Fantasy Hockey Scouts: Daily Dosage - Dec 11th, 2009

Dosage Express
Erat still hot... Dumont bumped... Russell & JJ up and Gilroy down... Lupul questionable... the real highlights of the Leafs debacle  

Daily Diarrhea   

HEADS UP:  Our weekly Fantasy Five article is up over at HockeyDraft.ca... for the love of god, please go have a look. 

Another goal last night for Marty Erat and that's goals in four straight and 6+3=9 in his last five games.  Pick him up if you think this can continue but we're going to pass as he's never seen the north side of 60 points in his career and despite his hot streak he's still only on pace for 51 points this year.

Erat has been promoted to the Preds top line lately which has bumped JP Dumont down a peg and lets just say that the 2nd line in Nashville is not where the magic happens (unless you're talkin bout line dancin)... JP is 2+2=4 with only 14 shots in his last 11 games. 

Not sure what triggered it but ever since being scratched for a few games a while back, the CBJs Kris Russell has come out swinging as he has 3+2=5 in his last six games and has been seeing a lot more ice-time... in his first 17 games this year, he only played above 19 minutes twice but in his last six games, he's done it four times. 

The Rangers have sent dman Matt Gilroy to the AHL... who would have thought that the highly touted rookie would get demoted?... well, actually we've been telling you that he's overrated since the day he signed.

Jack Johnson had a goal and an assist last night to continue his hot patch with 1+6=7 in his last six games... we've been waiting for his offense to come around as he's one of our favourites and has serious six-category stud potential.

Mikhail Grabovski has been playing well lately with 3+3=6 & a plus-5 in his last five games and while his PIMs have mysteriously disappeared (only two so far this year after 92 last year) he is shooting the puck a lot more (on pace for 185 after only 120 last year).

Another solid performance last night for Tuukka Rask as he has now gone seven starts without a regulation loss or without giving up more than 3 goals.  Rask is putting some pressure on Tim Thomas and we could see him just playing so well that Claude Julien has no choice but to keep riding him... keep tabs on our Crease Conflicts page for the latest.

When Pascal Leclaire went down injured we recommended Brian Elliott as we like the kid and we thought the Senators were a little underrated.  Well things haven't quite gone as we had hoped, he did post a shutout last night but is only 4-5-1 with a 2.79 gaa & .890 sv% in the 10 games since Leclaire's been out.  Now his teammates have been keeping up their end of the bargain by only allowing 25.4 shots per game in those 10 games but the goal support isn't there as they're only scoring at a 2.3 gpg clip.

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

We've been pumping up Joffrey Lupul lately cause it seems like something has gotten into him since he returned from a back back... well whatever it was must have wore off cause he missed practice with a leg injury yesterday and is questionable for their game tonight.  

Craig Anderson is expected to make his return tonight, its possible that he will only backup Peter Budaj, but he could just jump right back in and start. 

Returning to action from the injured list last night was: Dennis Wideman and Alex Goligoski.     

Daily Distraction 

What's distracting us today?  Good shit from Bloge Salming on the Leafs debacle in Boston... no, not the one last night, the one from last week...