Fantasy Hockey Friday: Injury Madness

On Yahoo!, if you go to your Hockey ’09 mainpage, there will be a list of trends happening within fantasy hockey. Who’s hot, who’s not, and it will usually list reminders about your own teams, either letting you know you have an injured player on your starting roster, or letting you know you own a guy that thousands of other teams have dropped. That statistic usually ends up being my absolute favorite, because it’s guaranteed that no matter who the player is, how good they are, if they get injured, the next day, tens of thousands of teams in Yahoo! hockey will have dropped that player. Thomas Vanek out for a week? Drop him. Ilya Kovalchuk out for 2-4? Peace out. Ryan Smyth maybe out for a month? 663 teams can’t be wrong!

This year has been a pretty remarkable one for injuries, with people who take care of important things like statistics saying that at one point this season, 18% of NHLers were either injured or sick enough to miss a game. There’s never been a better time to be in the AHL and teams have been forced on a nightly basis to dress 5-7 minor-league players. So what does this mean for your fantasy team? How should you deal best with injured players?

The most important statistic to consider is points-per-game. The fact that guys like Thomas Vanek and Ilya Kovalchuk got dropped while injured speaks more to the fact that poolies tend not to understand that even if your pool doesn’t have an IR spot to stash injured players, a player like Ilya Kovalchuk, who averages over 1.0 PPG for his career is simply worth more to your fantasy team over the length of a season than a guy on a hot streak, say maybe Tomas Fleischmann(a popular waiver-wire add in recent weeks) who averages less than 0.5 PPG. So that essentially means that were Ilya Kovalchuk to miss HALF the regular season and Tomas Fleischmann played all 82 games, they would score roughly the same number of points. Now, of course trends can change and guys can take off(I’m a huge Flash backer, personally), but before your trigger finger gets itchy, take a look at long-term stats and make the smart decision, not the snappy one. I know as well as anyone that it can get extremely frustrating to look at a guy not playing on your roster every night and to watch guys on the waiver wire rack up points(Eric Staal JUST got put on the injured reserve by Carolina today and he was injured NINETEEN DAYS AGO), but these players are simply too valuable to let go for the shiny new toy on the waiver wire.

When you’re looking at replacing an injured player(if your pool allows you the luxury of IR spots), it’s important to look at the needs of your team, and not simply replacing the player straight-out. For example, a lot of teams will have an offensive defenseman go down, and then see the need to replace him immediately with another offensive stalwart. It makes sense, one offensive guy out, one offensive guy in. However, that might not be what your team needs most at the moment and if you’re picking up a guy for only 2-4 weeks, you want to make sure you can maximize your use of that extra roster spot by picking up someone that may boost certain categories for you. If you need +/- help, PIM help, these are places you can look to get short-term boosts without damaging the core of your team because hey, the core of your team is injured anyway. Players who are on your roster for a short period of time aren’t going to win or lose you a pool and especially when it comes to big-time stats like goals/assists or in the case of goalies wins/shutouts, because they’re on the waiver wire for a reason: they don’t accrue enough of those points anyway. So pick up the guys who can make the most impact in a short period of time by focussing on guys who are very solid in one or two categories and who won’t hurt your team in the interim while your main guy is out.

Be patient, ride the injury wave as best you can, and make smart decisions, particularly when it comes to dropping an injured player. Those sorts of decisions can lose you a pool and impatience is the key reason why guys win and lose pools. The injury bug has been especially tough this year and I’ve likely had one of my fantasy seasons ruined by having some major players injured, but it’s one of those things that’s bound to happen and you may as well set yourself up for a strong run at the end of the season by IR’ing guys or saving a roster spot for them than ditching them for a short run when the season’s not even one-quarter over yet.

The Saturday Slate

Your weekly guide to goalie sits and starts. If my “start” goalies record a win and a peripheral statistic of either 2.00 GAA or less, or .920 save % or higher, I take one point. If they record one of the two, I take a half-point. If my “sit” goalies take a loss and post either a 3.00 GAA or higher or a .900 save % or less, I take one point. If they take either one of the two, I take a half. For the year, I have 16.5 of a possible 24 points, recording at least a half-point in 20 of 24 games thus far. In the event of a starting goalie not playing the game, I will assume their backup’s stats.

Last week: Sorry to those who starting Craig Anderson on my advice. Vancouver picks the one time all year to spark it up(on the ROAD no less) and Andy takes the brunt of it. I was 3 for 4 otherwise, making smart decisions on Varlamov and Hiller(5 and 7 GAA, respectively) and Ryan Miller was his usual brick-wall self against Philly.

START

Henrik Lundqvist v. Florida: The Rangers have gone 4-6 in their last 10, but 7 of those games have come on the road and both Lundqvist and the Rangers have had bursts of their old self in their last two games against Ottawa and Washington. A home date after a few days off against one of the most anemic offenses in the NHL seems like a recipe for a solid performance from the King.

Antero Niittymaki @ Carolina: It seems too easy to keep picking on the ‘Canes but this speaks more to Niitty’s great play than it does Carolina’s poor play. The Tampa netminder has turned his back-up position into at least a 1-B situation with his stellar play of late and I don’t see that changing against a team that has struggled to score this season and is without Eric Staal indefinitely, who was added to the team’s IR this week.



SIT

Gustavsson/Toskala v. Washington: This is pretty obvious, isn’t it? Washington is averaging nearly 4 GPG(3.75, to be exact) and the Leafs are hemorrhaging goals at the same clip. Gustavsson has been a sexy pick in pools as of late, picked up by a lot of teams and he posted some decent numbers during the Leafs’ points-in-seven streak of a few weeks back. Washington always plays well against the Leafs and the games are almost always high-scoring. Bench the Buds.

Marc-Andre Fleury @ Atlanta: There’s always a certain amount of pressure involved when you recommend that poolies sit one of the top goalies in fantasy. That said, Atlanta’s been lighting the lamp on a regular basis this season, averaging 3.75 goals-per-game(up there with league-leaders Washington and San Jose) and have scored 15 goals in their last 3 games, including torching the usually solid L.A. defense and Jon Quick for 7 last Saturday. This one should be a high-scoring affair and even if the Pens win, I like Atlanta to find twine multiple times against the Pens’ defense which is currently missing between 4-6 regulars on a nightly basis.