Rotisserie by the Numbers

Look to teams at the bottom of the standings for fantasy help

By Craig Rondinone, SportsTicker

Although stocking up on Red Wings, Avalanche, Sharks, Stars, Bruins and Devils might sound like a good way to finish atop the standings, your fantasy team would be better served if you picked up a few players from the NHL's perennial cellar-dwellers.

A good friend could not make our draft this year due to personal business, so he asked if I could draft for him. Of course, he gave me a few rules to follow, and one he was particularly emphatic about was he did not want any players on bad teams, such as the Predators, Lightning or Panthers. He said the last thing he wanted was a bunch of guys destined to finish with minus-20s this season.

There are a couple of holes I can shoot through that theory. One bullet is that you never really know before the season which teams will finish first and which will finish last. Many fantasy owners probably assumed that Minnesota and Tampa Bay were going to be in for long seasons, but both look like they are going to be playoff-bound.

Bullet No. 2 is that plus-minus is only one category. Why pass over a possible 30-goal, 60-point player just because his plus-minus might be in the negatives? Do you hear fantasy baseball owners passing over Jim Thome because he does not steal bases? How many fantasy football owners skip over Kurt Warner because he does not pile up enough rushing yards?

Bullet No. 3 is that even if you carry one or two plus-minus killers on your roster, you can easily balance it out by having many players who possess great plus-minuses. How much damage can Vincent Lecavalier do if you have 10 players on your team you know will finish with a plus-10 or better?

Here are some players you may have ignored on draft day because they were not on the best teams and how these players are making other fantasy owners very happy:

Andy Delmore, Predators: The Predators have not exactly made Nashville fans forget about the wonderful wailings of country music artists like Brooks and Dunn and The Dixie Chicks. The Predators never have made the playoffs and have just one victory this season.

Delmore was one of the biggest surprises in fantasy hockey last season, however, leading defensemen with 11 power-play goals. His offense dried up toward the end of the season, so many fantasy experts thought he might be a one-year wonder and rated him lower than he probably should have been entering the 2002-03 campaign.

Besides Andreas Johansson, Delmore has been the only bright spot for the Preds through the first three weeks. He has proven that his man-advantage mastery was not just limited to last season as he already has scored three power-play goals. Delmore has six points in his first eight games and appears on his way to a 15-goal, 45-point effort.

Olli Jokinen, Panthers: It did not take a rocket scientist, psychic or brain surgeon to figure out that Florida was going to be a downright awful hockey team this season. They were terrible last season and did nothing in the offseason to improve. With little offensive firepower to work with, coach Mike Keenan likes to ride the few horses he has as much as he can, and he has been riding "The Jokester" a lot lately.

Once Keenan took over behind the bench last season, the talented but underused Jokinen started getting huge amounts of ice time -- and the trend has not stopped. Jokinen is finally playing up to his potential, logging more than 20 minutes a game, leading to a team-high 11 points in 10 games. He plays on the power play, penalty-kill and is the first-line center at even strength.

Jokinen is no joke. He might end up as a minus-50 because of the team he plays for, but he will more than make up for it with his offense.

Martin St. Louis, Lightning: Between having his 2001-02 season cut short by a severe ankle injury and figuring the Lightning would be the laughingstock of the league for another year, St. Louis may have gone undrafted in many leagues. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

St. Louis's injury obviously did not rob him of any of his speed, and Tampa Bay is playing like the next coming of the Wayne Gretzky-led Edmonton Oilers, so his fantasy value is soaring. Playing on a line with Brad Richards and Fredrik Modin, St. Louis is among the league leaders with 13 points. And with Lecavalier and Vaclav Prospal forming another strong unit, opposing teams cannot focus solely on stopping St. Louis.

Will the Lightning keep winning at this pace? Not likely. Will St. Louis continue to average close to a point per game? That is more likely.

Prejudice. That is what it is. You probably think you do not have a prejudiced bone in your body, but you do. Many fantasy owners have at least one. It is time to stop labeling players on bad teams as worthless and start picking them up and playing them.

Penalty shots

The Mario Lemieux Award for excellence at getting injured goes this week to Adam Oates. Oates was supposed to be the first great playmaking center Paul Kariya ever played with on a full-time basis in Anaheim. Seven games later, Oates was a minus-5 with just three points and Kariya was back with Steve Rucchin.

Now Oates is out at least a month with a broken hand. When he returns to the lineup he could see his ice time reduced to Rucchin, Matt Cullen and Andy McDonald. I think Oates deserves a two-minute minor for obstruction holding -- holding Kariya back from scoring more goals, that is.

An honorable mention goes to Minnesota's Bill Muckalt, who was mentioned in last week's column after he got off to a torrid start. I said he never would keep up his frantic goal-scoring pace because he is so injury-prone. Like clockwork, that very night he dislocated his shoulder and is lost for a month. Give me a medal.

 

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