This article is part of our The Man Advantage series.
Hello all you fantasy hockey fanatics out there, and welcome to another edition of The Man Advantage, where we look at the NHL's latest power-play data and put it in some sort of fantasy context for you, our gentle readers.
First off, I have a confession to make. When I sat down to write this week's article, I was going to continue the theme I started with the last article, taking the hottest PP teams the last two weeks and identifying those players making the biggest contributions. Turns out there was only one problem with that approach this time around.
A lot of teams in the NHL have really sucked on the power play the last two weeks.
Seriously.
Want proof? A dozen teams -- almost half the league -- have two or fewer PP goals in their last 6-7 games, including Dallas (2), St. Louis (2), Boston (1), Colorado (1), Toronto (0) and Florida (0). Furthermore, only six players in the entire NHL have more than three PP points over that stretch: Patrick Kane, Alex Ovechkin, Jack Eichel, Evgeny Kuznetsov, Ryan Johansen, and Evgeni Malkin, all with four points apiece.
That's it.
Pretty slim picking in terms of which guys to write about.
So that got me to thinking -- let's look at the opposite end of the scale, and take a look at the guys who are underperforming the most this year. So without further ado, I give you:
The NHL's Top
Hello all you fantasy hockey fanatics out there, and welcome to another edition of The Man Advantage, where we look at the NHL's latest power-play data and put it in some sort of fantasy context for you, our gentle readers.
First off, I have a confession to make. When I sat down to write this week's article, I was going to continue the theme I started with the last article, taking the hottest PP teams the last two weeks and identifying those players making the biggest contributions. Turns out there was only one problem with that approach this time around.
A lot of teams in the NHL have really sucked on the power play the last two weeks.
Seriously.
Want proof? A dozen teams -- almost half the league -- have two or fewer PP goals in their last 6-7 games, including Dallas (2), St. Louis (2), Boston (1), Colorado (1), Toronto (0) and Florida (0). Furthermore, only six players in the entire NHL have more than three PP points over that stretch: Patrick Kane, Alex Ovechkin, Jack Eichel, Evgeny Kuznetsov, Ryan Johansen, and Evgeni Malkin, all with four points apiece.
That's it.
Pretty slim picking in terms of which guys to write about.
So that got me to thinking -- let's look at the opposite end of the scale, and take a look at the guys who are underperforming the most this year. So without further ado, I give you:
The NHL's Top 10 Power-Play Disappointments in 2015-16 (So Far)
10. Troy Brouwer, RW, STL: Brouwer had 14, 21 and 16 PP points, respectively, the previous three seasons with the Capitals. Well, no kidding. There's no better way to pad your PP stats than by playing on a line with Alex Ovechkin. This year in St. Louis -- his first with the Blues -- Brouwer has three PP points in 51 games. Part of the problem is, he's not seeing nearly the same amount of PP ice time he was used to seeing in Washington (about 3.5 minutes per game) because the Caps relied so heavily on the Ovechkin PP unit last season. This year with the Blues, he's seeing less than two minutes per game because coach Ken Hitchcock rolls his two PP lines a little more evenly.
9. Radim Vrbata, RW, VAN: Last season, Vrbata totaled a career-high 23 PP points in 79 games. This season, with just eight points through 46 games, he's on pace to fall roughly 10 points short of last season's total. In fact, he's notched just a single PP goal in 13 games dating back to Nov. 27 -- that's almost two months ago. So what's the problem? Well, looking at the numbers, it's hard to say exactly. For the most part, he's still skating with the Sedins on the PP this season, and both Daniel and Henrik are performing pretty much as expected (each guy on pace for roughly the same amount of PP points they had last year -- 25 each). And Vrbata's seeing roughly the same amount of PP ice time he was last year too (3:02 versus 3:06). Could be that time has just finally caught up to the 34-year-old winger.
8. Nick Foligno, LW, COB: Last season, Foligno had quite the coming-out party with 73 points in 79 games, including 26 points with the extra man. This season, he's gone off the rails with just nine PP points in 39 games. Granted, he did get off to a pretty horrendous start this year, with just seven points in his first 20 games, including a measly three PP helpers. He's been much better since then, of course, with six PP assists in his last 12 games, but he still hasn't registered a PP goal yet, after notching a career-high 11 last season. The upper-body injury he's been battling lately hasn't helped, causing him to miss nine of the past 13 games, but he's been pretty productive when healthy of late. It's possible he just hasn't adjusted to life under new head coach John Tortorella, in much the same way Ryan Johansen didn't, before he got shipped out of town.
7. Ryan Callahan, RW, TAM: Callahan had a decent season on the PP last year, with 16 points in 77 games. This year, he's stuck on two. Yep, two PP points through 46 games. Tbhe 30-year-old Callahan is showing signs he's just not the player he was, and the steady decline in his PP minutes is looking like a confirmation of this (4:11 two seasons ago, 3:49 last season, 2:19 currently). Callahan was playing regularly on the Bolt's top PP line along with Steven Stamkos last season, but this year he's been largely replaced by a handful of new names in the lineup, including Jonathan Marchessault and Vladislav Namestnikov.
6. Marian Gaborik, RW, LOS: With just one full 82-game season under his belt in his entire career, Gaborik has always had trouble staying healthy. That is, until this year. Yes, you read that right. The oft-injured Gaborik has not missed a single game so far in 2015-16. So that must mean his stats must be pretty good this year, right? Not so much. Gaborik has just 17 points in 46 games thus far, including just two lonely PP assists. He's not being used in the same capacity he once was -- his overall ice time is a career-low 15:11 per game, including just 1:47 on the power play where plays a second-line role. Tyler Toffoli now sees more ice time as the Kings' first-line PP right winger.
5. Phil Kessel, RW, PIT: Sometimes, things just look so much better on paper than they do in reality, don't they? When Kessel was shipped from the lowly Toronto Maple Leafs to the Pittsburgh Penguins in the offseason, the hockey world was abuzz. Including us. There it is, right in his season outlook: Kessel was supposed to "make up one of the most explosive top lines in hockey alongside Sidney Crosby," we said. Well, 46 games in, and how's that going? After notching at least 20 PP points in each of the last five seasons, Kessel is on pace for about 15, in a season where he probably should have wound up with at least 30. Granted, he does have a goal and three helpers in his last seven games, so if he keep up that pace, there's hope.
4. Pavel Datsyuk, C, DET: Here's another guy who just can't seem to stay out of the trainer's room for an entire season. After missing the first 15 games of the season with an ankle injury, Datsyuk has quite remarkably played in every game since about the middle of November. Unfortunately, it took him 12 games to record his first PP assist, and he's bagged just four more points since then (2G, 2A). At this rate, he won't come anywhere close to the 24 points he recorded last season. Datsyuk is still an integral part of the Wings' PP, averaging almost three minutes a night on the first line, but it's clear something is missing this year. It's possible he's still adjusting to life without coach Mike Babcock, who was the only NHL coach he ever had prior to this season.
3. Keith Yandle, D, NYR: After eight seasons playing for the Coyotes, Yandle was on his way to becoming the super-elite of NHL power-play defensemen. He had 26 PP points last season before being traded to the Rangers in March, and had 31 points the season before that. Trouble is, once on Broadway, all that desert magic apparently dried up, because he's scored just 11 PP points in 68 combined games for the Rangers since the trade, including just eight this season. He averaged a whopping 5:38 in PP ice time in 21 games for the Rangers last season, but that time has been cut in half this year (2:19) as the Blueshirts are relying more on Ryan McDonagh and Dan Boyle as their top PP quarterbacks.
2. Anze Kopitar, C, LOS: At first glance, Kopitar is having a great season. I mean, really great. With 40 points in 47 games, he's overcome an unusually slow start and now has a shot at yet another 70-plus point season. Trouble is, he's just not delivering on the PP for some reason. After delivering 24 points with the man advantage last year, he's stuck on just eight so far this year. Two seasons ago, was a whopping 4:25 per game, as the Kings leaned pretty heavily on the line of Kopitar, Gaborik, Jeff Carter and Mike Richards. Now, however, coach Darryl Sutter spreads his minutes around a little more evenly between his two lines, and Kopitar's ice time has declined to about 2.5 minutes per game.
1. John Tavares, C, NYI: Tavares tied for fifth in the league in PP scoring last year with 31 points in 82 games. However, with just nine points halfway through this season, he likely will not even come close to that number this year. So what happened to him? If you look back over his game log, he was his usual dominant self to start the season with 11 points in his first eight games, including four points on the PP. Then two games with nothing. Then he missed three games with a mysterious illness that was never really explained in detail by the team. He wasn't bad after that, with 11 points in his next 13 games, but then an eight-game stretch where he had just a single point, and nothing on the PP. And he's been hit-and-miss since then. He may still be dealing with lingering effects from whatever sidelined him in November, but whatever it is, it's turned him into a shadow of the player he was last year. Fantasy owners really have little choice but to ride out the slump and hope for better days ahead.
