Fantasy Hockey Scouts: Daily Dosage - Dec 9th, 2009

Dosage Express
Lupul possessed... who is Dan Sexton?... four pairs in Philly... we're big on Okposo... down goes Emery... maybe somebody is not as cool as they thought they were  

Daily Diarrhea   

Not sure what kind of rehab Joffrey Lupul was doing while he was out with a bad back recently but he's come back like a man possessed... check out his line in his three games since returning: 4+0=4, plus-4, 8 PIMs with 10 sog.  He's also playing on the 1st line with Getzlaf and Perry now and is seeing more ice-time than he has all year (21 minutes last night).

Two goals and nine shots last night for Ducks rookie Dan Sexton in only his third NHL game... not half bad.  He's another one of these college free agents that the Ducks are known for, he had a good year last year at Bowling Green and has been bouncing around the ECHL & AHL this year before getting the call from Anaheim.  This game has caught our attention, so we'll keep an eye on him but there's probably no action required at this time.

Crazy boxscore last night in the Philly-Islanders game as Mike Richards potted two, followed by Jeff Carter with a pair, John Tavares responded with two and Claude Giroux finished it off with... you guessed it, two goals.  Can't say I've ever seen anything like that before.

So yeah Marty Erat's been hot but we didn't see his 3+1=4 game from last night coming or we would have picked him up ourselves.  He's now 8+5=13 in his last 10 games but we've never been a big fan as he's proven to only be about a 50 point player over his career.

Kyle Okposo is back on L1 with Tavares & Moulson and he had two assists last ngiht and five over his last five games.  KO is still putting a lot of rubber on net (on pace for 262 shots) so despite not scoring in his past 10 games, we think he's due to break out of this slump soon.  In a related note, Trent Hunter is back on the 2nd line and with no points in three of his past four, we think its time you bailed.

Jaroslav Halak was close to unbeatable last night as he stopped 45 of 46 Senators shots to pick up his first win since October.  Carey Price has been very solid lately, so Halak hasn't seen much action but possibly this performance will earn him some more starts.

We're not big fans of this guy as we think he's vastly overrated but Andrei Kostitsyn has a little hot streak going with 3+6=9 & a plus-6 in his last eight games.

One Canadien that we do like, probably a little too much, is MA Bergeron... he's 5+5=10 with 5 PPP in his last 13 games and has been playing a little forward lately.  We can't say what will happen when Andrei Markov comes back but we'd bet that Bergeron will get a shot to keep his job on the #1 PP unit.

The CBJs acquired Brendan Bell from the Blues for & along with some other scrubs.  He was useful last year with Ottawa and while he'll probably stay in the AHL for now, he could get a call-up to Columbus if they need a little spark from the back-end. 

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

Ray Emery has been dealing with an abdominal issue for a few weeks now and after sucking the big one, the Flyers have decided to shut him down and operate... he'll be out 4-6 weeks following the surgery.  Brian Boucher will take over in net for the next while and Swedish vet Johan Backlund has been called up from Adirondack... we don't have much confidence in either of these guys.

Brendan Witt got run over yesterday, by an SUV, but he was fine and played last night... yeah really.

Alexander Edler left last night's game with a shoulder injury that could keep him out a while.

We mentioned yesterday that Randy Jones sat out the final period of the Kings game on Monday night, he wasn't injured, just benched.

This one's not going to affect your fantasy team but Cody Hodgson has pulled out of consideration for the WJC as his back is still giving him problems.

Daily Distraction 

What's distracting us today?  The Blues had a 'Star Wars Night' on Monday night that involved people (who surely still live with their parents) dressing up like characters from the movies (we'll spare you the visual evidence) to get cheap tickets to see the Blues get shutout by the Avs.  Now Star Wars fanatics aren't as bad as Trekkies but c'mon people, grow up, its a goddam movie.  Well we found this little video and after taking it to heart... maybe Star Wars fans aren't so bad after all, since I guess the alternative is that we're waaaay less cool than we thought we were (which is impossible).