Fantasy Hockey Scouts: Daily Dosage - Dec 2nd, 2009

Dosage Express
Triumphant return to SJ for Cheech & Milan... Kovalev awful... watching Karlsson, Stajan & Jones... Ovie escapes (partially)... Regina sore after rough Grey Cup finish 

Daily Diarrhea   

So Dany Heatley dropped two assists and a season high eight shots on his former Sens teammates last night in his only game against them this year (unless they meet in the Finals... right).

Jonathan Cheechoo also seemed really fired up to be back in San Jose and he managed a whole two shots on net and was only a minus-1... with how its going for him lately, he probably considers this a triumphant return.

Milan Michalek is doing his best to not make Bryan Murray look like he totally got raped on this deal as he put up two goals last night, has eight in his last eight games and is on pace for close to 50.  We can't see him keeping up this pace but he is shooting the puck more (on pace for a career high 242 shots), so he's got that going for him. 

Anyone that argues that Murray's trade was a success since cleared up Heatley's $7.5M in cap space would be wrong... as the Sens used that money to sign Alex Kovalev to a $5.0M per season deal.  Kovalev looked real inspired last night with one shot and a minus-3... words cannot even describe how horrid he's been this year, but his stats do as he's on pace for 39 points and only 114 shots.

Last night was Erik Karlsson's second game back after being recalled from the AHL and he played a season high 21 minutes with 5:36 coming on the PP and notched a PP assist.  Also notable was that Alexandre Picard, who had been playing on the #1 PP unit and had a nice run going with 1+6=7 in his last seven, saw his ice time drop to 16 minutes with less than a minute of PP time last night.

Corey Perry extended his scoring streak to a beyond bizonkers 19 games last night with a goal and an assist... not sure what we can say, the streak speaks for itself.

Joe Thornton extended his point streak to nine games and he's been really hot with 3+14=17 during the run.  Ryane Clowe also has a seven gamer going where he's 4+4=8.

Matty Stajan has shook off an early season funk and has 5+5=10 in his last 10 games.  Curiously, this little run coincides with him being paired with Phil Kessel... that's odd.

We're not big fans of Antoine Vermette around here but he's 5+6=11 in his last 10, if that's the kinda thing that flips your lid.

We're not recommending you do anything yet but we're gonna be keeping an eye on Scott Parse from the Kings for ya, as he's had 1+4=5 in his last six games while playing limited minutes on the 3rd line (see FantasyHockey911 for line combos).

Another longshot from the Kings that we've mentioned before is Randy Jones, who with two more points last night is 3+5=8 in 10 games this year.

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

Alexander Ovechkin seemed to escape his knee-on-knee hit from Monday with only a minor knee injury, he's listed as day-to-day, but he wasn't so lucky with the Colin Campbell as the wheel of justice landed on two games and so Ovie will miss the rest of the week.

Jonas Gustavsson left last night's game after the first period with elevated heart-rate and spent the night in hospital under observation.  Sounds like he's ok but expect the Leafs to be cautious with him for the next little while as this is the second time this has happened to him this year.

No news is bad news for Nikolai Khabibulin owners and he hasn't played in over two weeks due to a sore back and isn't even well enough to skate yet.  [more]  

Returning to action from the injured list last night was: Scott Gomez and Matt D'Agostini.     

Daily Distraction 

What's distracting us today?  Classy find from Stoeten on the theScoreblog.. we know it has nothing to do with hockey but it has everything to do with hilarious, so it has a home here.

 
Does it make it better or worse that it looks like a dude that's holding the sign?