When it comes to fantasy hockey (and fantasy sports in general), there are plenty of reasons to open your browser and grumble about your team. The following is an abridged list for such grumble-fuel:
- Your top pick is out week-to-week with a freak injury.
- The other team started two goalies and got two shutouts.
- You sat a guy who generated a hat trick after a five-game goalless slump.
Allow me to point out something that almost always leaves me muttering in a more existential way: just about every trade in fantasy sports.
One can divide fantasy trades in a bunch of irritating categories.
If you’re in a league with friends, colleagues, and co-workers, there’s the dubious, late-season “favor trade.” A bad team mysteriously sends a lopsidedly friendly gift to boost your top rival, possibly in part because you made fun of their fedora at last year’s draft party.
Last week’s column: How hard do you really want to work in fantasy?
There are other groan-worthy swaps. When two romantic partners are involved, it heightens the “favor trade” into something even worse.
There are plenty of other ways you can describe trades, including garden-variety ones where the strong pick on the weak. Such cases are simple enough: there isn’t collusion there, merely one person leveraging their superior hockey knowledge upon a neophyte.
Those trades are annoying because they betray the “spirit of the game,” yet in a lot of cases, it’s annoying because someone else beat you to it.
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Honestly, fantasy hockey trades can be fair, but my personal preference is to never see that “veto trade” button come up. Still, the option is there, and this post is designed to help you identify a few slumping players to target in trades.
Consider this a companion piece to Joey Alfieri’s weekly Add/Drop columns, as most – if not all – of these slumping players won’t be available on your waiver wire. This isn’t a comprehensive list, but consider this something of a blueprint of players to look for; applying this logic later this season is just fine, too.
That said, newbies tend to get closer to panic mode earlier in the season, so it might be wisest to strike while the desperation is hot. Let’s consider a few worthwhile trade targets, shall we?
Oh, Patches.
It seems like there are two patterns forming with Pacioretty: goal slumps and freaky fast recoveries from injuries. There’s at least one time where those two matters converged, as Pacioretty barely scored for a month last season and then we realized he was dealing with a fractured foot.
(You may say that he’s dealing with a fractured franchise right now.)
Pacioretty scored a goal in his first game of the season and his most recent one. In between, there were seven games with zero goals and zero assists. This is a puck luck thing, as it is with many Habs: his 35 shots on goal ties him for the 11th-most in the NHL.
The Capitals defenseman has almost as many SOG as Patches (34 in nine games) despite being, you know, a blueliner. With a 5.4 percent career shooting percentage, Carlson’s climb probably won’t be as dramatically beneficial as Pacioretty’s likely will be, but you’d think that Carlson would be easier to pry away.
Washington needs his offense (to be fair, he does have a respectable five assists), and Carlson needs a strong season. The 27-year-old is in a pivotal contract year, and greed can be very good for fantasy.
Facing similar shooting struggles to Carlson. No one’s crazy enough to trade the crazy-bearded defenseman, though, right?
Well, he’s at least worth mentioning, especially if you think a first-timer might have an itchy trade finger.
Justin Faulk is going through the same basic issues, and the Hurricanes haven’t played a ton of games, so he might be a better bet than Burns. You can, in fact, be too brazen with an offer.
(There are times when I’ve closed a browser/laptop in disgust at THE AUDACITY of certain offers. There’s a fine line to walk here, gang.)
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Five points in nine games is fine for a defenseman who likely goes reasonably high in most drafts, but not quite in those “premium” spots that really sting. Still, after “only” scoring 12 goals in 2016-17 following two 20+ goal seasons, “OEL” is stuck at one goal, but that’s not the category that might cause some anxiety.
With a -10 rating, OEL has the second-worst mark, only below Mats Zuccarello. That’s rough, but the beauty of trading is that you haven’t absorbed any of that player’s bad moments.
Honestly, you might want to wait about a month on this one though. Read this post to see why the Coyotes are in for a few rugged weeks.
Henrik Lundqvist, Carey Price, Devan Dubnyk, etc.
This column is going a little long (don’t get this guy started on how annoying fantasy trades can be, folks), so allow me to lump in disproportionately struggling goalies to a single spot.
It’s true that each guy has his own caveat (Lundqvist’s age is a concern, Price will cost a higher price, and so on), the general rule is that they’re bound to rebound. If you can get them at a discount, go for it.
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The short version of this is to check extremes.
If someone’s shooting at an extremely high percentage compared to career numbers, sell high by trading them. This list is well-stocked with players who are suffering awful puck luck, and all should turn around. You can use similar logic to identify potential adds on the waivers, too (Rick Nash owners have had it).
Of course, you could also do the right thing and not annoy me by making any trades at all. There’s also that.
James O’Brien is a writer for Pro Hockey Talk on NBC Sports. Drop him a line at phtblog@nbcsports.com or follow him on Twitter @cyclelikesedins.
