With part one in the books, we continue our fantasy hockey awards by naming our nominees and winners for fantasy categories not normally used by the NHL.
We would love to see the NHL award show hand out hardware for the super sleeper, biggest bust, and more. Since that likely won’t happen, close your eyes and imagine a world where these are real awards. Here’s how those award presentations would play out.
Super Sleeper
Nominees: David Pastrnak, Leon Draisaitl, Mikael Granlund
Winner: Pastrnak
Who you define as a sleeper will depend on your league format and depth. In this case, each of these three nominees would have been drafted outside the top 150 players in many fantasy leagues before ending up as a top-25 scorer at season’s end.
If you’re in a pure points league, Draisaitl would have been your guy, thanks to his 77-point season aided by Connor McDavid. However, Pastrnak was the stronger player in leagues that count multiple categories. His 34 goals was the highest among this group and tied for 10th in the league, while he took nearly 100 more shots more than both Draisaitl and Granlund. In other words, a helping of Pasta was nutritious for your fantasy team.
Biggest Bust
Nominees: Gabriel Landeskog, Matt Duchene, Tyson Barrie
Winner: Duchene
Here, we’re looking for players who fell far short of pre-season expectations, which in fantasy leagues would reflect where they were drafted. Injuries may also play a role, but someone like Steven Stamkos will not be on the list because he scored more than a point per game when he was in the lineup.
The fact that the Avalanche sweep the nominee list reflects how truly disastrous their season was. In fact, one could argue Nathan MacKinnon should also be on this list, but MacKinnon didn’t perform the level of damage of his three teammates, who you were probably looking to drop at some point. So if we had to pick one from this group, Duchene stands out. A consistent 55 to 70 point scorer, Duchene sunk like a rock to 41 points while hemorrhaging your team’s plus/minus with a league-worst minus-34 (tied with Barrie). His keeper owners can only hope that he is traded in the off-season.
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Comeback Player
Nominees: Sergei Bobrovsky, Eric Staal, Henrik Zetterberg
Winner: Bobrovsky
You invest a high pick in a player, only to see that player fall well short of your expectations. With a rotten taste left in your mouth, you vow never to draft that player in your fantasy league again. But sometimes giving that player another chance when others wouldn’t can pay off.
Remember our Vezina Trophy winner from part one? He certainly wasn’t drafted among the elite goalies in your league, but he sure performed like one. Among the league leaders in all major goaltending categories, Bobrovsky was the kind of goalie you didn’t want any part of last season: missing time due to injury while posting below-average ratios while he was healthy. One other possible nominee for this award is Bob’s teammate Nick Foligno, who rebounded from a 12-goal season to score 26 after scoring 31 two seasons ago. In other words, betting on the underdog Jackets paid off.
Sophomore Slump
Nominees: Dylan Larkin, Shayne Gostisbehere, Anthony Duclair
Winner: Duclair
After a strong rookie season, a young player can only build on what he accomplished, right? Not always. That’s the affliction known as the sophomore slump.
With a decrease of 13 points to go with a minus-28 ranking, Larkin deserves strong consideration here. But Duclair regressed in his second season to the point where he needed a trip to the AHL. The warning signs were there, however. A 19 shooting percentage overall to go with a 5-on-5 10.98 shooting percentage proved that luck was on his side in 2015-16. When the overall shooting percentage dipped to 6.6, so did the goal totals. In fact, Duclair only scored five goals in 2016-17 compared to the 20 he scored in his rookie campaign.
Fourth-Year Breakout
Nominees: J.T. Miller, Nikita Kucherov, Mark Scheifele
Winner: Kucherov
Many fantasy owners believe that a player is most likely to experience his greatest production spike in his fourth full NHL season. If you believe in this theory, these players may have paid off for you.
This one was a virtual dead heat between Kucherov and Scheifele. Both became 60-point scorers by their third season, but both also made their jump to an elite level in their fourth season with at least 80 points and top-10 finishes in the scoring race.
However, it’s Kucherov’s goal total that makes him stand out here. Kucherov was forced to take on a greater role with the absence of Steven Stamkos and he delivered, reaching a 40-goal mark that only two other players accomplished in 2016-17.
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First Half Stud/Second Half Dud
Nominees: Cam Atkinson, Brent Burns, Michael Grabner
Winner: Grabner
These players may not necessarily be even when it comes to first-half hot, second-half not. But all three players burst out of the gate and were scorching hot during the first few months of the season. However, their production cooled off significantly by March and April, when it mattered most to many fantasy owners.
Both Burns and Atkinson were point-per-game players during the first half of the season. Burns was among the scoring leaders in early March. But both were basically scoring half a point per game through March and April. Neither faded down the stretch like Grabner, though. On Feb. 9, Grabner had already scored 26 goals. He scored once after that in his last 23 games. At times Grabner had an abnormally high shooting percentage, and he had not scored more than 12 goals in any of his three seasons, so astute fantasy owners would recognize the scoring wouldn’t last.
First Half Dud/Second Half Stud
Nominees: Patrice Bergeron, Jonathan Toews, Anze Kopitar
Winner: Bergeron
Many fantasy owners were ready to stick a fork in the three players listed above after all posted underwhelming first-half numbers. But patience was a virtue for those fantasy owners who stayed the course.
All three players mentioned here have been solid first-line pivots for contending teams. Age and mileage from extended playoff runs combined with key international games may have caught up to all three by the time the 2016-17 season started. Of this group, Bergeron’s first half/second half splits were the most pronounced. After earning just 12 points in 36 games before the calendar turned to 2017, Bergeron exploded for 41 points over his last 43 games. Talk about making a new year’s resolution to score more often.
Multi-Category Player
Nominees: Brent Burns, Alex Ovechkin, Erik Karlsson
Winner: Burns
Ovechkin has previously held this title because of his contributions in goals, power-play goals, shots on goal, and hits. Karlsson’s inclusion on this list may be more surprising. But we have to give props to his high blocked shots total (201, second in NHL).
Burns led all defensemen in scoring (76 points). But he was even more valuable in multi-category leagues than pure points leagues. His 29 goals was first among defencemen and 12 ahead of the next defenceman. As well, his 320 shots was also first among all players and nearly 100 ahead of the next defenceman. He also finished in the top five among defencemen in assists and power-play points.
One or Two-Category Wonder
Nominees: Mark Borowiecki, Kris Russell, Anders Lee
Winner: Borowiecki
No one does blocked shots like Russell, who has led in that category two of the last three seasons. Lee was a prolific goal scorer (34 goals), but he managed to score all those goals with under 200 shots and also didn’t provide many assists (18) to balance.
Our winner actually dominated in two categories: penalty minutes and hits. If there is a toughest player in fantasy hockey, it would have to be Borowiecki, who led the league with both 154 penalty minutes and 364 hits. If you were in a league that somehow rewarded grit with both categories, then Borowiecki was a must own. The only drawback (and it was a kind of an enormous one) is that he couldn’t score – just three points all season.
Super Sieve
Nominees: Antti Niemi, Semyon Varlamov, Calvin Pickard
Winner: Niemi
This category is for the fantasy owners who draft a fantasy goalie, then leave him in the lineup all season. These are the goalies that could potentially do the most damage to your fantasy team if you are that kind of owner.
Colorado dominated the biggest bust category and finished 21 points behind the team with the next-lowest point total. So it should come as no surprise that their two goalies are here. But in terms of truly destroying fantasy teams, Niemi was in a league of his own. Varlamov may have had the worse season (just six wins, a 3.38 GAA and .898 SV%), but at least you had a reason to dump him after he was lost for the season in mid-January. Niemi was brutal for fantasy teams all season long with a league-worst 3.30 GAA and .892 SV% among goalies that played at least 30 games. Was he on your team because you were chasing wins? Niemi registered just 12 of those in 37 games, winning less than a third of his games.
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