I think TomG has a very good point. There is a leveling out effect when choosing goalies. I have thought of it as somewhat like if in baseball your pitcher actually received points for hits and walks against, only losing points for runs.

+1 Tom, but you can't really just chose any goalies. The top FP getters are still the top team goalies (Price, Murray, Bobrosvky, Rusk) even though some of them usually don't face that many shots. I think it really depends on match ups.

varlamov had 51 saves last night as a +160 dog against the leafs lol.

i think bc no matter how bad your goalie is, even a replacement level goalie benefits from facing a lot of shots. and all else equal the underdog team's goalie tends to face more shots than the favorite. yes, he will probably give up more goals and is less likely to get the win, but simply knowing you are going to more shots helps cushion those negative effects.

Is there a regular NHL fantasy thread? Got a bunch of trade offers in my 3 keeper 14 man league and would really love some insight.

Sorry if this is not the place.

Currently in 1st in a 14 man, goals, assists & goalie stats league. 3 keepers and I am in 1st place.

Guy offered me Tarasenko & one of Couture/Thorton/O'Reilly/Marner for Stamkos & Austin Mathews.

I've got Gaudreau & Laine as my other keepers currently, Tarasenko would be my 3rd keeper and it'd allow me to push for the win with Stammer sidelines.

Thoughts?

Are goals worth more than assists in your league or everything counts as 1 pt?

It's a tough call since Stamkos slightly have more value than Tarasenko but Stamkos will be out for a while. For the short run, the trade seems pretty good if you have no plans of keeping Matthews as a keeper. I believe Tarasenko is slowly catching up to Stamkos in terms of scoring abilities so it wouldn't be such a downgrade for next season.

Goals are worth 3 and assists are worth 2.

I think the trade is pretty good as it gives you a better chance to win this season. Tarasenko isn't much of a downgrade from Stamkos. If you don't plan to keep Matthews anyways then it would be fine to trade him away.

crosby held scorelsss in his last game is this the beginning of a long regression from his 27% shooting percentage?

you're compring the wrong guys imo. tarasenko > stamkos. swapping matthews for tarasenko is a fair trade. overall i'd make the trade and drop stamkos to pickup marner from that group.

Matthews is definitely overrated this season as he plays with sub par wingers. Stamkos is certainly above Tarasenko is ranking at the moment due the amount of goals he consistently score every season. Not a big fan of players on 1A/1B lines like Marner/Matthews line so I'd rather take O'Reilly, Couture, Marner/Thornton in this order. Would generally prefers players that play 1st pp unit with a crappy 2nd unit therefore 1st unit stays on for more than 1 min on pp.

can you explain? wouldn't the opposite be true? an average player surrounded by star linesmates will have an inflated assist rate (particularly 2ndary assists) and goal scoring ability due to his linesmates playmaking ability.

can someone explain hornqvist to me? he leads his team in shot creation (CF, FF, SF), but has scored relatively few goals, particularly at even strength. is he just running bad?

I guess if depends how people value Matthews. From a fantasy perspective, he isn't an elite tier player at the moment as his line isn't producing that consistently and isn't the first option on the powerplay. Definitely true that an average player with star linemates will have inflated assists and scoring abilities (which is good!). A perfect example would probably be Crosby's linemates. Kunitz had great value when he played with Crosby but now it seems like Sheary + Hornqvist is benefiting from it.

Haven't watched much of Penguins games this season but from couple highlights, it seems like Hornqvist just parks in front of the net (on PP). He gets a lot of rebound shots and maybe it's not the highest quality shots/chances.

Running somewhat bad. His 5x5 and personal shooting percentages are a bit low, as is his IPP. Plus, he was off PP1 for a few games.

I still like him for 0.75-0.80 points per game this season.

Tarasenko has 92 goals in his last 189 games since the start of 2013-14, for a rate of virtually one in every two games. Stamkos, who's nearly two years older than Tarasenko, has 88 goals in his last 176 games, for exactly one per every other game.

As of right now, they're pretty comparable when it comes to goals, plus Tarasenko gets you more assists, which are still worth 2/3 as much as goals. And starting next season Yeo will be coach in St. Louis, and that should only help the Blues offense as compared to Hitchcock. And let's not overlook that Stamkos will be coming off his second major leg injury in four seasons, so who knows if he'll be truly the same player again.

My take on Matthews is he's comparable to a Tavares type. But unlike Tavares he'll have a ton of surrounding talent in 2-3 years; so whereas Tavares stalled at 80-85 points we could realistically see Matthews get past 90.

Nobody knows what will happen after his surgery this season but Stamkos has 43,45,51,60! goals years. Tarasenko has a great chance to reach that level but as of now if both players were healthy this season, I would def take Stamkos over Tarasenko. Stamkos is a heavily relied guy on Tampa Bay and at times he hogs up 80% of the pp time whereas Tarasenko starts off on the first unit but will most likely play half the pp due to the two strong lines in STL.

Talk about unlucky, Krug has 98 shots and 1 goal........Yikes

No offense, but three of those four goal totals were from 2009-12. To put in perspective how long ago even 2011-12 was, Zdeno Chara and Dan Boyle combined for 100 points that season. On the other hand, Tarasenko is only scratching the surface and his best has yet to come.

And what does PPTOI matter when Stamkos doesn't capitalize on it? In 759 PP minutes since 2013-14 Stamkos has 68 PPPts, whereas Tarasenko has only 5 fewer PPP in 150 fewer PP minutes. And just watch when Yeo comes in as coach - Tarasenko will be leaned on tons more, both as ES and on the PP.

Valuing Stamkos higher than Tarasenko in a keeper would be a costly mistake.

From a DFS perspective, PPTOI is key for lots of picks along with $ value but I'm not quite sure if it translate into Year long Fantasy leagues. Even if we only look from 2013 onwards, Stamkos (39 goals) scores at a better pace than Tarasenko (29 goals) on PP. I definitely agree with you that Tarasenko has yet to scratch the surface and will surpass Stamkos at some point.

Tough thing with these keeper leagues is that nobody knows how long it will actually go on for. If your league will last 4+ years more then Tarasenko will have more value. I'd still take Stamkos over Tarasenko for the next 3 years. Stamkos is just a more proven goal scorer and his shot is just too deadly to ignore. From 2013 onwards, he is shooting at 17.0% (113 G) which is highest for anyone scoring 50+.

You keep placing huge emphasis on Stamkos' stats from 5+ years ago. That's ancient history for fantasy hockey, yearly or daily. Since 2013-14 he has a 16.2% shooting percentage. Still very good; however, he's also down to 3.08 SOG per game. Meanwhile, Tarasenko is shooting 13.7% but has averaged 3.54 SOG per game. The added SOG volume more than makes up for the slightly lower SH%.

Frankly, you seem like a Stamkos fanboy, which is fine. Just don't let it trump sound DFS or regular fantasy logic, which I submit is what's happening here. What would help is a third opinion - anyone?

I honestly have no bias towards Stamkos but just giving my opinion based on facts. I only used stats from 2013 on wards because you used it in your PP example but now you disregard those years also? I can't predict the future so I use past stats as evidence of consistency and proof that he can score every year.

From reading your posts, I actually thought Stamkos was like 30 years old as it sounded like he was past his prime and slowly declining. I had to look up how old he was and he is only 26 so he still has MANY years ahead of him. Tarasenko has never had a point per game season but is currently on pace for his first. From stats and age perspective, I just can't see how Tarasenko is a clear cut winner like you stated.

Fair enough - we agree to disagree in this case. And don't get me wrong - I appreciate the debate and your positions. As I said though, I'd love to hear a tiebreaking vote......

what are some other forums for more active nhl discussion? i'd prefer more of a dfs focus but seems like most people still focus on their seasonal leagues.

i've found hockey's future and dobber's forum to be the most active with some quality discussion.

I find rotogrinder's forum to be pretty good regarding DFS. They make a thread for each day.