundqvist? Check. Bobrovsky? Check. Crawford as a third option? Wow. This team is extremely deep at goal. All three goalies could be up for the Vezina trophy at the end of the year.
Why Finland will win: Fantastically deep offense mixed with three elite goalies means that this team is going to win a lot of games. I’m sure Doug is already finding a prominent place in his home for the 2014/15 championship trophy—and he’s not wrong to do so.
Why Finland will lose: Is it a coincidence that “Finnish Flash” nearly rhymes with “Finish last”? I think not. The lack of depth at the bottom of this roster and in the defense could come back to haunt Doug when the injury bugs come biting. This team has a gift at finding creative ways to lose and then trade all and any useful players in a panic while stocking up for some future championship run. Will the future be now?
Best contract: G Corey Crawford for four years at $17 per year is an absolute steal. Some teams are going to be kicking themselves for passing on him. Erik Karlsson has just one year left on his deal, but the $8 price tag is insanely low. He’ll be quadrupling that in free agency next year.
Worst contract: I like David Clarkson as a bounce back candidate. Wait, no I don’t. No one does. Not even Clarkson. At $15 for two more years? What a waste of a roster spot on an otherwise good team.
ELC player of note: The Flash will be relying heavily on defensemen Dougie Hamilton and Justin Schultz, who are both entering their third year in the league. But the most important EL player is goalie Sergei Bobrovsky, who still has two more years of EL options. Star-in-the-making Ryan Johansen has not been able to come to terms on contract with Columbus and could miss significant time to start the year.
Ugliest Player: Alex Ovechkin
Voted most likely: ...to trade for all the star players in the NHL, only to trade them away for draft picks, then trade those draft picks back for the players again, all while constantly lurking on the Dynasty Hockey League proboard and posting repeatedly in the shoutbox about how great this team is.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 5, 2014 3:15:48 GMT -5
Amazing, great work! Love it.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 6, 2014 12:05:08 GMT -5
Gravol Datsyuk Last year: 1st in Whalers Conference, 2nd overall in the regular season with 285 points (130-87-25). Lost to the Québec Bulldogs in the second round of the playoffs.
Forwards: The Gravol Datsyuk’s forwards are headlined by Pavel Datsyuk—the namesake for this team. But after Pavel, there is a huge talent drop off. This team features a solid group of young and gritty forwards who will struggle as a group to put up points, with only two players—Pavel Datsyuk and Patric Hornqvist—to have ever scored over 30 goals or more in an NHL season. This forward crew is further hurt by the loss of Tyler Seguin who was traded to the Caroline Kifekillers in a trade described as:
Defense: Similar to the forwards, this group is very young. Radko Gudas puts up some incredible hit and block numbers, but has yet to play 100 regular season games. Matt Niskanen put up huge offensive numbers in Pittsburgh, but will he be able to keep it up now that he’s signed with Washington? Impressive youngsters Trouba, Reinhart, Josi, and Faulk make for great additions to any NHL team, but will they provide enough value in our fantasy league?
Goal: Cory Schneider looks to bounce back after a so-so year in New Jersey where he only played 45 games. John Gibson enters the season as the number one goalie in Anaheim—but who’s to say how many games he’ll start in his first full season? This tandem looks good as a long-term duo, but are a high-risk/high-reward gamble for this season.
Why Gravol will win: Smart team management and full belief in the youth movement, this team’s young legs will find a way of surpassing expectations and talent ceilings to produce a surprisingly competitive team that finds a way to win in spite of the projections.
Why Gravol will lose: Too young, too inexperienced, with management spending too much time focussed on how to use the ten 2015 draft picks that have been amassed over the last few years. I suspect Gravol’s 2015 first round pick might be worth holding on to...
Best contract: It was C Tyler Seguin ($13 over 2 years), but he has been recently traded... now it is likely RW Patric Hornqvist who is signed for $12 over 4 years. Hornqvist’s value will be greatly determined by who he plays with on the Penguins, but with both Crosby and Malkin as possible centres, it seems likely that Hornqvist will have his best offensive output to date this year and moving forward could be a fantastic bargain as long as he’s in Pittsburgh.
Worst contract: C/LW Brandon Dubinsky will be making $19 over the next 4 years. I like Dubinsky. He’s versatile, should get a lot of ice time, and brings a lot to the table, but $19 needs to give you more in this league than a utility guy.
ELC player of note: More so than any other team, the Gravol Datsyuk are completely relying on the organic growth of their EL players to take this team to the next level. Last year, C/RW Gustav Nyquist put up a ridiculous 28g and 20a in just 57 games. If he’s able to come close to matching that per-game production—or even improve on it—then Gravol’s in for a good year. After investing the top pick in the 2012 EL player draft in a Russian sniper, Gravol was expecting much more out of RW Nail Yakupov. Yakupov put up an anorexic 23 points in 63 games. Will this be the year that he starts to meet his potential? Or will he replace Alexandre Daigle as the biggest first-overall bust in NHL history?
Ugliest Player: Pavel Datsyuk
Voted most likely: ...to say something friendly in the shoutbox, to need fake ID’s to get the team’s players into bars, and to win the 2015 Connor McDavid sweepstakes.
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St. Roch Hawks
General Manager
Doug
Every season is a reincarnation - and nobody does reincarnation better than me
Posts: 2,785
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Post by St. Roch Hawks on Oct 6, 2014 12:18:16 GMT -5
"John Gibson enters the season as the number one goalie in Anaheim..." No he doesn't. Other than that this is another home run! Great stuff, Tim. Keep 'em coming.
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Post by Vegas Aces Wild on Oct 6, 2014 12:19:38 GMT -5
Good assessment Tim. And, although craaaaaazy, there are methods to Gravol's madness.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 6, 2014 12:35:22 GMT -5
Mandalore Mythosaurs
Last year: As the now defunct Portland Flying Monkeys, this team was 6th in Whalers Conference, 12th overall in the regular season with 172 points (74-144-24). Missed the playoffs by a whopping 84 points.
Forwards: Malkin, Landeskog, and MacKinnon, mixed with Oshie, Eberle, and Stastny, make for a nice mix of forwards. While this group projects to do very well in assists, ppp, and +/-, there is an overall lack of goal-scoring and grit, never mind a lack of veteran depth.
Defense: A very young group of defensemen mixed with the solid grit of Mark Stuart. With Dumba, Gormley, and de Haan really just getting their first tastes of the NHL, this group will likely struggle from a lack of experience. Will this be the year that Cam Fowler makes the jump from decent offensive defenseman to star puck-moving, power-play quarterback?
Goal: Marc-Andre Fleury will get the bulk of the games for this team. Fleury was once the next-Martin Brodeur, but his inconsistent play has made him into one of the greatest big-ticket question marks in the NHL. He could put up top 5 fantasy stats, or he could be outside of the top 20 goalies. Victor Fasth looks to try to establish himself as more than a backup in Edmonton, and while he had great numbers playing in Anaheim, Edmonton is a far inferior team. Fasth will be splitting duties with Big Red alumni Ben Scrivens, and it’s a coin toss as to who will take the reigns as the feature goalie.
Why Mandalore will win: A great disturbance in the Force causes the fantasy hockey universe to bend reality in Mandalore’s favour.
Why Mandalore will lose: Like the Mandalorian Mythosaur, Mandalore’s chances for winning in 2014 have been extinct since a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
Best contract: Getting C Paul Stastny for just $7 over 3 years is a great bargain. It will be interesting to see how his output adapts to playing in St Louis, but I’m very optimistic that he could be a better fantasy player for the Blues than he was for the Avs.
Worst contract: It’s impossible to not love what LW Gabriel Landeskog brings to the table as a real NHL player and as a fantasy hockey player. But $45 over 5 years is actually crazy. That’s the same amount that Sidney Crosby makes per year, and Landeskog is far from being Crosby. Great player, great term, but this is a potential future cap-crippling price tag.
ELC player of note: LW Tomas Hertl and RW Kyle Palmieri are two exciting wingers who could each put up over 20 goals and 50 points this year. But this team’s top EL player is unquestionably Nathan MacKinnon, who put up 63 points as an 18 year old last year. MacKinnon will look to improve on those numbers, and projects to be a very, very good player. It’s only a matter of time before he becomes a point-per-game (or better) player.
Ugliest Player: Evgeni Malkin
Voted most likely: ...to trade away 2014/15 cap space, and to sell off his best players to the highest bidder—all with an eye to competing next year and beyond. In the immortal words of Gold Five, "Stay on target!"
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St. Roch Hawks
General Manager
Doug
Every season is a reincarnation - and nobody does reincarnation better than me
Posts: 2,785
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Post by St. Roch Hawks on Oct 6, 2014 13:03:09 GMT -5
"Why Mandalore will win: A great disturbance in the Force causes the fantasy hockey universe to bend reality in Mandalore’s favour."
That might be the best line yet. HA!
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Post by Deleted on Oct 6, 2014 13:07:35 GMT -5
I love how everything is about me, and then it asks why Caroline will win and lose..
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