No Fantasy Love for Wings
George Sipple of the Free Press went ahead and did the leg work to find the highest rated Red Wings in the two most prominent Fantasy Hockey arenas - Yahoo! and ESPN. Little surprise to most: Detroit players got little love from the pre-season ranking committee.
But the most surprising (I guess) snub in the rankings would be that of Nicklas Lidstrom. I know we're all probably used to the whole "he's getting too old" drum being beaten, but do you really think Lidstrom should already be counted out of the top 5 or even the top 15 defensemen in the league? Maybe we're looking at King Lidas through red-colored glasses - but to me, he's still in the top 5 for sure. ESPN and Yahoo! do not agree with me.
ESPN's top 300:
13. Pavel Datsyuk
35. Jimmy Howard
...are we detecting a pattern here with ranks/player numbers?
37. Johan Franzen
41. Henrik Zetterberg
83. Tomas Holmstrom
86. Nicklas Lidstrom
101. Brian Rafalski
161. Niklas Kronwall
172. Valtteri Filppula
228. Todd Bertuzzi
234. Mike Modano
I think it's interesting how much lower Hank is ranked compared to Pavel. They tied for the team lead in points last season, and hank is only 2 years removed from a 90+ point season. Plus, they'll be playing together for likely the entire season. As one goes, so does the other, in my book.
And Mikey Mo but no Happy Huds? That doesn't seem right to me - especially with all the Modano bashing going on out there.
Yahoo! Sports Top 100:
17: Pavel Datsyuk
26. Jimmy Howard
29. Henrik Zetterberg
57. Johan Franzen
64. Nicklas Lidstrom
88. Brian Rafalski
Well...there's your starting six all in the top 100 according to the home of Puck Daddy. I suppose that's still alright if you think about it. With 30 teams in the league, that means 80 players that are in the top six on their respective teams are OUT of the top 100 via Yahoo! rankings. Hey, I'm trying to find the good in this.
I think it's ridiculous that ESPN ranked 15 defensemen better than Lidstrom and Yahoo! ranked 8 better than the TPH.
