Saturday links: Penguins visit White House, Gonchar/Letang contracts, Ovechkin > Malkin in fantasy hockey?

Hehehe, juuuuuust before football season starts! At least the guys will look less awkward in their suits than the NASCAR championship contenders did.

Oh please let’s not have any issues with Letang and Gonchar!!!!!!

At least Malkin’s getting the attention he deserves. Of course that article’s dead wrong, but I’m still hoping to watch Ovechkin drive a Zamboni by the NHL store in NYC anyway…from a safe, high vantage point…

Emery’s going to make life in the Atlantic Division quite a bit more interesting. At least he won’t be making it interesting for our team.

And we need to flood the Department of Transportation with e-mails! Having the Pens in the White House (and considering that the memory of 9/11 will be invoked to justify that new rule), this will be a good week for it.

I love Letang and definitely want to see him stick with the team, but $4 million/yr is a lot for him at this point. I hope they can get him for less.

Some Daniel Lavender PensBurgh guy also did his first sports report piece yesterday.

As for Fantasy Hockey, I would put Malkin ahead of both Sidney and Alex. I say that on the basis he has consistently improved his statistics year by year, and can add that balance between goal scoring and assists just as an Albert Pujols can give your fantasy baseball team RBI’s and a solid batting average.

But, of course, I’m a tad biased there.

I don’t necessarily disagree with the article. While I wouldn’t trade Geno for Ovie ever, Fantasy Hockey is a different beast entirely than Real Hockey. I think the case the author is making is that over the long-term, Ovie has been more valuable in fantasy terms than Geno. While Ovie had more goals this season, Geno won the scoring title this year; which may be an indication of a change in the winds, to this point, Ovechkin has had more worth in the Fantasy realm.

I don’t think, however, that fantasy worth correlates 1:1 with real world worth. I think you also have to look at intangibles, such as team effectiveness, and how that player plays on a line of 3. Ovechkin is certainly a talented goal scorer, but Geno is, in my opinion, a better team player. A good indicator, I think, is to look at which player’s team got routed 6-2 in a decisive Game 7, and which player’s team got to hoist a big, shiny, silver cup at the end of the season.

regarding the fantasy hockey thing, there are a few reasons why I would take Ovechkin over Malkin or Crosby. The first being that Ovechkin is a LW. In my experiences, I’ve found that LW is by far the hardest to get good players for and center is probably one of the deeper positions, with many more elite players.

Also, consider some of the “other” categories that each of those players is going to win you. Ovie is going to score more goals than Geno or Sid. While Gino or Sid will have more assists. The powerplay goals and assists will be roughly the same scenario and power play points will be a wash. But, my fantasy leagues also use such scoring categories as shots on goal and face off wins.

To go along with the fact that there are more elite centers, face off wins is a category that is easier to dictate. It is just easier to find centers who take a lot of draws (just take a look at the list of players who have 500+ faceoff wins…generally in the 35-50 player range), or to pick up that extra winger that takes the occasional face off. But Malkin is not going to win that category for you and that is probably his biggest fantasy liability. He’s listed at center and plays the center position. But, he just doesn’t take (or win) that many faceoffs. Crosby can win that faceoff category for you. But like I said, that’s an easy category to dictate.

Ovechkin on the other hand will win the shots on goal category for you every week. And it that is a category that is much more difficult to predict. Last season, I had a high shooter like Lecavalier on my team and don’t think that I won that category once. Take a look at players with 300+ shots a season. You’ll see that there are only between 5-10 of these guys and none of them ever outshoots Ovechkin.