Ask Illegal Curve

Today marks the first installment of the Ask Illegal Curve feature, where we will answer your fantasy hockey (or other) related questions. Don’t be shy, send in whatever is on your mind.

Commenter Bob Roberts asked:

Your team is on the powerplay and has the puck when an additional penalty is indicated against your opponent.

What’s the best course of action to follow? Why?

Bob, our opinion is that you should turn the puck over to the other team as soon as possible. While the extra PP minutes are nice, you can’t really beat the 5-3 option, especially if you have a potent powerplay. Assuming you are asking in an NHL context, you get the offensive zone faceoff, so we advocate giving the bad guys the puck as soon as possible.
Thanks for your question.

Reader Keith from Grand Prairie asks:

I entered a pool that only had an auto-draft option where you pre-rank the players. I ended up with 3 Oiler defenders, (Visnovsky, Gilbert and Grebeshkov). I would like to deal one or two to get some balance to my lineup. Who would you deal and what kind of return would you ask for?

Thanks for your question Keith. Our best answer here is to keep Visnovsky and Gilbert and trade Grebeshkov, or if you want to keep only one, keep Gilbert. Its our opinion that Gilbert will improve upon his 45 point performance from last year, and he is durable and defensively sound enough so that he wont cost you points with a series of minus games.

While Visnovsky is a solid producer too, he is a little older and could be injury prone at this stage of his career. Grebeshkov would get you about 35 to 40 points, but is prone to the odd bad game where he can end up deep in the minus.

As for targets, why not try an up and coming type defender. Ask around about Drew Doughty, Kyle Quincey or Matt Niskanen. If no one is willing to part with them, check out someone like Keith Ballard, who might put up a little better results this year in the absence of Jay Bouwmeester.