Geek of the Week – Nick Bjugstad

Terry Campkin

2014-12-21

Nick Bjugstad

 

Geek of the Week with a break down of Nick Bjugstad’s hidden value.

There is no question that draft time is the most important time of year to use tools like Fantasy Hockey Geek to help gauge players' values and rankings in your league(s). In mid-season though, it is also important to stay on top of the trends, see who is hot and who is not and who could be potentially breaking out. GMs who don't actively manage post-draft get left in the dust by those of us who do and are able to find hidden value for our mid-late season push. Today I look at one such player: Nick Bjugstad.

 

Bjugstad is one of many bright prospects in the Panthers' organization who has always had great fantasy potential (In the guide, Dobber sites Bjugstad's career upside at 85 points). Coming into this season it was hard to tell who would be getting the minutes for the Panthers and which of their young players might be ready to take the next step so when Bjugstad busted out of the gate with a whopping ONE point in his first ten games, it would have been easy for most fantasy GMs to write him off for another season. Since then though, he has quietly amassed 18 points in 20 games.

 

So how did I stumble across this number? There are so many players in the league and so many games every night and it's not like I am tuning into Panthers' broadcasts on a regular basis. How can you possibly keep up with all  of these players on teams you may not see to ensure you don't miss out on a player like Bjugstad whose slow start might be masking a breakout season? The answer for me is easy: Fantasy Hockey Geek.

One of the things I do on a weekly basis is run my league rankings in FHG for only the past month's games. Doing so yesterday showed me the following results:

 

Rank Player G A +/- SOG PPP SHP HITS
52 Nick Bjugstad 8 3 0 36 2 0 30
53 Evander Kane 4 4 0 35 4 0 41
54 Jonathan Toews 5 7 6 29 4 0 7

 

I saw Bjugstad's name up there in the 50s amongst a couple of other fantasy studs and I knew right away that I had to look further. When I opened up his game log I noticed the cold start I pointed out above and then I really started to get excited because it was looking like a real opportunity. Before I get too carried away though, I always do a little gut-check to see whether his amped up production is sustainable:

 

First, I looked back to the guide and I see that Dobber had Bjugstad as a sleeper for 55 points and that's pretty much the exact pace that he has been on over the past four weeks. Great – the production passes the Dobb-test.

Finally, I always like to check the minutes a player is getting before getting too excited about his output. A quick glance at Frozen Pool shows me that Bjugstad is firmly entrenched on the top line and top powerplay for the Panthers, getting upwards of 20 minutes a night. I like what I see here.

 

Ok, so now I have convinced myself that Bjugstad is legit and I may be onto something. So what will he be worth going forward? I personally see three possible scenarios for Bjugstad. 1: He maintains his current season pace with some ups and downs along the way as we have seen. 2: He maintains his last 4 week pace of 55 points which Dobber had as his upside for this year. 3: He maintains around his last 20 games pace and Dobber's three year peak of 65 points. Let's see how each of those scenarios looks using FHG's What-if tool (my favorite tool since the sawzall):

 

Rank FHG Value Player G A +/- SOG PPP SHP HITS
85 53.3 Nick Bjugstad – current pace 33 19 2 221 11 0 159
79 58.9 What if? Scenario 2 30 25 2 221 14 0 159
53 69.8 What If? Scenario 3 35 30 2 221 16 0 159

 

ou can see from the above that Bjugstad's current pace (which includes his cold start of one point in ten games) has him ending the year as the 88th most valuable player in my league. This is not bad at all considering this guy is widely available and I believe his current pace to be very achievable. If this is his worst case scenario, then he needs to be owned in far more leagues.

 

In scenario two, I bumped him up to 55 points. I didn't add any shots because his shot rate has been fairly steady but I added some PPP because obviously he will be getting some of the extra points with the man advantage. I smoothed out his G and A somewhat and the result is Bjugstad being the 79th most valuable in the league. I expected a bigger jump from adding 13 points and three powerplay points but the reason the jump wasn't so noticeable is that I reduced his goal total to a more reasonable level and what the FHG math is telling us is that goals are very valuable so removing just three of them reduced the value gained from the other categories by a significant amount. This is why using FHG is so key: I have no idea how to value three goals vs. 12 assists (or whatever the case may be), do you? Probably not but FHG does the math work for us. Despite the only modest jump in value, 79th overall is still quite good and I personally think that this scenario is the most realistic.

 

In the third scenario, I took his three year peak of 65 points. If Bjugstad pulls this off, he will end the season as the 53rd most valuable player in my league, ahead of dozens of other players who are owned in far more than 32% of the leagues out there.

 

Running these scenarios, I have a high degree of confidence that Bjugstad will end the season with a value in my league between 50th and 90th most valuable. That isn't a stud, but it is the type of shrewd depth addition that can help a solid team become a championship contender. Running the last four week values in FHG took me under five minutes and I was able to identify my target. Checking the scenarios using the what-if tool took another five and just like that I have a solid target to help me win my league. Players like this are everywhere and they pop up all season long in fantasy hockey. Make sure you check your league in FHG periodically so that you can find some more players like Nick Bjugstad who can help you bring home the hardware.

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