Fantasy Hockey Scouts: Daily Dosage - Oct 23rd, 2009

Dosage Express
Fivers for JP, Dusty & Alice... Bergeron sees three nets but hits the middle one... Halak heating up, Pavelec burned... Stamkos on his way... Listen to the cool stylings of Slippery Pete

Daily Diarrhea  

Big night for the Predators offense as they had only scored 11 goals in eight games coming into last night but pumped in six goals in an OT victory over Ottawa.  JP Dumont had an okay night with 1+4=5 and the Nashville d-core accounted for the other five goals as Shea Weber and Ryan Suter both had two and Cody Franson got his first NHL goal.

Not to be outdone by Dumont's heroics, the Oilers had two guys drop nickels on Columbus as Dustin Penner (2+3=5) and Ales Hemsky (1+4=5) combined to do a little damage on a new 1st line in Edmonton.  Sam Gagner centered the line and struggled in comparison with only three points.  Penner was dominant in the game as he finished with 11 shots on goal and if he hasn't been scooped up in every league by this morning, then feel free to add him.

There's been all this talk the past few days about how MA Bergeron shouldn't be playing because of that hit he took the other night... well he looked just fine last night scoring on the PP and adding an assist.  We've been pumping up this guy a lot and he's still available in most leagues right now so grab him and give him a whirl.

That's back-to-back wins for Jaroslav Halak and he would have had the shutout last night if he didn't misplay the puck behind his own net and give a freebie to Josh Bailey.  Now granted, the wins were at home over the Thrasher & Islanders but I don't think Jacques Martin really cares as I think he's gonna ride Halak while he's hot... so climb aboard and enjoy the ride.  Price owners should also grab Halak, if you have the space.

Maxim Afinogenov moved up to the 1st line with Antropov and Kovalchuk last night and they clicked right away as Max had 1+1=2 and the line combined for six points.  Max can be a decent little player, check that, a dynamic little player when he's in the right frame of mind, so keep an eye on him as he may decide he'd like to play with Kovalchuk regularly.   Don't feel bad for Bryan Little, who was bumped off the top line, as he landed on the 2nd line with his old buddies White & Kozlov and this is where he did most of his damage during his breakout season last year.

Rough night for Thrashers tender Ondrej Pavelec as he was torched by the Caps for five goals on 14 shots before being pulled in the 2nd period.  One of the goals was particularly odorous as he let in a bouncer from the opposite end of the rink.  We'll see if Coach Anderson goes back to him on Saturday against San Jose, but if not then we'll be interested to see how the kid bounces back from a bad outing.

The Sharks Ryan Vesce continued his crazy streak as he now has goals in all three games he's played this year.  He also chipped in six sog last night and we told you the other day to keep an eye on this guy... well we're ready to go ahead and recommend that you give him a go as he's seeing decent minutes on the top line & #2 PP unit and firing lots of shots on net, so we think he's definitely worth a short-term add right now. 

Its been a very solid start for Steve Stamkos as he added two more goals last night to give him 6+4=10 in his first eight games.  So far he's doing everything we asked of him when we named him our top breakout candidate in the Breakout Bible and predicted a 75-80 point season.

Coach Hitchcock got Nikita Filatov back into the lineup last night after scratching him the last three games but he might as well have just scratched him again as Filly played less than six minutes.  Its gonna be a very challenging year for Filatov and we hope he's mentally prepared for this.  We'd say that it will get better eventually but Jakub Voracek went through the same thing last year (averaged 12 mpg) and he's still only seeing around 14 minutes of ice-time a night this year despite being third on the team in scoring.

Injury Updates (see our Injury Updates page for a consolidated list of injuries):

Justin Williams missed last night's game with a LBI that he suffered in the morning skate yesterday... nothing serious, he's just out day-to-day.

Alex Semin missed last night's game due to an illness, so nothing to worry about unless it turns out to be something like swine flu.

Returning to action from the injured list last night: Pavel Datsyuk, Brad Richards and Peter Regin. 

Daily Distraction 

What's distracting us today?  This awesome original song about the Blackhawks by some dude named Slippery Pete... actually I think its just plain Pete but we added the Slippery in there cause it seems to work.  Actually, if you stand way back from your monitor and really squint, he kinda looks like the love-child of Joel Quenneville and Brian Johnson from AC/DC... if that doesn't blow your mind, then nothing will...