Fantasy Hockey Forecaster: October 27th – November 3rd

Welcome to the Fantasy Hockey Forecaster! In here, you’ll find:

• Each team’s ranking for goalies, forwards, PK and PP against the other teams in the league. These stats are as of 10/25/2019 (there is no separation for home vs. away since the season is so young).
• Three players who are on fire (this might not even be points wise, it might be an uptick in play that signals to me they are on the cusp of some point production
• Three players who are cooling off (this will also include players that aren’t materializing the way we expect)
• Three free agent pickups (among all players under 50% owned, preferably some in the single digits and some that are close to 50 to feed all different sizes of leagues)
• The schedule which will show each team they play and what the individual rankings are for each matchup, this is more useful in the daily leagues where you are looking at individual matchups

Let’s begin!

3 players who are on fire

1. Bo Horvat (74% owned). Bo got his first career hat trick and 100^th NHL goal this week as Vancouver has now won six of their last seven games and Bo is looking like a steady producer with five goals and 1 assist in his last seven games. He also added 42 faceoffs won over the last week.
2. John Carlson (100% owned) He’s continuing to produce. After a strong opening where he was league points leader for a minute, he continued scoring 7 points, a +8, 3 hits and 6 blocked shots over the last seven days.
3. Pekka Rinne (25% owned) His last three starts have netted 1 shutout and 3 goals allowed across 80 saves.

3 players who are cooling off (not panicking on any of them)

1. Blake Wheeler (100% owned) He’s pointless in five games and he’s scoreless on his last 18 shots. with a -7 over that time. It’s probably just a blip.
2. Alexander Radulov (91% owned). Dallas is finally rebounding from a nasty five game losing streak but despite their recent 3 game win streak, Alexander has amassed just two assists over this eight game span. He’ll find his way but it’s coming about slowly.
3. Dylan Larkin (86% owned) I think we all saw this coming, Detroit was hitting above their weight class. After a strong start, Dylan has gone pointless in four straight with a -4 and no goals on his last 12 shots.

3 free agent pickups (under 50%)

1. Dominik Simon (1% owned) Look, I get that this looks crazy from afar and that he is only 1% owned. He’s on the line with Jake Guentzel and Sidney Crosby, he could be a practice cone and would trip into 40 points in that situation.
2. Kasperi Kapanen (28% owned). With six points in his last four games, I’m convinced he is “quasi-legit”. He won’t be scoring six points every four games, but 50 points is not unreasonable given what I’m seeing. Either way, short term pick him up until he cool off or shows us something else.
3. Casey Mittelstadt (48% owned). I did these three in this order for a reason. I’m most confident on Domink, fairly confident on Kasperi, Casey will be a star in the NHL, I’m just not sure if that’s happening now or if he needs another year. He’s on a line with Jimmy Vesey and Conor Sheary and it’s working right now, he has three goals and five points in his last four games.