January 17, 2011

Dobber Sports

2011-01-17

 

The Midseason Guide, you can buy it here, re-released just this past Friday. Get yourself organized and ready to go in the second half by picking up this great read.

 

FORUM update: I think we’ve recovered the lost posts of the last 24 hours, but in exchange we lose the posts of the last three hours. I apologize for this. If we put those back, then we will lose any posts you are doing right now. The server is pretty much rolling now and everything we lost has been recovered except Frozen Pool. Still working on that. If we have to recover work done earlier, it may mean losing Forum posts that are happening now. So post at your discretion. I will let you know when it’s 100% safe to post (should be within 12 hours).

 

Some hilarious suggestions for the Streaky Boys tag. But can I use them to describe a player? Band-Aid Boy Gaborik is a great way to use “Band-Aid Boy”. But some of the suggestions, while very funny, just don’t flow well when describing a player. UNTIL, that is, 4T2 chimed in with the word “Windex”. Oh, me likey. I think the Windex Boys is a great nickname for those frustrating players.

 

The new server – I’m already noticing a big uptick in speed of page loads. You? Anyway, known problems that we are solving: Frozen Pool fantasy tools – a fix is coming. Also, I’m not getting most emails, nor is the admin email address or any dobberhockey address for that matter. So if you’ve emailed anyone on staff, hang in there, we’ll get them… eventually. Also, DobberBaseball lost an article during the conversion.

 

Welcome to my new server. Tell me what you think of the performance! This is what buying the Midseason Guide does for all of us – upgrades the website. This badboy is now running on 8 GB of RAM – double what it was.

 

Bryan McCabe has a broken jaw and will miss at least the next two weeks. He also has a broken finger. Keep an eye on Dmitry Kulikov, who had two points including one on the PP Saturday.

 

Great insight (and perhaps some hope?) on Andrei Kostitsyn’s possible turnaround.

 

Wayne Simmonds has been placed on IR with a LBI. Look for the likes of Ponikarovsky and Richardson, perhaps Lewis, to pick up the slack in ice time. Kevin Westgarth gets back into the lineup.

 

Prospect Matt Halischuk was recalled yesterday and got into his first career game as a Predator. He played just under 10 minutes and was pointless, though. He’s not having the greatest AHL campaign, (16 in 29 games)

 

Now it’s done. The Blues have signed Kyle Wellwood. Blues fans were hoping this wouldn’t get done. Buck up – maybe another team will claim him off of waivers. Wellwood’s presence will eat into the ice time of either Sobotka or D’Agostini, both of whom were doing quite well.

 

Back from the minors – Brett MacLean has been recalled by the Coyotes. Notice these call-ups are happening more frequently…

 

Whenever I see a headline like “Moulson wants to stay with Islanders“, I immediately think “okay, Moulson is going to be traded soon.” Funny how that works.

 

Ryan O’Reilly’s injury was to his shoulder and the buzz in Colorado is that he did not suffer a head injury. I dont’ buy it. He’ll miss the next two weeks while his shoulder heals, and perhaps his head will heal too. But I think there’s a minor concussion in there at the very least, he whacked his head hard. Teams are cautious in releasing injury information and it’s in their best interest to keep a second injury on the lowdown if they’re already announcing a first injury.

 

Look for Tom Gilbert to tally 10 points in his next six games. Because I just dropped him for the third time this morning (and he always does that to me) and replaced him Sami Lepisto, who is another beneficiary of how nutty Keith Yandle is playing.

 

Marco Scandella had his ear nearly sliced in half by a puck late last week. Michael Russo of the Star-Tribune thought he looked a little loopy when he had to leave practice, so perhaps there’s a concussion in there too.

 

LA line combos for Saturday: Kopitar with Smyth and Williams; Stoll with Brown and Sturm; Handzus with Lewis and Ponikarovsky

 

Buffalo prospect defenseman Marc-Andre Gragnani had five assists Saturday in AHL action. He has 12 points in his last seven games. He turns 24 in a couple of months, so I can’t see the Sabres delaying giving him another look for very long.

 

Patrick O’Sullivan scored in his first AHL game of the season Saturday. It’ll be a loooong road back for him.

 

After Saturday’s game, Jacques Lemaire said that Anssi Salmela played his “best game”, according to Rick Chere of the Star/Ledger. He had an assist and logged solid ice time, so perhaps he’ll put some points on the board for a couple of weeks.

 

Jiri Tlusty is ready to play, but is unable to get into the lineup due to the strong play of Boychuk. Tlusty had lots of time to make his mark, but failed.

 

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Fabian Brunnstrom had two assists in his debut with the Toronto Marlies Saturday. Look for him to get a look sometime soon. Perhaps he was just on a less than ideal farm team in Texas.

 

That’s two losses in a row for Cory Schneider. His only two losses, but still. Not that you can blame him when his team scores zero goals. The Canucks will hang onto him this year and next year, perhaps dealing him a year from now before next season’s deadline. He’ll get you the big minutes in 2012-13.

 

Marian Gaborik was benched for the third period – gotta love Torts. I know I do. Anyway, they slapped together a line of Stepan centering Zucarrello and Wolski and they quickly scored two goals in the third. Keep that line together and get Gabby going with Dubinsky and you have two pretty effective offensive lines.

 

I traded Boyes and Hornqvist for Grabovski in a points-only keeper yesterday. Boyes was the last man on my pro roster, so I gained 10 points with the move. Grabovski looks like a star this year, but I’m wary of him regressing. Here’s hoping.

 

Ville Leino has nine points in his last six contests.

 

How can poolies take advantage of the Flyers winning when they go with an every-other-game system? Both goalies are winning, but playing every second contest. I’m stuck keeping Bobrovsky’s ass firmly planted on the bench in my weekly transactions league.

 

One project I’m going to work on this week – a section indicating streaky players. It will go hand-in-hand with the Band-Aid Boys. Any suggestions for a catch phrase? If I like it, I’ll give you credit…and then steal your catch phrase forever and it will become a part of DobberHockey lore, much like “Band-Aid Boys” and “clowns” and “suckitis” and “Dr. Dobber” and “Dobber for GM!”

 

Speaking of Streaky Boys (temporary name), Brooks Laich picked up a goal Sunday. Ohhhh hell yeah, he’s a streaky one. And year after year, it seems to occur in February/March. Look for yourself. Is it starting now? Or is this a little teaser and the real one starts in a couple of weeks?

 

Eric Fehr is out for the next three or four weeks with a shoulder injury. He has had both shoulders operated on, so any shoulder injury is bad news.

 

Varlamov has lost two in a row and now Neuvirth is coming off a win. The see-saw has just dropped the other way again.

 

Brian Elliott is 0-6-2 in his last eight. And they seriously don’t want to give Mike Brodeur a shot? I don’t care about pedigree and I don’t care about contract. The bottom line is that he is undefeated in three NHL starts.

 

We have some great insights in our forum and in particular you have seen some of these great posts getting “called up” from the DobberHockey minors and become full-fledged articles. There is too much gold in our forum and we don’t often have spots on the home page, given all of our great columnists. But I invite you to check out some of the stuff you see there, particularly in the PG Advised section and Dub’s Take. These users were voted in to have their own sections by you and have not let us down. Here’s GMG’s Top 10 Roto Players so far and here are some solid recaps of Washington games, as well as previews from Mikerocksthered.

 

Lundqvist goes nuts on Pacioretty:

 

 

Rangers/Flyers line brawl, including Avery vs. Carle and Prust vs. Walker:

 

 

A Bolland beauty!

 

 

 

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