The excitement that surrounds rookie players in any fantasy sport is kind of surreal. The hope is always that “this guy will be the guy that explodes” and somehow you end up with a Top-10 player with a waiver wire pick-up or late-round pick. I have written about this before in passing and will get in depth more about it in future posts, but for the most part, it’s a fool’s errand.
When it comes to second-year players, it’s not a whole lot different. While the list of players that have successful seasons more than doubles when looking at second-year players, it’s still not a very big list and, in fact, on average, only about three second-year players each season will crack the 60-point-pace plateau. The excitement of a good rookie season magnifies when the player reaches their second year.
Here’s the next issue with this: Of those 60-point-pace players in their second year, 10 of them ended up being a minus player. If you look at the worst of those plus/minus players, you see teams that were very, very bad at the time:
- Nikolai Zherdev (2005-2006: 54 points, -13). The Columbus Blue Jackets were tied for a bottom-five team in the NHL that year, were fourth-worst in the previous season.
- Anze Kopitar (2007-2008: 77 points, -15). The Los Angeles Kings were the worst team in the West in 2007-2008 coming off a season where they were the second-worst team in the West.
- John Tavares (2010-2011: 67 points, -16). The New York Islanders were the second-worst team in the East in Tavares’ second year, after being a bottom five team for the three years before that.
Maybe a player produces points in their second year, I’m not saying that they won’t. However, in fantasy leagues that count plus/minus, the production has to be pretty high to justify an early round pick on them (first seven or eight rounds). The players that do have successful second seasons in fantasy hockey tend to be players that found their way on good teams: Tyler Seguin (BOS) in 2011-2012, Nicklas Backstrom (WSH) in 2008-2009 and Thomas Vanek (BUF) in 2006-2007.
So with that in mind, there are two second-year players that I will avoid not because I think they won’t be productive, but because the circumstances surrounding them are less than ideal and their ADP will be too high for me to be comfortable banking on them being a core of my team.
Jonathan Huberdeau (C) – Florida Panthers
The Panthers came crashing down last year after a division title in 2011-2012, largely a function of their goaltending save percentage at even-strength going from sixth-best in 2011-2012 to second-worst in 2013. This year the team will be relying on their young franchise goalie in Jacob Markstrom. While I’m a big fan of Markstrom and his prospects as a goalie of the future, I worry about this about relying on essentially a rookie goaltender for an entire season.
Huberdeau had a very good year himself in 2013. Baby Hubey managed to tie for the league-lead in points by a rookie with 31 which earned him the Calder Trophy as the league’s top rookie last year. You look at his year and put it in the context of seasons before him by rookies still in their teens, and it measures up just fine.
A good baseline this year would be to accumulate around 60 points, based around what he did last year and assuming an expanded role. If he can put up 25 goals and 35 points, in real hockey, that would be a pretty good season for a 20-year-old. Here’s the problem: This isn’t real hockey.
Huberdeau was a bit more of an agitator with lots of skill in his junior years, accumulating 229 PIMs in 195 regular season games. This obviously cannot continue into the NHL as a 6’1” 170 lb centre who is the centrepiece of a franchise. We saw that in the 18 PIMs in 48 games last year. Even if his pace in PIMs upticks a bit this year, 35-40 PIMs is not a lot to rely on.
If you think about how he will almost certainly be a heavy-minus player – at (-15) last year and little (no) improvements to the team, he will probably be around (-20) or worse this year – and won’t contribute much to penalties, he’s now a four-category player. Those types of players are on the fringe of my personal levels to be acceptable as a “core” player, which is where you will probably have to draft Huberdeau.
Jonathan Huberdeau will be a very good player this year and in the future. But when you’re talking about the core of your team – it varies, but a rule of thumb is two goalies, one defenseman and five forwards – I am not willing to take the risk on this sophomore. Do you want that much uncertainty in one of your top five forwards? I don’t. Think about it this way: Players that finished around 60th in points among forwards last year include Tyler Seguin, Jeff Carter, Patrice Bergeron and Evander Kane. These are players all ahead of Huberdeau for fantasy purposes and they could all put out similar point totals this year.
Nail Yakupov (RW) – Edmonton Oilers
Recency bias can be a terrible thing.
If you look at Yakupov’s final season line, it doesn’t look too bad for a rookie: Yakupov won the rookie scoring title by finishing first in points at 31 but finished with more goals (17) than Huberdeau did (14). Also, his 0.35 goals/game pace is one of the best we’ve seen from a teenage rookie in the last decade. When you get put into conversation with Sidney Crosby and Jonathan Toews, you’re doing something right.
It’s easy to forget that Yakupov scored 11 of his 17 goals in the final month of the season, when he had 11 goals and four assists in 14 games in the month of April, shooting 33.3% along the way. He finished the season shooting 21%, an extremely lofty feat that is highly unlikely to repeat.
What concerns me more than anything is his ice-time.
If you look at Jordan Staal’s rookie season, a comparable one to Yakupov, you notice that the following year he posted just 12 goals and 16 assists, despite nearly an extra three and a half minutes of ice-time per game. A main reason for this was power-play time; Jordan Staal finished 7th among Pittsburgh Penguins forwards in power-play ice-time per game in his sophomore season. So after shooting 22.2% in 2006-2007, Staal’s totals declined the following year because he didn’t get much power-play time, and when he did it was mostly not with the first unit including players like Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Marian Hossa. That, combined with his shooting percentage crashing down to 6.6%, led to a 28 point season.
Fast forward to last year and we see Yakupov finished 7th among Oilers forwards in power-play ice-time per game and remember, he shot 21%. Going into this year, while Shawn Horcoff is gone, the Oilers acquired David Perron in the off season. So again, there are six skilled and more seasoned players ahead of the depth chart than Yakopov right now. This means Yakupov will see his fair share of third line minutes and second unit power-play time. We saw what happened to Staal when his shooting percentage came back down to Earth, and I expect something similar for Yakupov. A quick note that this changes if Ales Hemsky gets traded at some point this season, as it has been believed he will at some point.
Don’t take this as a slight to Yakupov as I do believe he will be an all-world talent and has the skill necessary to be a game-breaking player in the NHL. All I’m saying is that between his imminent decline in shooting percentage, his lack of productive line-mates like he had last year and less-than-ideal power-play time, I see Yakupov as a fringe Top-50 forward this year in fantasy hockey. I can nearly guarantee that there will be somebody in your league who drafts him in the first five or six rounds. Don’t be that guy.
Remember, fantasy drafts are all about value. If these players drop far enough, I absolutely would take them on my team. I just don’t think these guys will fall far enough in drafts to warrant being described as “value” so I would tread lightly around these guys in your drafts.
