Love em or hate em.  Want em or take them late.  YOU NEED A QUALITY GOALIE at some point in the draft.

They account for “only” 3 categories but without these 3 categories you will be hard pressed to win a league title.

Roto is supposedly balanced throughout the season and H2H is more matchup based unless you get a Top 5 netminder.

Much like starting pitching in baseball and every position in football players are tiered.

FIRST LEVEL (TIER) goalies – these are guys worthy of a late first round good choices in rounds 2 or 3 if still available:

#1         Evgeni Nabokov             solid team – plays well in regular season – good system – will lead league in wins and possibly challenge 50 (I have him listed at 48/49) – he will play 65-70 games unless injured  SHUTOUTS PROJECTION 8

#2         Roberto Luongo             will play 60-65 games – has a team that will be very solid in front of him – will have 40-45 wins and could challenge for the GAA title among starting goalies with 45 or more starts  SHUTOUTS PROJECTION 7

#3         Mikka Kiprusoff              HE IS LISTED at like #312 on the ESPN player rater and slips low in drafts because he is listed so low (MAKE A NOTE OF THIS and if he is still available in leagues in rounds 4 or 5 or 6 I got him in round 8 the other night) GRAB HIM.  He plays 65-70 games EVERY year and posts solid GAA – Save % and will have upwards of 45 wins.  Another solid choice.  SHUTOUTS PROJECTION 6

#4         Marc-Andre Fleury         Plays for the Pens so will get plenty of wins (probably 40) – proved last year he can be “the man” between the pipes and should only get better – his GAA and SP% will be average by starting goalie standards though (figure 2.70 & .910 respectively).  SHUTOUTS projection 5

#5         Martin Brodeur               some will have him ranked higher while others will have him ranked lower.  This is because of age and last season’s injury!  The man is in a Devils system that year in and year out despite whoever plays in front of him bus into the system and limits shots to about 22 per game and he’ll not have much traffic in front of the net so figure another solid 40 win campaign with a GAA around 2.50 and save percentage about .915

SECOND LEVEL (TIER) goalies – use your judgement based on draft room, goalie runs and your team’s needs.  If you haven’t grabbed on of the top 5 IMO and still need a goalie getting one of these guys should become a priority by round 5!!!!!!  If you’ve gotten a top 5 guy there isn’t anything saying you can’t sure up your goaltending early and focus on other needs throughout the remainder of the draft!

Goalies 6 thru 12 IMO are interchangeable with strengths and weaknesses HOWEVER all will give you good runs during the season and most play for playoff contending teams (some with hopes of making deep runs).

Simeon Varlamov           Caps     that’s right forget about Theodore.  This guy is for real.  He’ll challenge 40 wins and will challenge for the GAA title as well.  I think he’ll play 60 games have a GAA of around 2.33 and a save % of .920.  He will play for the often offensively challenged Capitals but they will have moments of putting up good numbers against bad teams.  Shutout projection 6

Cam Ward                     Hurricanes         he only quietly goes about his business and wins his 35+ games every year with his standard 2.60 GAA and .915 save %.  Plays on a team that traditionally hangs around until the end and will challenge for a playoff spot this season in the East.  Shutout projection 5

Ryan Miller                    Sabres              will be depended upon to “save” the Sabres and play like they expect (need) him to.  A solid choice for 35 wins and pedestrian GAA and SP%  SHUTOUT PROJECTION 4

Ray Emery                    Flyers               could be a huge jolt in Philly (we’ve been down the emotional goalie road before – ie Hextall anyone) or a huge bust.  Just another name to add to the goalie experiment list in Philly.  I think until he gets nabbed speeding along I-95 late after a game one night he’ll be fine.  I got him projected as 35-40 wins with a sub 2.60 GAA and about a .915 SP%.  Shutout projection 4

Henrik Lundqvist            Rangers            as Henrik goes so go the Blue Shirts.  A 35-40 win season with a sub 2.50 GAA and about .920 SP% will pass!  Shutout projection 5

Jonas Hiller                   Ducks               were the playoffs a fluke?  What about JS?  Well, the Ducks will “platoon” the goalies early and hope for a team to get an injury and want a trade!  If that doesn’t happen I have BOTH goalies projected as 35 win talent and NO THE DUCKS AREN’T WINNING 70 games!  That means one of them goes!  I’m taking the gamble that Hiller is the real deal.  He will have a sub 2.40 GAA and post SP% of .920  SHUTOUT PROJECTION 6

Tim Thomas                  Bruins               Yep, the Bruins ARE for real.  The team will play well. Thomas will win and he will play well too.  Why so low in my rankings?  His unorthodox style of goaltending doesn’t sit right with me.  He will possibly win the GAA title as he will have a GAA of around 2.25 and a save % of .925 but despite all that I have him projected to only win 35-40 games which puts him among the second tier goalies.  Boston also has Tuuka Rask which is a better goalie than Thomas and if the few games Rask sees early are good it will take more games away from Thomas.  Shutout projection for Thomas 5 +  Rask 3

Third Level (tier) – these guys are serviceable but all have potential HIGH risk with high reward.  BUYER BEWARE

Cristobal Huet                will have strong GAA and possibly 30-35 wins

Pascal LeClaire             depends on what Ottawa team shows up in front of him – could be 25-30 wins w/good GAA or 20-25 wins with horrible GAA

Steve Mason                 will probably get you the most shutouts in the league but since ESPN doesn’t reward that – he will only have 30+ wins but low GAA

Carey Price                   is he really gonna play with a clear head in high pressure Montreal?  POSSIBLY a 30 game winner

Marty Turco                   can he regain his old form?  If so could be a late round sleeper but pick him too early he could be a early round BUST

Niklas Backstrom          Is the starting job really his or is Harding waiting for the first slip?  Will he stay out of injury trouble?

Tomas Vokoun              ALWAYS a strong GAA and save % but plays in Panthertown and they at times look pathetic.  Can he win 15 games ALONE?

Chris Osgood                showed he still has flashed if brilliance IN THE PLAYOFFS but another year of .890 SP% and ABOVE 3 GAA won’t cut it in titletown

Pekka Rinne                  Playing with the Preds could be good?  Right?

JS Giguere                    Is it JS or Hiller?  Is the playoff catastrophe behind now?  How about a trade to say the East Coast?  Do you really think the Islanders are gonna have DiPietro AND Roloson all season?

FOURTH Level (tier) – hope you aren’t selecting BOTH goalies from this group or good luck!  Struggles ahead with little good news

Jonathan Quick              hockey in LA is an afterthought – does Goldie Hawn still go to games?

Kari Lehtonen                yeah ok – is this the year?  FINALLY?  Whatever

Ilya Bryzgalov                sorry Charlie but your team is up for sale, Wayne is gonna be gone SOON and the team is distracted with too much and still too young

Mike Smith                    tampa is a year away from being a year away

Jonas Gustavson           can “the beast” take the job in Toronto – YES but not until mid season

Craig Anderson              finally gets hs chance to start – shame they are in rebuilding mode

Vesa Toskala                the heir apparent (JONAS) gives Vesa a short leash and little wiggle room for error

Rick DiPietro                 I have to stop laughing – he signed a 10 year deal right?  Has played like 15 games since signing it right?  Sorry, still laughing

Nikolai Khabibulin          his time has come, gone and past!  Edmonton will get a serviceable year out of him but will miss the playoffs!

FIFTH Level (tier) – these guys are emergency starters and backups only – all are quality backups and could be nice “handcuffs” if you so choose but better options are available barring injury to a team’s starter!

Jimmy Howard

Martin Biron

Ty Conklin

Brian Boucher

Dan Ellis

Tuuka Rask

Jose Theodore

Josh Harding

Hope this helped a little

Newman

For those still reading along this is part 9 of an 11 part series for fantasy hockey owners.

This installment deals with DEFENSE and my rankings

Good teams with good systems have GOOD defenses.

EVERY team has a “quarterback” which is the guy on the #1 power play unit for the team that “organizes” the rush (or attack).

Good teams have better power plays while bad teams usually do not as they are killing penalties more often than scoring on them.

Think Teams like Detroit, Calgary, Vancouver, Pittsburgh, San Jose Boston or even philly for good units

Think Tampa, St louis, Florida, Atlanta Colorado for struggling units

The rest will be clumped in the middle as a team!

As far as INDIVIDUAL RANKINGS – again the disclaimer (this is only one man’s opinion).

Go with your gut, watch for trends, read up a bit about a rookie making strides in preseason making a club or a guy coming up from minors.  WATCH JUNIOR PLAYERS as some teams will carry them until ONE GAME BEFORE THEY ARE REQUIRED TO KEEP THEM AND SEND THEM BACK “FOR DEVELOPMENT” TO JUNIORS!!!!!

Defense is a weird animal in fantasy.  You want SOLID guys that can get you at least 3 of the 7 categories for “OFFENSE” production.  Traditionally the defenders don’t travel down deep into the offensive zone which is why goal totals are low for them as they “stay at home” (which means stop at the opposing team blue line (USUALLY).  Some of your more offensive minded defenders are paired with a guy that only stays at home such as Washington with Mike Green or Edmonton with Sheldon Souray and Nashville with Shea Weber.  Those aforementioned guys will ALL bang in 20 goals.. Defenders are lucky if they get 20 goals and MOST YEARS no more than 8 good defenders will do it in the ENTIRE NHL.

Defenders are good for assists though, usually will be among the team leaders for PIMs and ALWAYS will lead the team in TOI.  Most teams employ FOUR offensive lines and only 3 defense pairings.  This “shortens” when the game enters the third period and specialty teams are needed (power play & penalty kill).

Solid defenders will get 24+ mins per game (24 defenders topped this total last season that played in 55 or more games) with some getting as high as 27 (Jay Bouwmeester last year in Fla).

My rankings are as follows:

YOU CAN’T GO WRONG WITH ANY DETROIT DEFENDER (Rafalski – Lidstrom – Kronwall) are ALL very good and rank as #8 -9 -10 in my book.

Chicago is another team with a quality corps of defenders (Campbell #15 – Barker #25 – Keith #30 – Seabrook #55)

Boston has Chara #11 and Wideman #7 which are strong

Calgary has who many feel is still among the best in Phaneuf #3 for me and the addition of Boumeester #12

Want a sleeper or two?  How about Mark Streit of the Islanders – he’ll be among the point leaders on the whole team just like last year with Okposo

Another “sleeper” Alex Edler of Vancouver or Kevin Bieska of Vancouver – here’s a name to remember LATER (not during the draft as I don’t know if he’ll be on the roster) Zach Bogosian of Atlanta for a deep stretch sleeper.

THE LIST:

#1         Mike Green  (most drafts have him going as one of the top 2 defenders off the board in the late first or early second)

#2         Dan Boyle

#3         Dion Phaneuf  (he has lasted in some drafts until late third and early fourth

#4         Dan Boyle

#5         Sheldon Souray

#6         Sergei Gonchar

#7         Dennis Wideman

#8         Brian Rafalski

#9         Nik Lidstrom    (he will be picked EARLY because of name recognition)

#10       Nick Kronwall

#11       Zdeno Chara

#12       Jay Boumeester

#13       Mark Streit

#14       Shea Weber

#15       Brian Campbell

Go with some of the guys you like.

I am high on Pronger – Niedermeyer – Edler – McCabe – Kaberle as well.

Good luck

Newman

Not that it really seems to matter but I feel better getting it done since I promised it.

THE REGULAR SEASON FOR THE NHL STARTS TOMORROW (Thursday 10-1-09).

Please watch waiver moves and bubble players for transactions, movement up or down and early season injuries placed on IR at last minute.

That guy you took a gamble on in Round 22 like JVR or the extra goalie you carried as a backup for quality starts (Boucher maybe as an example) should be watched as FINAL ROSTERS ARE DUE TODAY AT NHL OFFICES IN TORONTO.  That doesn’t mean moves can’t be made after the roster deadline but it matters for starts, fantasy and salary cap reasons!

Watch the quirks of the schedule this year as well.

ESPN FANTASY starts tomorrow as well and the first week in H2H is only 4 days!!!!!!!

The Fantasy Hockey season is 26 weeks (or scoring periods as the Olympic break causes about an 18 day stoppage in the NHL).

REMEMBER THE “NEW” H2H rule of NO LIMIT for games played HOWEVER you can only have 7 “acquisitions” during the scoring week.  This can be 7 additions from waivers in one day OR spread out over the week.

KEEP IN MIND some “special” weeks have different limits:

Week 1 has only  3 acquisitions

THERE ARE NO GAMES ON 10-18-09 but the week still allows 7 pickups

Week of 12-21-09 to 12-27-09 only allows 5 as no games 12-24 or 12-25 this year!

Week 21 2-15-10 to 3-7-10 allows 7 pickups for the entire scoring period (Olympic break time)

PLAYOFFS are COMBINED for scoring and NOT 2 separate weeks!

ROTO it should be noted that you need a completely different games played “PACE” or you will run out of games by week 23 or 24 and as previously noted the game stretches for 26!

Watch your pace with this suggestion in mind:

CARRY AN EXTRA DEFENDER ALL SEASON AND PUT HIM IN UTIL SLOT WITHOUT MOVING HIM – put a durable defender that averages 78-82 games per year and don’t worry about him as you get 82 Util games and this move will make your TOI higher giving you a better score in that category.

CARRY THREE GOALIES (sometimes 4 isn’t bad either) at least half of the season which will cut down on player games for forward, defense and util.  Even the most games played by any goalie (Kipper played 75 last year) but most played is usually 65 and put another goalie you only total 130 and with a limit of 164 that gives you 34 games to play with!  Use this advice creatively especially early and/or late when teams are finding themselves, juggling lines and goalies are playing for starting jobs, etc.

LIMITS for ROTO:           Forward 738

Defense 410

Util       82

Goalie   164

Weekly goal:                 forwards 29 games (28.3 per week)

Defense 16 games (15.76 per week)

Util       3 games (3.15 per week)

Goalie   6 games (6.30 per week)

WATCH NHL schedules for LONG road trips and LONG homestands

A perfect example this season is VANCOUVER – they are the host city for the Olympics and the Canucks BOTH benefit and suffer for this.

Example they play 8 straight at home in December AND another stretch of 9 out of 11 at home in January.  They then don’t play a home game for a period of 44 days (6.5 weeks) from January 28 to March 13.  In that period they have the 15 days off for the Olympic games but play 14 games straight on the road.

Another team with a LATE season favorable schedule is Nashville.  If they plan on making a run this year in the West (which I don’t think they can) but mid March through start of April would be the time to do it as they play 9 of 10 at home and that is a stretch where FANTASY PLAYOFFS ARE PLAYED TOO.

Atlanta plays 12 times at home and 4 on the road in March.

EARLY season schedule advantage goes to OTTAWA as they in play October and November with a total of 17 home games and only 7 road games. The schedule catches up with them really at no point as they have a few 5 game road stretches and a few 3 game stretches but nothing too long to handle!

If Toronto is going to make a move for the playoffs this year (not quite as they are still one year away) coming out of the East then it will be late March into April as they play 8 of 10 at home!

Bruins have a stretch leading into the Olympic break where they play 4 on the road and come back from the break playing 7 of 9 on the road as well.  That could be a rough patch for a team challenging for the top spot in the East.  They make a stand here or wither into 4^th in the East based strictly on this stretch!

Good luck and watch those waiver moves in the NHL

Newman

The bread and butter of the NHL – the playmakers, highlight reel guys and those guys that make up a majority of the roster in fantasy.  They take up NINE (9) active slots and usually 2 of the bench slots in ESPN leagues.  They are your forwards.  They consist of wingers (both left and right) or centers.

I think 5 of the top 6 guys this season are centers (the one exception is Ovechkin a LW) and he is #1.

Before I get into my opinion of rankings I want to point out some possible “sleepers or breakout players” for this season.  Now, some of these guys may start in the minors so watch waivers, and others won’t adjust to NHL lifestyle until midway through or play on the 4^th line for a spell or the last defensive pairing.  So waych them CLOSELY which is why they are potential breakout candidates.

Red Wings are ALWAYS capable of carrying a guy or two for this category and this season is no different as they reload to once again attempt to dominate the West.  Look to Valtteri Filppula and Dan Cleary.

How about big name prospect in Washington Tomas Fleischmann.  The Oilers have Sam Gagner amd the Maple Leafs have Luke Schenn.  The Pens will show some love to Maxime Talbot and the Ducks might carry a soft spot for Andrew Ebbett.  If you don’t mind having REALLY bad +/- look to Steven Stamkos of Tampa and Ryan Clalahan has to arrive at some point for the Rangers.

How do I see them ranked at forwards:

1                     Ovechkin

2                     Malkin

3                     Getzlaf

4                     Datsyuk

5                     Thornton

6                     Carter

7                     Iginla

8                     Crosby

9                     Semin

10                 Parise

11                 Savard

12                 Nash

13                 Kovalchuk

14                 Gaborik

15                 Backstrom

16                 Lecavalier

17                 Kane

18                 Zetterberg

19                 Perry

20                 E Staal

21                 D Sedin

22                 H Sedin

23                 Richards

24                 Jokinen

25                 Heatley

26                 Spezza

27                 Toews

28                 Vanek

29                 Alfredsson

30                 Kopitar

31                 Hossa

32                 Gomez

33                 Elias

34                 Marleau

35                 M Koivu

36                 Gagne

37                 Briere

38                 Zajac

39                 Boyes

40                 Roy

41                 Doan

42                 Kessel

43                 Havlat

44                 Franzen

45                 Morrow

46                 Tavares

47                 Ryan

48                 Ribeiro

49                 Kunitz

50                 Hemsky

Good luck and remember that fantasy is not ONLY about winning it is about FUN.  Pick your favorite guy if you like.  Stock up 3 or 4 from your favorite team but don’t only go with “love” of team as sometimes a pick with your head is better served than going with your heart!