New York Rangers: Fantasy Hockey Winners and Losers

As the last few fantasy hockey drafts are wrapping up before the season kick off on October 3rd, its time to make those New York Rangers pick-ups.

The New York Rangers are not favorites to be a big winner this season. Despite the expectation of the team sitting quite low, the team has some players who will have excellent seasons for themselves, and for fantasy owners.

The Rangers had three players show up in the NHL.com top 100 forwards rankings, Mika Zibanejad, Chris Kreider, and Pavel Buchnevich, in that respective order.

A common practice in daily fantasy sports is Stacking. FantasyWired defines Stacking as rostering multiple players from the same team. The relevance to the three aforementioned Rangers is that all three were an integral component of the Rangers “KZB” line. However, the practice of stacking is not wasted on regular fantasy, as the benefits of double points are not lost.

Keep stacking in mind when picking one player from a line, adding another one almost always increases the effectiveness.

The Winners

The Rangers have a few players who are more than likely going to have an excellent season. One of the players almost guaranteed to have a great resurgent season is Kevin Shattenkirk.

Shattenkirk went down with a torn meniscus in January of last season. Shattenkirk played from training camp to January on a fairly aggressive knee injury that ended up knocking the Rangers’ highlight defenseman out for the season. Shattenkirk put up 23 points in 46 games last season with a bit of a handicap. The hope and expectation is that Shattenkirk will double those point totals.

Some other Rangers players who will certainly grab some points for their fantasy owners:

• Mika Zibanejad is projected to score 49 points including 17 power play points and will be eligible for center or right wing. Zibanejad can be expected to outscore 49 points with little issue, if he can stay healthy.
• Chris Kreider is the 32nd ranked left winger, projected 48 points with 12 power play points. Where Kreider takes a step above in his Fantasy play, is if you are playing a PIMS/Hits league, Kreider will contribute 50+/125+. Projected here at 58 and 152 respectively. Kreider will probably overtake 48 points and finish the season with 55+.
• Pavel Buchnevich ranked 46th on the right wing list. Buchnevich is coming off a preseason where he looked very in control of his game and the projected totals of 17 goals, 26 assists for 43 points seems a little modest. Buchnevich is expecting a jump in play time as well as production and he will be getting a good amount of time on the powerplay unit as well. He is projected 14 power play points.
• Brady Skjei will likely be receiving a bit more play time considering his increased role this preseason, and he can be a great pickup especially in a league that counts hits/blocks. Skjei is projected 33 points, 139 hits, and 95 blocks.
• Neal Pionk is a bit of a pick that can be classified as a sleeper. Only 1.2% of fantasy owners have picked Pionk, so you may be entirely able to grab the young American defenseman after your draft or if you need a pinch defenseman during the season. Ranked 122 at his position, he put up 53 total points on ESPN last season.

Other players to look out for: Mats Zuccarello(could exceed point totals) and Kevin Hayes(important contract year for him).

The Losers

If you are picking a team for fantasy, it would be entirely recommended to think about going in a different direction than with these players. Whether there is a high concern due to prior injuries, or a poor history of fantasy performance.

• Jimmy Vesey has produced just under 30 points in both his NHL seasons to date. Unfortunately Vesey does not produce great hits or blocks to even out his point totals, averaging about 70 hits and 30 blocks a season. If you can go to the later rounds and potentially stack Vesey with players like Brett Howden and Jesper Fast( as preseason projections show), you may not suffer.
• Marc Staal is not a player you should be picking under any circumstance. Staal has not had an offensively productive year in a few years, particularly since his eye injury. Even under a circumstance where you would be able to stack him with a defensive partner, it may not be worth the roster spot you are losing. There is a reason only 0.4% of fantasy owners have Staal on their teams. He may be viable as a deep bench player for his block totals, which last season hit 96.

Other players to look out for: Cody McLeod(Does this need to be justified?) and Vlad Namestnikov(Unproven in his time with the Rangers last year).

In order to get the best performance of your team, it is very important to play the match up as well as take into consideration other small factors such as coaching changes over the summer. Using line stacking as well as fantasy analytics will help push your team to the top.