Welcome to Fantasy Hockey Life presented by fan Tracks. Here your source of information
and analysis to help you win your fantasy hockey league. Block off, hot
a, step hit on, stay lock. Here's your hosts, Jesse Severe
and Victor Nuno Fantasy Hockey Live. Back to you once again. Jesse Severe
from fan Tracks over there, you know him. Victor Nuno ep ringside Victor.
How you doing today? I'm doing great, Jesse. Yeah, it's
definitely nice day outside. All of the rain is coming and things might flood
over here. Hopefully I'll be able to swim my way out of it.
How are you doing? I'll tell you what, I'll do you one better.
We've had no snow for I swear it's been over a month and today
we got four or five inches. It's just bizarre. Uh. Luckily went
out there a snowblow at seven o'clock, so my daughter can go to school
and everything else seems to be hitting in Melton. So this has been Wisconsin
weather with Jesse Severe. Yeah no, so we'll see how that goes.
But the season is almost done. March came in like a lamb vicker.
It's going to go out like a lion. That's what I say, Are
you familiar with that? Saying nope, I find more and more people are
not. It used to be March comes in like a lamb, out like
a lion, or in the lion out like a lamb, So the weather
is only bad at one end of the month, and it came in like
the lamb this year, so it's going out like I think I'm the only
one who knew this. Maybe my mom just came up with this stuff.
I don't know. Maybe, oh gosh, if your fantasy hockey season came
in like a lamb and you're afraid it's going to go out like a lion
in March this year, then maybe you want to come and commiserate or sell
with people who also appreciate fantasy hockey. And those are the few the proud.
In our Fantasy Hockey discord, the Fantasy Hockey Life Discord. All you
have to do to join up is hit Victor and myself up at fan Hockey
Life for me at Victor New No. Twelve for Victor Or, just email
us. Email still works, doesn't it? Fantasyhockeylife at gmail dot com.
We'll give you a link. That's what you need, that's how you join
discords. If you haven't before, it's cool little program. If you haven't
done it before, it's a little bit milder of the social network because the
people in their enjoy life and things like that. So Victor, there's also
a Patreon. I know we had at least one big upgrade in our Patreon
today and more and more people are getting into it. And why would they
do that? I think there's lots of reasons. The reason, the most
recent reason was wanting a little more detailed analysis of their team, what to
do offseason moves, trade trades, draft, those kinds of things, what
to do about different guys, and that's the roster doctor, as we call
it. So that's one of the great perks you can do that. There's
obviously the player cards, which are my favorite new thing that we're rolling out
and still tweaking some of the features on it. We have our ranking lists,
We have all kinds of cool things over at the website, including reports
for prospects, and we're going to have all kinds of more things up there
soon, like the twenty twenty four draft ranks. But yeah, there's some
good stuff patron casts looking forward to all those kinds of things and playing in
the tidy, which is something you can get on the list for next year
when we open up a new division. There should be at least half a
dozen spots or so, if not more so. Yeah, check it out
patreon dot com slash Fantasy Hockey Life. I'm still doing tidy right now.
I'm going for that number seven pick in my division because I pulled that late
season rebuilt, got myself in the middle, so that now I'm instead of
being a first round out, most likely in the playoffs, I hope to
be picking and at least seventh in this year's draft victor. Yeah, seventh
overall is nice. What's even nicer is playing for the championship and the chance
to get promoted. That show off that's where I ended up. Yeah,
it was. It was. It was a weird season. There was a
lot of moving around, a lot of machinations. My team was good,
but it wasn't amazing. We did that that episode talking about all the host
of trades and I ended up finishing fifth, but knocked out two of the
top teams on my way to the championship. So it's me and Mutant Monsters
Quicksmith, and it's it's gonna be it's gonna be quite the battle. It's
gone back and forth already with some big days, so I'm really I'm living
on Bradon Point. Nathan McKinnon my superstars to try to carry me to the
championship. But it's gonna be funny the way. Only one of us gets
to go up, so it's for all the marvels. That's what's fun.
And whichever one of us doesn't make it, have a really strong team next
year. Hopefully try to work it out then. But yeah, so as
really fun league, and it's fun to be in the championship. Neither one
of us have been this close before, so it's nice to see that to
fruition. Yeah, it is good times, Victor, And I wish you
luck, and I wish our listener luck because they're probably a patron and they
deserve luck too. But we'll see how that comes out. That's exciting stuff,
Victor. We're gonna take a break because we have things to discuss.
It's reflection time. It's contemplation time, Victor. At the beginning of the
season, we did something called our Ketchup and Mustard episode, the two great
American condiments. Everybody knows that Mustard is the superior of the two. Ketchup
was just talking about the transitions, the transactions that took place after the team
previews, but before the beginning of the season, because of course we start
our team previews all the way the heck back in April and May, and
they keep rolling all the way up to October. So things happen with the
teams that we preview after that, and we wanted it just because we're obsessive,
compulsive, we like to get all that in and we did. Then
there's the mustard side, Victor and I through on the spice through on the
spicy mustard of some hot takes going into the season, and that was we
went through all the teams in the NHL. We took turns and we each
gave a hot take or what each of us picked half of the teams and
gave hot takes on them. And now today what's going to happen is we're
going back to look at those takes and what happened. Victor, how are
you feeling going into this exercise? Yes, it's definitely time to I guess
face the music, But I think more than anything, it was really how
we're feeling about certain players and situations at the beginning of the season, and
I think more than anything, it's about learning from these experiences and lessons.
It wasn't just trying to predict something spicy. He was trying to really see
if we believed in certain players and thought that things were going to happen.
So part of it is accountability, but part of it is let's see what
actually happened and what we can learn moving forward. So I'm looking forward to
it. I don't expect to have many correct takes, but that's okay.
I'm feeling we're gonna see how this goes. Victor. I'm feeling secretly happy.
I'm getting excited because we'll get there. I think you have the first
one, so why don't you set us up? I sure do. So
we started the Pacific Division. Was start on the Anaheim Ducks, and my
hot take was that Lucas do Stahl steals the net and gets Calder votes.
Though Anaheim remains terrible. One of those is definitely true. Anaheim is terrible,
although they did last night. They did they shut out the Chicago Blackhawks,
not a difficult feat and the person doing that was doch Stall. So
that was pretty fun, and looking at the number of starts, I'm not
going to call that a win just because Heim's terrible. That wasn't easy,
that wasn't difficult to predict. The starts are similar. I think it depends
on what you mean by stealing the net. I don't think he fully stole
it forty three starts to thirty five. Gibson still had eight more starts.
Although I think Doshtal is certainly playing a lot more than maybe some people thought.
I certainly don't think he's going to get many, if any Calder votes
because it hasn't gone super well for him, although I don't think not all
of that is his fault. If you just looked at raw save percentage,
he's actually quite a bit higher than Gibson, nine o two save percentage to
Gibson's eight forty one. The GAA is pretty similar, but if you look
at some of the advanced numbers, the delta Fenwick is much better for Gibson.
So it's a goal save above expected. The goal save above average favors
do staal. But anyways, I think that this is pretty clearly did not
happen. He did not steal the net and We don't know about the Calder
votes, but I don't expect many for Doschtaal. But I do still think
that the future is bright for Doshtall. I still have no idea what's gonna
happen with John Gibson. I think many of us would really like to see
him in a different situation, just so we can see what the heck's going
on? Is it just Anaheim? Is Gibson still a good goaltender? Is
he could he be better somewhere else? What is happening? There's there's still
a lot that we don't know, and there's three more seasons. That's six
point four million. I just don't know how they're gonna move him, even
if they wanted to, because I don't know who's taken on that massive risk
unless they retain. I still have tons of faith and belief in Doshdall,
but I'm not sure how long it's going to take for him to reach that
just because of what's happening with Gibson. What do you think, Jesse?
Clearly this is a loss right you. I liked your thought process, though.
The piece that would have made this come true would have been if Gibson
would have been traded right, simply enough, and there was consideration that could
happen even without getting traded. He didn't take He's only got eight more starts
than Doshtal does. The yeah, you're right, it's that he got signed
to that contract under the old goalie contract paradigm, where we just paid the
goalies all the money, and now that's not necessarily what the wisest teams do.
Gibson's only thirty and they keep talking about moving in, but they don't
move. Had they moved him, maybe your prediction would have come true,
because it looks like his stats are in fact a little bit better than Gibson's
are. So I don't know. The goals save it depends on what's that
you're looking at. Some of the raw stuff that the goals save above expected.
Dostall was a little bit worse, and it's a it's a tough mess.
It's a tough it's tough look to start, Victor. But I'm gonna
make it worse because next the Calgary Flames take that. I had Jonathan Huberto
back to one hundred points. You backed me, you said, Ah,
jesse Let's just did ninety to ninety nine points. Maybe somewhere in there.
Boy, was it wrong. He is sitting on forty three points at this
point in the season in sixty seven games, and it's pretty rough. Now,
I will say this in the first half and then not really not half
of the season. But let's just say in the twenty twenty three segment of
the season he had only sixteen points in thirty six games. He played for
a while with Blake Coleman and Michael Backland. It's Michael Backland, Victor.
I always screw up with ones on Calgary. Michael. It's technically Mikhale Backland.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's the grand Lands in the backlands,
Victor. I've got problems with grand linsen backer Backlands because there's there. There's
too many of each of them. Anyway, Wait, is there another Backland?
Really? Isn't there two Backlands? No? I think you're making that
up, Victor, But there are two grand making that up. There definitely
are two grand Lens. I know there are two Grand Lens. There probably
is another Backlan in the world, but there isn't another Backlan in the NHL
that I know of. This is going to bother me. Now you're probably
thinking of some other sport as you tend to do. You're right, there
is an extremely old goalie named Johann Backland. There's no other no, It's
something just went wrong in my brain, Victor. At some point the Granland
and the Backland got fused together and it's just never been able to come up.
It's like need a writer into Tarra Viynen. I can't get him apart,
and there's really no good reason for them to be together anyway. Not
only was I not right about how many Backlands and or Grandlins there are in
Calgary, but I also made this huge whiff on Huberto. Now Huberto,
the bad news here is he's getting the fifteenth highest AAV in the NHL and
his contract just started this year and it's going to go for eight years.
He is under contract for a very long time. But at least we had
that twenty seven points in thirty one games that he has so far in twenty
twenty four. There's a lot of people talking about Jonathan Huberto and what the
heck is going on in Calgary. Obviously they're in a bit of a rebuild,
and that Huberto contract could turn into the mother of all albatrosses for contracts.
If things don't get a little bit better, we just we have to
respect the fact that Huberto had the one amazing season and maybe we just don't
need to expect that he's going to get back to those types of levels like
he did in that last year in Florida. Even after he's settled in a
little bit, he's still a sieve on defense. He has made everybody on
Calgary basically better on offense, regardless, it just ain't working right now for
Huberto. Things are not coming together the way that Calgary certainly must have hoped.
I think there's a good chance for a point per game or seventy five
point player next year. I'm not doubling down. That's basically the pace he's
been in the second half. But yeah, one hundred points, Victor.
I went too far. I flew too close to the sun. I burned
my wings of the beautiful backland that I am, and I've crashed back down
to earth. What do you think, Victor, that's a good way of
putting it. Yeah, there was definitely I think some optimism that maybe he
could bounce back. A lot of people were saying that, and yeah,
as you said, he has done so much better lately, he has looked
a lot better from the eye test, and a lot of his underlyings look
like he's driving play. It hurts when they've sold half the team. It's
going to be hard to be that relevant. But yeah, I do think
that we can expect a little bit more from him, like maybe closer to
sixty to seventy. It wasn't just that one season, though, right,
I mean, he had three straight seasons of ninety plus point pace. It's
not like it's, yes, that one season was a total outlier, you
know, close to twenty points above what he'd done before, But he had
those three straight ninety point seasons that was huge, right, You can't completely
discount that. And then he was a seventy point player before that. So
yeah, I know his situation was different in Florida, But I think he
is getting older. He's never been the fastest guy. The way the Calvary
plays hasn't seemed to suit him until lately, and then what is that team
going to look like next year and beyond is tough. But I think,
like I did in the tidy I bought him at the end of last season
and sold him mid season. That might be something you could try again this
year if you could acquire him in the offseason and maybe expect a little bit.
I wouldn't expect like a ninety point player, but if you could expect
like a ten to fifteen point improvement, that's possible. You think about that
for next year, Yeah, I definitely would. And one unheralded thing about
Huberto is he's very durable. He's barely missed games in the last what seven
years. He's pretty much been out there in in the ice nearly every night.
If you look back at his game log. Here's an interesting stat that
I looked this up coming in to the podcast, because in his last year
in Florida, he led the NHL with eighty five assists en route to that
one hundred and fifteen points that he scored. And I looked back to see
how many of those points involved Alexander Barkoff, and obviously Barkoff a lot of
his power play points were going to be with Barkoff because they were both on
the power play together. But I'm gonna throw it out to you, Victor
for a wild guest, no accountability for this seventy two even strength points for
Huberto that year? How many of those seventy two points, do you think
also involved a point on the same score going to Barkoff? Of his seventy
two points, how many went to Barkov, how many included Barkov? How
what they were both? Each one of them had a goal, one of
them had an assist that type of a thing, or maybe both of them
had the assist. I'm guessing it's high, maybe like fifty five to sixty
out of seventy seventeen only seven team while of his points were tied to Barkoff,
So it wasn't. The reason I was looking that up is I was
curious how much it was Barkov driving him when he hit those great heights,
And I think there's a good argument to be made that he didn't, if
ire recall correctly, Actually he wasn't on Barkov's line a lot of the year.
So it really is remarkable how much he has fallen off since coming to
Calgary, because I think a lot of times late lately, a lot of
people have been like, we're really underestimating what Barkov does for people, and
I think that is true, but it just makes it all the more baffling.
What's happened to hubert O baffling, not backling. But let's move on
to our next one. This one I think might have gone a little bit
better. Edmonton Oilers hot take Evan Bouchhard finishes as the top five d of
note, which you didn't put these on all of them, Jesse, but
you disagreed with this, and it turned out that I was right about this
one. Because there's a lot of different ways you can look at this,
but Evan Bouchier is awesome. I think we can agree. He had a
monster season. He currently is on pace to more than double his point total
from last season. Eighty two point pace is what he's at. He had
forty point pace last season playing all eighty two, and had forty four point
pace this season before that. If you look at tidy, which we like
to do since that's our league, fifth and tidy total points for defenseman third
in tidy points per game, that's pretty ridiculous. He's fifth in total NHL
points and six in NHL points per game. Some of these are a little
wonky because people played less time, but he's right in there. And if
you just sort by power play points, he's currently third for all defenders in
power play points yeah, he's pretty awesome. So I think, you know,
the question is going to be obviously moving forward, is where do you
draft this guy? He's he like first round pick, and it's been a
while since we've talked about, you know, too many defensemen, especially like
in redraft where you're where you're thinking this high. And there was the Brent
Burns day, there Carlson's and then mccarr. Some people are still taking mccar
in the mid to the end of the first round. I wonder if Bouchard
enters that conversation. One thing about him is that he's been a lot more
durable than mccarr. McCart tends to miss a dozen games or so every year
more and Bouchard's played in eighty one, eighty two and currently he's on pace
to pay to play all the games. So that's so that's pretty nice when
you have really strong production. Obviously, Edmonton has an amazing power play and
he's there. So I think it's you're gonna have a hard time finding someone
that has more value than Evan Bouchard. Obviously, you still have guys that
are ahead of him, and those are your mccars, your yo SE's and
Adam Fox and those guys are all great value. But the thing Bouchard has
always done really well is get pretty good perferle covers too. He actually bangs
quite a bit, so that's pretty nice. Obviously, Quinn Hughes, how
could I figure him? But that's the thing about Hughes that he hasn't doesn't
done as much in the priffs, although he is doing that a little bit
more, but still Bouchard is still one of the best in terms of the
peripheral coverage and the points. I don't know, he's definitely going to be
top five rated next season, that he might even be top three or push
one of those one of those big boys for the number one spot. Are
you getting on board with that? Jesse? You're bringing me on board,
Victor. I keep thinking that maybe somebody will challenge Bouchard for a little bit
of that time. No more Tyson Barry, no more other guys who were
distracting in Edmonton from that role. And yeah, pretty clearly Evan Bouchard has
it. And as long as that power play storms on like it does right
now, I don't see any reason to think he's going to have to share
it. So you're right, victory. You're right, I did not respect.
I was not familiar with your game. So well done, Los Angeles
Kings. Here's what I tried to do, because I was very skeptical of
the King's goalie situation coming to the year, and I tried to say,
neither Phoenix Copley nor Camp Talbot will lead the Kings and start hedging against these
two managing to stay healthy. And you disagreed, Victor, and you were
right on this one. I was not. But at least Dave Ridditch was
the guy who came in, and Talbot has forty four starts to day,
Hreddach has twenty one and Copley had has only eight. It's a matter that
Cam Talbot managed to stay healthy and the LA managed to continue to carry in.
But even though he's Dave Ridditch, he has actually had a really good
season, to the point where I almost managed to talk you into picking him
up on one of our common teams. But that didn't quite come to fruition
because after all, he's still day Bridige. Victor victory lap on this one.
It's hard to take a victory lap anytime involved David Riddick. I yeah,
and we almost did pick him up. That's how that tells you more
about the state of our goaltending than it does and our confidence and absolutely,
but yeah, that we're out. We got outed, I believe, in
the first round in that league, unfortunately, but and it was mainly because
of the goaltending, because the rest of our team is pretty strong, but
we couldn't hang with that. But yeah, the situation in LA, it
was definitely all over the place. But Talbot has settled back into where we
thought he would be and he's been good lately in LA. Looks like a
really good team. All right, Let's move on to the opposite of a
really good team. That would be the Santurse Sharks, and they're really bad.
Trying to find a silver lining when we did this hot take, and
I think a lot of it revolved around how do we actually who's actually going
to run this power play? And how are they going to be valuable?
So I said that Henry Thrunn would finish as the top forty to five,
thinking he'd get a lot of minutes and have some decent bash. At this
point, he's played thirty eight games. He has scored six points for a
thirteen point pace. That's not very good. He's almost playing twenty minutes time
on ice. He's over a block per game and a little over half a
hit per game, doesn't shoot too much, So the bash is okay.
It's not great. It's not terrible. Some of it's good some leagues.
If you count blocks more than hits or something like that, it might be
decent. But he isn't scoring a whole lot, and he isn't really running
the power play. This is definitely a loss. But thinking about the question
of who the heck is going to run this power play long term and when
is it going to be good enough to be valuable, I don't know the
answer to that. I think it'll probably be whomever they draft in twenty twenty
four, if they get Celebrini or one of the top forwards. They also
have the pick from the Penguins, and they have some other might have another
late or early second that they could take a defenseman, and that because this
is such a deep defenseman draft, it might be good enough. That's their
But next best power play quarterback, I think it's pretty obvious. It's not
killing Addison, It's not any of the guys that are currently doing it right
now, I don't think that's the long term solution. But Shakier mccamadolin is
a maybe. And the guy they just got from Tampa, Jack Thompson.
He's pretty darn good too. So those are my current dark horse candidates.
But I think it's TBD currently someone not on the roster. That's who's going
to be the best player and be the power play quarterback when they're good again,
which probably will be I don't know, three or four years, Jesse.
I think it's going to be a while. Yeah, yeah, it
wasn't somebody's got to do it, but it hasn't happened yet for Henry th
Run. Let's move on to the Seattle crack, and my hot take on
this was that they would slip out of the playoffs. You disagreed. It
looks like it's gonna be correct. It looks like Seattle is going to miss
such a weird team this year. Last year there were second in the NHL
and shooting eleven point six and this year they've dropped to twenty seventh, nine
point two percent. And yet last year they couldn't save a goal. They
couldn't save a shot to save their lives. They had an eight to eighty
six save percentage, which was thirtieth this year nine oh five eighth, So
they've completely flip flopped on what their team has done well. And they're also
a steaky old team. I looked at an NHL Stats press release from the
beginning of the season that showed they were tied as the second oldest roster in
the National Hockey League, which you might think, why that's weird. They're
an expansion team. Think about it, an expansion team, where are they
going to get their players from. They're getting players who are a little bit
on the older side that other teams were willing to let go a couple of
years ago, and their prospect system hasn't necessarily produced the fruits that eventually it
will, So it's scary for them. They were older at the beginning of
the year than the Capitols. Probably not. They probably are much older than
the Capitals now because the number of young guys have come up. But this
is not a good sign. It looks like the crack Can are going to
have to do a little bit of rebuilding. So victory. It looks like
I'm on the right track on this one. What do you think? Yeah,
I think you're going to be correct on the crack end. It's so
weird. They bounce back and forth from this, oh they're not very good
to Wow, how are they this good too? Oh they're not good again.
It's a little bit confusing, but it is that they have their style.
It's which is basically it's similar to the Carolina style that I think Carolina
has better personnel to pull it off, which is, you know, they
just they flood you with a lot of capable players and they just play the
same style and they just try to get volume and get something to go in.
But it isn't It doesn't always work, and I think sometimes you need
someone to just step up and take the team on his back and pull you
into the playoffs kind of thing. That game a couple I think it was
like a week or two ago where they were beating Vegas and I was joking
about how hilarious it would be if they knocked him out of the playoffs,
and then of course Vegas comes back and wins that game, and I was
like, oh damn it. So that was also pretty big for them because
if they had beaten Vegas in regulation and maybe gotten a little bit of momentum
that could have. It could ended differently, but I think it is gonna
end up with you being correct and them on the outside looking in. All
right, let's move in, move on to the Vancouver Canucks. And this
started with a Canuck and it's gonna swing back to be a Calgary player because
Andre Kuzmenko is who I picked and he's no longer there. But that's he
was a Canuck at being in the season, and I said that he's gonna
not be a one hit wonder and get close get past the seventy point mark
again by upping his shots but still having a high shooting percentage. You agree
with me, by the way, and so it looks like we're both going
to be wrong on this one. He did increase his he did still shoot
over fifteen percent. He did not up his shots. That's really frustrating.
When you're shooting almost twenty six percent, you have to know that you're gonna
you got to shoot more in order to be as successful, and he just
didn't. He actually shot quite a bit less so far. He has eighty
five shots in fifty eight games. Last season, he had one hundred and
forty two and eighty one so his point his shots per game went down by
point three, not ideal, and he's currently on a forty one point pace.
When he moved to Calgary, initially it looked good. He had a
couple of goals, he was getting some good deployment. But that team's had
so many shakeups. I think it's been hard. I don't know what to
say about Kuzmenko. I've actually been thinking about writing for about him at ep
Rnkside, but I still don't. I don't really know what to think about
him, so it's made it quite challenging. The question I keep circling back
to is he even like a fifty point guy? I don't know. It's
so difficult to pin him down because he had such great success that first season
and then he comes crashing down. But he wasn't as bad. I don't
think he was quite as bad as being healthy crashed as he was in Vancouver.
But they are also a really good team and expecting more on a night
tonight basis, so you understood that. But he's not great defensively, but
he's not horrible. He's like pretty close to average, and so you know,
you think about that and you're like, okay, but he clearly has
some offense. He clearly can produce in the right situation. I think he's
probably I think he can get back to being a fifty to sixty point guy
next year. I don't think I think seventy four was pretty rich. We
all knew that. But he's not getting a ton of help from his secondary
assists. He's not getting a whole lot of help from some of the other
underlyings either, like the power play IPP the regular IPP those are all pretty
low for him. His PDO is pretty neutral. But overall, I think
he probably even deserves a few more points on what he's getting now, and
that would get him close to fifty, which is a bit more reasonable,
even though people would probably still be disappointed in that. And he still doesn't
offer priffs, so Kuzmenko is pretty much a points only play. It'll be
really interesting to see what happens though with him, not to mention the deployment
and what the team's going to be like. But there's also there's also the
contract situation. He does have one more year at that five point five million,
so he'll be hard to roster in those kinds of leagues. But then
after that, I can't imagine he's getting that kind of contract. So we'll
be this is one more data Jesse to figure out what to think of Andre
Kuzmenko. We'll see, Yeah, Kuzmenko not to making it happen this year,
we'll see if you can get a fresh start. And lastly, in
the Pacific Division, we got the Vegas School of the Knights, and my
hot take was that I thought Mark Stone Jack Eigel would combine for more than
one hundred and fifty games, and boy was I wrong. One hundred and
five games played between the two of them, with fourteen games left. Obviously
the big problem mark Stone out at this point, Jack Eikeel already missed a
lot of time. Yeah, it was my hope that we'd see healthy season
from both of them, But I guess that if that day ever comes,
it hasn't come yet. So I don't know, Victor that it's basically it
was just a maybe wish casting health on these two that they haven't demonstrated I
should believe in. Yeah, it's difficult with especially Stone. I call he'd
had some issues too, but it seemed like it had been behind him.
That turned out to not be true. But I don't think it was.
It wasn't related to his previous injury, right, that wasn't related to the
surgery with the neck, so it was a different thing. I don't know
that you could really blame him, but Stone just continues to have similar issues.
Although his one of his this the current injury with the was it the
spleen That was also unrelated. But they tend to just get banged up and
miss a ton of time. So I guess you could have predicted that,
but not entirely. So I don't think this one's entirely I think maybe the
idea was in the right place, but it didn't quite work out all right.
So the next one the Arizona Coyotes, and my hot take was the
Mattias Mitchelli discussion. So Mitchelli I was saying that he was going to up
his shots, goals time on ice, power play time on ice, and
get close to a seventy point pace. He had sixty three point pace last
season. He wasn't shooting a whole lot. The priffs tend to be a
little bit low with Mitchelli. This is where we're at. Shots are up
time on ice is up, power play time on ice is actually exactly the
same, which is incredible. The goals are the same, but he's currently
has fewer games, so I think he could probably do that. His shooting
percentage has been cut in half, so I think that's a big part of
it here. He's always been a high percent shooter and that's gone down.
So he's currently on a fifty five point pace, but I think MITCHELLI can
get closer to that. I like that he's up in his shots and getting
more time, so the thought process is there, and it seems like he
can continue to make those corrections to make up for the high shooting percentage and
be closer to a seventy point guy rest of the season. Maybe next season,
I don't know, but definitely he didn't get there yet. So there
you go. Jesse Nice. Yeah, there's only so far you can get
if you're in Arizona Coyote right now. Unfortunately, they had their hot streak,
but it ain't happening right now, that's for sure. Chicago Blackhawks,
my hot take was they would allow the most goals in the West. And
it wasn't a hot take that I thought they would be bad. I just
was trying to project them being even worse than bad as it turned and you
agreed with me. As it turned out, they were the third worst,
or they are at present the third worst, with a chance of becoming the
second worst. The San Jose Sharks have them lapped at this point with two
hundred and seventy one goals against. The Anaheim Ducks have two hundred and fifty
one against, and that leaves the Blackhawks with two hundred and forty seven goals
again, so the third worst in the West. They're still bad, They're
still real bad, but they weren't quite as bad as I would have anticipated
them to be. Why is that Peter Moraszak nine oh four staate percentage quietly
for a really awful team. So I guess we can blame Peter Moraszak for
keeping the black Hawks for being historically bad. What do you think, Victor?
Are you disappointed or surprised that the black Hawks I shouldn't say disappointed that
they didn't end up being historically bad. No, I'm still mad at the
black Hawks for getting Badard. I still think that's ridiculous, and the fact
that they're this bad and in contention to get another amazing player and potentially even
the following year. Yeah, they had enough success and it seemed like everything
happened a little too quickly for them. No, I think that they they
not that I really expected them to be that much better. Of Course,
they had some personnel issues with Perry, but some of those moves in Taylor
Hall obviously didn't work out because he was injured. But some of those moves
I think have worked quite well. And Nick Felino has seemed like he really
helped Madard. So yeah, this isn't terribly surprising, but I don't think
that many. I don't think that people realistically thought the Sharks would be so
much worse than the Blackhawks, especially since they were still trying to make it
seem like they were trying. But clearly they're not. They're ready to pack
it in. All right, let's move on to the color Avalanche, which
again we are going to talk about a player who's no longer a car Avalanche
player, but bo Byram is who I singled out. I've always loved Byram
and he was so good in that Stanley Cup run, but he has struggled
in the regular season, and to be a consistent fantasy asset hasn't really been
there. My hot take was that he played sixty plus games and he would
have a fifty five point pace. One of those two things definitely happened,
because he's at sixty three games, but he's at a thirty four point pace.
Since he moved to Buffalo, though things have been he seems like he
has been getting a little bit more opportunity. He had that two goal game,
which was amazing. That was that was actually I think I had those
in the matchup against you, Jesse, may help make it a little bit
closer, but didn't end up mattering in the end. But yes, so
far did we mention that Victor, Did we mention the outcome of our I
don't think we did. No. I think everyone knows though you definitely took
it down. And so he has eight games with Buffalo. Four points.
That's a little bit better if you're getting close to that half point per game,
I don't know. Five points, that's a little bit better. And
he's playing a lot more minutes, so that's really good. You'd love to
see that. I think Byron and Buffalo moving forward. I think I said
this before, but more than anything, I think it hurts own power more
than it hurts Byram. I think Byron is gonna get more power, playtime.
We've even seen him and dealing up on the top unit. I think
he's gonna He's gonna be okay and maybe even have a little bit easier path
to relevance. I like him, I like Byrom. I think, obviously
this didn't work out for this season, but next season I probably will get
stuckered into drafting him in too many places again because I just love the guy
and it's still optimistic about his future. I wonder too if he was dealing
with any lingering, concussion or headache issues this year, because he just didn't
seem like himself at times, and a lot of the underlyings were just awful
compared to previous years and they don't seem to be affecting him as much now.
So hopeful for Byrom. Yeah, Byrom obviously is a guy who is
looking up, and even though he's also moving to a team with a lot
of the men, it's there's nowhere more crowded than Kyler rat Or for d
men. So I think this might be a one of those one year too
early predictions. Victor, We'll see Dallas stars. The hot take I had
Tyler Sagan has a Jamie Benn type bounce back year at a sixty five point
pace. Victor hard disagreed, And what do you know about this? Tyler
Sagan has missed some games, but he is currently on a sixty four point
pace, And I said sixty five, I'm claiming victory. I don't care.
I don't care that it's one away because I think the intent here is
satisfied. Now that said, the reason that Tyler Sagan has that many points
and he's missed about eleven games at this point is because everybody on Dallas is
scoring. So Tyler Sagan is actually tied for seventh with Jamie Benn oddly enough
at forty six points on the Dallas Stars. So there's a whole lot of
guys who are scoring points for this team, and Sagan is no longer leading
the train. He is along for the ride. But I have been very
pleased at finally Tyler Sagan starting to return a little bit of value. What
do you think, Victor, I'm pretty surprised. I mean, it's pretty
clear that he's no longer like one of the main guys on the team,
but that team is just so stacked I mean they you know, we've all
we've been raving about Logan stank Covin forever and it's just fun to watch that
actually materialized to and Maverick Bork is the second leading HL scorer with dank Covin
was I believe first. So they have two of the top HL guys,
so they have another guy that they could plug in there and probably be just
dang good. So it's ridiculous the depth that they have. And second is
no longer like you said, and driving the bus, but he's still like
participating and being and benefiting. They move things around a bit and sometimes he's
not always playing with the best players, but yeah, he's definitely still relevant
and the depth role, it's still he's still someone to be interested in,
which is not something we thought necessarily for a while there he was progressing pretty
hard. But yeah, I think that there might be a renaissance coming.
He was only thirty two, he's not ancient, so he still has some
game left, especially if he's more in the middle six role, as opposed
to expecting him to be the best player on the team, like he's clearly
not that anymore. But the expectations changed for Segan. I think he can
still be previous in value on this one. He definitely did well. Let's
move on to the Minnesota Wild. So I was trying to decide somewhere believing
in Boldie or Rossi. So I gave Jesse the option of Matt Boldie seventy
five plus point pace from Marco Rossi sixty five point pace, and of course
Jesse picked the harder one and the one that didn't quite work out is Marco
Rossi, who is currently on a forty one point pace, although he has
had some times that he's looked pretty good. Boldie is pretty close seventy two
point pace, so he's had a pretty good season overall. Minnesota being a
little disappointing and not quite It looks like they're not quite going to make the
playoffs, and that's obviously disappointing for them, and a couple of their guys
have regressed. They're still in it. They might, but it doesn't look
super good and a lot of their a lot of their players have regressed a
little bit. But I think that Rossi has shown at least that he's becoming
a more competent NHLer and I still think they're some pretty decent upside there.
He's still only ninety one NHL games, so maybe it was the case I
was a bit too early on Rossi and it seems seemingly pretty close with Boldie.
He's kind of right in that range anyways, where he was kind of
in that mid sixty point and looks like he's he might finish closer to seventy
five this season. Anyways, that's a soft win there, But overall,
I think maybe it's next year for Rossi. Jesse, what do you think
that could be? A Yeah, I think Rossi is still on the come
up. I'm gonna give you credit for Boldi at this point, but I
knew that Rossi would be the tougher pull the Nashville Predators, the red hot
Nashville Predators. My hot take was that Ryan O'Reilly would lead the forwards and
points. Heck, Philip Forsburg's always injured, and nobody else on that forward
crew really impressed me much. It turns out at this point he is third
among the forwards in points, behind Philip Forsburg, and somehow Gustav nikequist I
was There was a Twitter conversation this week about Gustav Nikewist, and I pointed
out that I still didn't believe in him until fairly recently. I think we
just have to accept the Gustav Niquist as having himself a career year here,
but Ryan O'Reilly didn't quite make it to that level. So I still think
he maybe did better than some people might have expected come in into the year.
How about you, Victor, Oh heck, yeah, this was huge
for Ryan O'Reilly, and I think a lot of people thought he was absolutely
cooked. And yeah, he definitely has had a bit of a renaissance from
forty six to sixty eight point pace I think is huge. I have I
actually got him in a couple of leagues, and I think even Diesel was
one of them. But he's actually been one of my better players in a
lot of leagues, especially those leagues that count faceoffs and other priss. He's
still doing the face off thing, taking a ton, winning a ton.
So yeah, definitely the spirit of this one is good with Ryan o'reiley maybe
burying the lead there and how good Gustav Nyquist has been though, because he
has been he's also been a bit of a renaissance. He's been quite nice
in a couple of my leagues really productive, So we'll see if that continues.
Nashville in general just weirdly good. Apparently they need to take away at
their Vegas concerts every season and then they'll just never lose again. Let's move
on to the Blues. There are a couple of things that I mentioned.
Joe Hoefer pulls off pulls of Bennington and pushes Bennington out of the way and
the Blues into the playoffs. That was one and the other one was about
Justin Fulk being a top ten defender. And so far this season, Hopeer
has been really good. I would say I don't think that he pulled a
Bennington on Jordan Bennington, but he definitely has been good. Twenty five games,
about half of what Bennington has played. The same percentage is a little
bit better. The goals against is a little bit better. The underlying metrics
some of them are better that Delta Fenwick is better. The goals save above
expected is a little bit worse. But actually, overall, both these guys
are doing really well, and that's part of the and that they are both
that they are, that the Blues are in playoff contingent. Still, it's
kind of a Minnesota and the Blues. If anyone's gonna knock Vegas out,
it's going to be one of those two, and they both have to go
on quite the run in order to make that happen. But Blues looking much
better than they had in the past, So I don't think this is a
win, but I think hope for maybe surprise some people with how well he's
played. And he's certainly been valuable for spot starts and in Dynasty when you
flex him up and down from your miners, he's been very good and very
hopeful folk. No, he was the forty first best defender and tidy.
I was surprised at how long I had to scroll to find his name as
page after page. But yeah, so definitely not a top ten his bash
and he's still a valuable guy, but not top ten, not really that
close. Definitely an l Jesse. Yeah, it win them all and the
last of the Western teams, the Winnipeg Jets. My hot take basically,
it was a backhanded way of saying that the Winnipeg Jets would tank. I
said that two of Scheifeley Eelers, Morrissey Hellibuck and Nino Neda Rider get traded
this year and you agreed with me. Nope, the Winnipeg Jets surprised us.
All. They have been a fantastic team this year, so it was
not a case of them selling, but rather keeping those guys on board.
So that was not an accurate prediction. Winnipeg did not sell. They've got
lots of good guys. Anything to add to that. Victor. Surprised with
Winnipeg, Very surprised with Winnipeg. I thought that they could be good,
but holy cow, like one of the best teams in the league. I
don't think any of us saw that coming. In fact, I don't think
they're gonna win the President Trophy because its probably going to be Boston or Florida,
but the fact that they're right there and basically ahead of Colorado and Dallas
and Vancouver, that's surprising. We knew that they could out hellibuck other teams
with their goaltending, but I don't think we saw the depth and especially the
offensive firepower. Nope, didn't see it. But very happy for them,
and there's been some decent surprises. So we'll talk about those more in the
team preview, though that's right now, Victor. We're going to take a
break, come back and talk East. This two excellent, our serious injury.
When the Eastern Conference victor, of course, we always start with the
West. If given the choice, the Boston Bruins first up, what do
you got? I had a couple of things. One of them was that
Olmark would be a top ten goalie, and the other is that Jake Debrusk
finishes with a seventy five plus point pace. You agreed with me about Debrasque
and held me to the Olmark take. That was the wrong choice for you,
because Debrusque was not very good. He's currently on a forty five point
pace. Last season. The sixty four point pace seems to be the outlier
as he's back to that forty five point pace. And what's crazy is that
some of his like his PDO and some of his IPP numbers look like he
actually deserves less. That's not good. So overall pretty disappointing. I don't
think this Bridge deal is gonna look very good for him in hindsight, because
I wonder if he's gonna get even less out of this. He's certainly going
to get a not as exciting long term contract from it. I don't know
that the cap hit will be too much different. But he signed that four
million dollars I think two year deal when he had a when he had that
kind of rough season or that a good season. So anyways, I don't
know that's gonna go very well for Debresk. He's definitely looking like someone not
terribly interesting in fantasy. But Ollmark, on the other hand, I think
it depends on how you define top ten goalie, because if you go points
per game fantasy points per game, then he actually did do very well.
He depending on if you want to count Matthew Murray, the Dallas goalie,
deming Justice Anenin who didn't play very many games, they're all ahead of him.
But of all the goalies who played a decent number of games, he
was actually sixth in points per game for the tidy. That's pretty incredible.
Now, he didn't play very many games, so obviously that's not as exciting
as someone who we would have wanted to play. He only played thirty five
games to date. Swiman definitely taking the net from him be more the volume
star, and I think a lot of that was the worry for a lot
of people, and that definitely ended up being true. He didn't have the
volume, didn't have the total points, but man, he really still brings
the heat on a game per game basis, And as long as you don't
count on him as your first or probably even second goalie, he's a fantastic
third goalie if that's what you had him on, And that might continue to
be true moving forward. Obviously there's some cap considerations. I think they asked
him to wave his no trade class and he was like, nope, I'm
staying here. Of course, wants to be on a good team that has
a chance to win the Cup. But I don't know what they're gonna do
moving forward, because clearly sounds like Swimon is better. Olmark has one more
year. Five million doesn't seem like he's gonna that seems like a lot to
pay backup. So we'll see what happens in the offseason. Yeah, Victor
and Olmark. Yeah, I've long been a believer in Olmark. He was
a guy who did not he had a prospect pedigree, and then things didn't
go so well in Buffalo. And when he left Buffalo, the guy who
replaced him Victor, a certain fellow named Uka Pecca Lucanan and my hot take
for the Buffalo Sabers this year was that UPL Pecca Lucanan would take that net
and lead the playoff bound Sabers in starts. I got it half right,
and frankly, I think I got the hard part right because Kapeca Lucanan is
by far leading the Sabers and starts he's got forty five or he's got forty
two starts. Devin Levi only twenty spent a lot of a year in the
miners. Eric Comery with eight you did not agree with my Ukupeka luken in
take and right now it looks pretty pretty rough for the Sabers to make the
playoffs. Dom Lucisians odds have him down to two percent, have them down
to two percent chance of making the playoffs. But nonetheless, I'm happy about
UPL kind of stabilizing and showing what he can do that what we saw of
him in the World Juniors years ago. What do you think, Victor,
Yeah, I think I was more believing in the Devon Levi hype train,
so that was probably part of it. I definitely didn't believe in Eric Comray,
but I think more of that skepticism was on the idea that the Sabers
were going to make the playoffs because I wasn't on that train. Even as
fun as they were last year, I think of the same thing again.
They were fun for a while and then they just not so well. But
they've actually turned it around and they are They were making a run out of
it for a while, but I think they're just too far back now.
They're currently seven points out with Detroit having a game in hand, Tampa having
a couple games in hand, so it seems very unlikely. But yeah,
he definitely Ukapeca Luca and a guy we talked very early on this podcast years
ago. It's nice to see him have some success Detroit. My hot take
was that most Cider would return to his Calder form and put up fifty five
point pace. I also threw out there that Shane Gosta Spear finishes with more
power play points than Cider, and you wanted to hold me to the Sider
and Cider isn't quite there, but he did have a bit of a bounce
back season. He's currently on a forty five point pace, so I mean
his Calder season was fifty last season was forty two, so he's getting back
there. But it's not quite all the way there, so forty five point
pace it didn't quite do it. But he's still he's His time on ice
has actually gone down a little bit, his power play time on ice has
slipped a little bit, but overall he's getting still a ton of periffs,
he's shooting a lot, and he's getting those even strength points. For the
most part. I think a lot of this has also a lot to do
with how Detroit has been up and down, so that's probably part of it.
I do think Cider is still a great player, but they also just
got so many other guys. They have Walmant now, they have Sharat and
Peatries there Gosta Speris, there's only one puck and there's too many NHL quality
defenders. I blame Stevie why on most Sider not being as good in fantasy.
That's all his fault. He'll he'll have to feel shame for that.
But then the other one, Shane Gosta Spear definitely leading the team in power
play time on ice. He is also very much leading in power play points.
So he has twenty five, Cider seventeen, Wallman down at four.
Everyone else has zero, So I got that one right. But that's not
the one you wanted to hold me to. Jesse. Dang it, you
pick the right one, yeah, Victor, Sorry, that's how we do.
We're supposed to pick the harder one. This one you didn't need to
even actually you agreed with me. Florida Panthers. I went for Maddy Kachuk
one hundred and twenty points. Woof. I guess theoretically, mathematically could still
happen. But ka Chuck currently's done a ninety two point pace. One hundred
and twenty was a bit aggressive. I was a little high on my own
supply. Only three qualifying players are at or ahead of a one hundred and
twenty point pace, that is Kucherrop, McDavid and McKinnon. And Kachuck is
at a healthy twentieth in the NHL with his ninety two point pace. I
think I was just asking too much of our man down in Miami in Sunrise,
Maddy Kachuck, What do you think? Victor Kachuck is awesome, But
if you're trying to if you're thinking about how much, if you're disappointed with
the amazing season he's had, I get it, being over one hundred point
pace and then now being ninety three. It seems a little low, but
he's still doing a ton. He's actually hitting way more this season than he
did previously, and he's blocking more. His shots are a little bit down.
Overall, I think the value is still pretty similar. Of course,
you always want a few more points, but the power play points are there
and the hits. Yeah, you might be a little bit disappointed, but
I don't think he's in that same air as coach McDavid McKinnon. But that's
okay. He's still great. Let's move on to the Canadians. My hot
take was that Cole Coffield scores at a forty goal pace and or Michael Matheson
scores a sixty point pace. You disagreed with Matheson, and you wanted to
hold me to the oh with Mathison and Coffield, but you wanted to hold
me to Matheson, which actually was pretty close, definitely closer than the Coffield
one. Mathison currently on a fifty six point pace. That's I think maybe
surprising to some people. But he looked around and it was like, who
else is going to do this and in Montreal and there weren't really other good
options. He did it last year. He's pretty much on a similar pace
this year. He might eventually get to sixty or above, but right now
he's just below that. But overall feels like a win the spirit of it,
and he's been good in Montreal. He has struggled elsewhere Mike Matheson has
but he's playing a ton of minutes. He's getting a ton of power playtime.
I think it's more that the unit isn't converting as much and he's not
getting in on them all. But he's out there a lot and he's contributing,
so I think it's going to continue to be pretty valuable. The question
I think is win, if at all, do you need to get out
from under this, because I think that is going to end at some point,
But they eventually Lane Hudson or someone else is going to come along.
But he has two more seasons as the highest paid defender in Montreal. I
don't know how long that'll last, but maybe they'll bring someone else in,
whether it's Hudson or maybe Kaden Googli or someone else gets some opportunity, but
it's still Mike Matheson's time. I think he could probably hold that for another
season or so. I think Lane Hudson probably needs another another season or two
maybe in some HL time, so you can probably have a little bit longer.
Cole Caawfield was not really that close. He has twenty goals for a
twenty four goal pace. I think he still has that forty goal upside in
him at some point, but I think some things in the situation in Montreal
need to change for him to fully get there. So I don't know that
I feel even confident about that next year happening. So probably a little rich
just in general, and not even a year early. Jesse rationally Matheson would
be the better likelihood in some ways, but you know that I cannot dispositionally
go against gold caw Field, so I did stick with him as being possibly
accurate, even though that has not turned out to be the case. Ottawa
Senators, My hot take, Jake Sanderson ends the season as the d one
in tom on ice in Ottawa. You disagreed, and I'm gonna declare some
kind of victory victor. I'm going to ask you to throw some ice water
on me right away, because according to the smooth ice time, Sanderson is
getting the most time on ice of anybody on that team now lots of different
ways to throw Astris on this. Thomas Shabbat has had a lot of mistime
this year, but Jacob Chickering is on the outs. I think it's becoming
less and less strange to think that Sanderson is going to come out of this
thing as the D one. Do you think you're gonna give me the W
on this one? Yeah, I definitely am, because I think that Jake
Sanderson is incredible and I think that the people who were championing him early on
it has really shown that he really, I think, is the air apparent
to the one D in in Ottawa long term. So I do think that
he's just gonna be awesome. And I think that Shabbat had some pretty early
success and there were some things that he did really well, and I don't
know if he's necessarily gotten worse or the situation, but Sanderson just looks so
much better than he does. Actually, if you look at this season,
the last couple seasons, Sanderson, whether it's expected goals against four of course,
all of that, he looks amazing and the quality of competition is even
he's even dealing with a more and more difficult load. So yeah, I
think Sanderson is truly the one d of the future in Ottawa. He's definitely
a good one. And yeah, I think that they were smart. Wasn't
that that that was the draft wars between him and Drysdale? Right? It
definitely seems like Ottawa picked correctly there. Yeah, for sure, for once,
they've had some difficulty in doing that. Victor, what do you got
next? Let's go to Tampa. So my hot take, I was really
wanting to see Hugo Allmenfeldt in the league, but I didn't really think that
would happen, and I was right, So I didn't pick that one.
I said, Brandon Hagel seventy plus point pace with twenty power play points.
He has a seventy five point pace, so definitely half right, but only
seven power play points. We know who gets power play points in Tampa,
and it's generally not Brandon Hagel. It's the big guns, the coaches and
the points and the headmans. There's not Ben stampcos there's not enough room always
for someone like Brandon Hagel, even though he is out there a lot,
still a career year. The spirit of the take I think was still I
think the long term question is whether Brandon Hagel is a long term seventy plus
point player, and I think he is. I don't know who else,
you know, they don't really have a lot of depth. There's really no
one else that I can see doing that. So I think Brandon Hagel probably
is going to continue to be roughly this production. I would say probably sixty
five to seventy five. This is probably on the high end of what he's
he should be doing, but I feel like it's somewhat sustainable. What do
you think, Jesse? Yeah? Why not? Why not? I think
there's there is a chance of that. So we'll see what Hagel is able
to do. Trying to make believes this is too early to tell. Victor
one more round advanced to the conference finals is what I predicted. They're going
to have an awfully rough road to get there. Right now would be playing
Florida in the first round of the NHL playoffs, and that's not anything you
want to be doing. But we'll see what happens there. Yeah, we
got to avoid these picks that involve the playoffs because we just we won't know.
You guys, stop doing that. Stop doing that, all right,
Let's move over to the Metro and talk Hurricanes. So my high eyed a
couple one is that Tony DiAngelo has a sixty five point pace plus twenty power
play points, just like you did a few seasons ago. And also that
Martin HS fails to hit the seventy point mark. And you wanted to hold
me to the TDA take, which was smart because that was not correct.
But what if I told you that instead of power play points, TDA had
a series of healthy scratches. Would that be good for you, Jesse would
Would that be close enough to know? Okay, he was definitely nowhere near
relevant or useful. Anyone who drafted him got a couple dozen games out of
him and not much else. So yeah, he's definitely been irrelevant for the
last several weeks and probably won't be the rest of the season. I don't
know what's going to happen after this year. That definitely didn't work out for
Tony DiAngelo. Wish I'd wish he'd held me to the NATS one, because
I think I nailed this one. I've always been a little skeptical of Martin
HS. I do think he's a very good player, but I thought that
he was cooking way too hot last year, and that seventy one pace wasn't
sustainable. He's currently on a hot streak of three points in the last three
games, and that has brought him up to a sixty two point pace.
His time on ice has gone down, his power play tom and ice has
gone down. His shooting percentage is roughly similar, but he's lost a lot
of power play points. He was cooking way too hot on the power play
last year. So I feel like this is where Martin Chis should be between
a sixty sixty five point guy. So that's when I think of him moving
forward. But You've always, I think, been a little bit higher on
him, Jess. Do you think he can get back to that seventy plus.
I think that Nachos has that opportunity with him. Yeah, for sure,
I think that is something that could happen. So I'm still confident in
Nachos. But I certainly believed that Tony DiAngelo the chances were very high that
he would blame out in one of various in sundry different ways onto the Columbus
Blue Jackets. My hot take Kent Johnson would be top three in the team
in scoring. I was effectively correct in the concept that Columbus would be a
tire fire when it came to scoring behind Johnnie Gudro. But what I did
not anticipate was that Kent Johnson wouldn't have much of a year either. He
had sixteen points in forty two games. He was placed on season ending season
engine ir with a torn left laborum in the beginning of March. It's not
happening for Kent Johnson. This year the last year for the kid. Nothing
in Columbus seems to be going right now. I don't know, Victor,
do you have any take on Kent Johnson. Yeah, he's very confused.
I think he's still he seems to not really I'm not sure if he just
can't leverage it correctly. I definitely need to watch him more. But when
I look at some of his play in some of his numbers, it seems
like he isn't quite getting to the dangerous areas enough and that might be team
situation. I don't know. He can't do everything himself, but I think
he's still super skilled. I wonder if Columbus tries to pull some blockbuster and
trades him this offseason. That would be interesting to see him in a more
competitive environment with more skill around him. But I still believe. But I
also wouldn't begrudge anyone from moving off of Ken Johnson because it's been frustrating.
He hasn't really delivered at all. Let's move on to the New Jersey Devils,
and my hot take revolved around the Hughes brothers. I said, Jack
Hughes one hundred and fifteen point pace, Luke Hughes forty five point pace.
These are both either spot on or really close. As of last night's game,
Luke with a I think he had two or three apples, He's up
to a forty five point pace, so spot on. Jack Hughes has one
hundred and two point pace, so not quite one hundred and fifteen, but
that's he's on pace for what he did last year, one hundred and two
point pace. He finished with ninety nine points. It looks like he's still
going to be shy of breaking the actual one hundred point mark. I believe
we have had some discussion about that that no one has actually broken that number,
even though they point paced above that, including Jack. It'll be fun
to see when that happens. I don't think it's going to he missed too
much time this year. Eventually, if he can stay healthy enough, he's
gonna break that under point mark. But it's not gonna happen this year.
But I feel like the spirit of this was correct. Both the Hughes brothers
were pretty awesome. Luke has been up and down throughout the season. We
talked about how difficult that can be for a young player used to playing the
college schedule, and there's just so many more games and it's during the week,
and it's such a grind, and the Devils have been not so good.
But overall, I think the spirit of this was right. They're both
pretty valuable, and Luke getting way more power play time because of the Dougie
Hamilton injury, but still he was pretty good at times. You definitely were
correct in your confidence in the Hughes, and it is starting to come into
place. The Jack Hughes love that you hear at the beginning of every show
is starting to come into place. And Luke what a decent debut for him.
And the sky is the limit. My take for the New York Islanders
was that they would miss the playoffs narrowly, but finish in the bottom three
in the Eastern Conference and goals and buy gum. I think that there's a
good chance of this. They currently are fifth worst in goal scored with two
hundred and six, The fewest in the Eastern Conference belongs to the Washington Capitals,
if you can believe that, who are ahead of them in the playoff
race with one hundred and eighty four. So right now the Islanders are at
the forty five percent chance to make the Eastern Conference playoffs. All they would
have to do is fall down a couple spots. So the basic concept of
they would not score for jack and still would get very close to the playoffs
but not make the playoffs. Seems like we're on the trajectory, but once
again, we're doing it too early for a definitive answer. Does anything about
that performance surprise you, Victor? You just think I might nail it right
on the spot. I think you did nail it. The Caps are the
most confusing thing out You look at the Caps lineup and you're just like,
how how is this happening? It doesn't make any sense. But in Detroit
being in the spot, the devil's not being Pittsburgh not being based on their
lineup and even the Islanders, with maybe not having the most exciting names,
but having an All World goalie and some pretty competent defenders in middle six ers,
they seems like they should be a little bit better. That whole Eastern
part looks very confusing, and I know a lot of people would say that
maybe some of those West teams were there, they might be doing a bit
better. Yeah, so that's partly just the way it is. Let's look
at the Rangers, and my hot take was Capocaco fails to surpass fifty point
pace, and I gave to the other one is that Philip Pedal scores at
a higher pace than tro Check. That was very wrong, but you agreed
with me on Coco, which was also very right. But you were wrong
to Oh no, you were right to agree with me. There Kacko at
a twenty four point pace, so basically half he is just struggling. I
don't know what to make of him. I'm sure people are frustrated. They
probably dropped him. He does not look like a fantasy relevant player most of
the time. He's basically been. His best season was last season with a
forty point pace, and he's been basically irrelevant in all these settings. So
I think that's probably going to continue. I don't know that there's a lot
of faith for that completely changing. Maybe if he moves somewhere else, But
I just don't know that. He looks like a top six player. So
it's sad, but that's what he looks like. Definitely wrong about he'll he
missed a lot of the season though he was taken care of. I think
of some personal matters, but forty nine point pace looking decent. He definitely
when he comes back, I think he can have some decent value. He'll
look like he was taking a step forward. I think my thought was that
he would take over for Trocheck and be that two C, and maybe he
would have if he was there the whole season. But Trochik still literally has
a lot left in the tank, and he's been awesome. You know,
for a second line center to be at a seventy seven point pace, that's
pretty awesome. So yeah, definitely am wrong on that one, and definitely
great spot for Trocheck. I still wonder, though, what's gonna happen next
season. If he's their offseason all season, maybe he starts to take some
of that role. I don't know what'll be interesting to see for sure,
we can keep waiting for those kids to mature. It looked like at the
end of the year last year that they were going to take the step,
but Vinnie Trochek is holding people off for the time being. The Philadelphia Flyers,
my hot take was Cam York with a fifty five plus point pace.
You agreed with me. The bad news is he's only got a thirty three
point pace, But really he's having a pretty good year. Maybe not at
that outstanding pace, but he is second on a surprise Philadelphia Flyers team in
time and i second on his team among the man points. Probably never a
good thing when Travis Sandheim is the defense, someone on your team that's getting
more points than you, just as a principle, But he is doing pretty
well in that context. He's not burning and up on offense. That's the
problem. He actually the Philadelphia five on five offense is worse with him on
the ice than without it. And actually he's having a mildly positive impact on
defense. So that will endure him to Tortorella, I am sure, but
it will not endure him necessarily to the scoreesheet until he is able to make
some corrections in that area. What do you think, Victor. I really
like York and I think he's been a bit underrated. Obviously, there have
been a lot of people moving around, They've had a lot of different defensemen
run the power play and getting a lot of weird deployment. But I think
people wrongly think of Cam York as just this offensive defenseman, but he really
has been more than that. He's been quite capable in a lot of different
situations, and I think that he's much better than people give him credit for
in all those situations. Yeah, I think that he's a bit underrated,
and I think this season is a big success. Maybe we were hoping for
a little bit more the offense. A lot of the offense hasn't quite been
there, but I think he's focusing yeah, the tort system, being more
defensively responsible, and he has been pretty good defensively, if not so good
offensively, So that needs to come a bit for that to be closer to
being correct. But I still think there's hope long term for York. Let's
move on to the Penguins. So my hot take was that Ricard Raquel surpasses
his career high point pace of seventy three, not even close he has currently
on a forty two point pace. Pretty awful. The whole Pittsburgh situation has
been pretty awful, except for Sid Crosby, who's just insane and is still
amazing. But that actually, Eric Carlson really has been good. Even though
people want to blame him on what's happening, it's clearly not his fault.
Power play has been terrible. A lot of the other play has been not
good. But anyways, Ricardo Roquel definitely a part of the problem. I
would say he does not look good. He did not look good this season,
So yeah, I don't know what to think of him moving forward.
I probably am not going to be picking him. I know some people are
like, oh, we could pick him and you'll play it with Crosby or
Malkin, but it hasn't really worked out, and I'm not sure that it
will next year either. I don't know what's gonna happen with Pittsburgh. Doesn't
seem like they're going to tear anything down. They're going to just retool and
keep going at it. It seems Jesse they're gonna ride that sucker all the
way down the hill. So we're going to see how that goes. Probably
be like the last days of the Red Wings in some of those types of
things. The Washington Capitals. Last, but not least, my hot take
was Tom Wilson is top three in the team on scoring. You agreed with
me, but you said it wasn't spicy enough. It is a spicy enough
take, Victor. When it doesn't come true, that automatically means it was
spicy enough at the time. Because Tom Wilson, with thirty two points,
is currently in fifth place on the team in points, behind Anthony Mantha,
behind John Carlson, Dylan Strom, and Alex Ovechkin. The bad news is,
with no doubt illuminant suspension Connor McMichael, which we don't know about as
we record this, Connor McMichael and Alexi Protas are only four points behind him
each, so he could very well end up seventh on the team in scoring.
This year. It really has been a matter of shooting percentage just dropping
like a rock. He He had been higher in shooting percentage every year since
twenty seventeen eighteen than he is now with it's only eleven point two percent right
now. Almost got a career high end shots already at one hundred and fifty
two shots, the very highest he's had in his career as one hundred and
fifty four, but eleven point two percent shooting for Wilson, who, of
course you got to remember, is going to take a lot of those shots
up close. He's the physical presence. The fact that he's not able to
get those in is really killing his scoring production. So he is scoring less
than or fewer than half a point, less than half a point per game
as a ratio. So, Victor, I don't know any surprises there.
I know Tom Wilson's one of your favorite guys to talk about. It's actually
this suspension that's looming is brutal. He has in our common league that I
co manage with Elon. He and I are in the finals against our buddy
Yarno, and having Wilson out for the rest of the finals is going to
be rough because he's definitely a contributor, not like our best player or anything,
but he has been productive four points in the last three even though he
doesn't score a whole bunch of the hits generally in the blocks are helpful along
with some shots. I am surprised. We thought that this would be a
no brainer, but Yeah, he's Anthony Manthe who's now gone Strom. I
thought that Wilson could be at least closer to Strom. He's not even in
the same zip code as Dylan. Yeah, that's crazy. So this all
does very much surprise me. I thought Wilson could continue to be I never
thought he was anything special, but I thought he could be a fifty to
sixty point scorer. And it doesn't seem like he is anymore. I'm not
sure if that's age, because he's never been the fastest guy and he's a
bigger dude. I don't know if that's catching up with him. But the
team around him has been much better than expected and he's been worse. So
that's confusing in terms of point scoring. That's it, Victor. We've been
through thirty two teams. The fact that there were hot means we didn't get
them all right. We got a few of them, right. I was
pleased with what we saw here, Victor. I'm gonna take a break to
come back. What was that? The show a reminder, as though you
needed it, Mantrax is the place to play your fantasy leagues. You could
move leagues over is soon as that old NHL regular and ends. You can
probably immediately set your twenty twenty four to twenty five fantasy leagues up or roll
over your dynasty leagues there. That's pretty cool. You don't have to wait
around for people to get their acts together. You can start new leagues.
There's ten different sports. There's all kinds of customization. Just try it out
if you haven't yet. Fantraks HQ lots of fantasy content articles on fantasy hockey,
other fantasy sports. There's all sort of folks who are helping us to
create this show these days. Content curator Kevin Adams helps out with our show
prep. Ryan Downey are Tidy Admiral. You've heard him on the show and
he is putting together, keeping together, holding together the tidy the tiered Dynasty
league system, which is currently in the finals. Jeremy Vee is our lead
scout. A lot of his work in the work that he's HEARDing will be
heard soon on the show. Jason is helping with our prospect ranks. Brandon
is our website guru as well as a scout. The visualizations coming up on
the Fantasy Hockey Life website are pretty pretty remarkable. If you have skills you'd
like to lend to the show, hit Victor up in the discord, email
or X. You can once again, as we said at the beginning of
the show, Fantasy Hockeylife at gmail dot com or at Fanhockey Life at Victor
Nuno twelve, but more likely hit him up in the discord. That's where
you can hang out for free. We're brought to you by Daber Hockey Dober
Prospects. Victor is an editor, I'm a writer. Follow his work there
as well as his other podcast, dobera prospect report with Peter Harlan more Diggins
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