How to stream penalty minutes & find the right enforcer

This year more than years before it seems like there are less and less skaters who actually drop the gloves.  We have enforcers and we have agitators but severely lack those power forwards who can knock in 30 goals and 150 PIM for your fantasy hockey team. If you failed to grab David Backes, Milan Lucic or Scott Hartnell you could pick up some slack with an enforcer on your bench, one you can spot start when Patrick Sharp, Stephen Weiss or Marian Hossa is a late scratch.

Step One: Finding out who fights the most per game

To find out the most efficient players we simply examine the top fighters in the League and do a little formula work, finding out the exact probability of a player throwing down.  This list has been taken from HockeyFights.com, where you can see the current League leaders in fighting majors here.

As you can see from the table above, Jamal Mayers, Zenon Konopka, Frazer McLaren and George Parros fall within the 40 percent range. While other players fall somewhere between 20 percent and the high-30s.  Clearly, the margin between these are less than negligible as it could mean one more/less fight over a ten game span, which is why we are streaming these players in the first place.

In addition, we know enforcers do not take a regular shift but do they play every game?  There is no point in trying to stream a player when they might be subbed in for a more offensive player or benched for not keeping up with the play. We also would hate for our PIM stream to be a player constantly shuttled back and forth from the AHL.

Step Two: Are they ever scratched?

Making sure your guy will be in the lineup is an important criteria for finding your man.  Of course, you can always check on a game-to-game basis whether they will be scratched in our team lineups section.

As we can see from the above table, McLaren only plays half of the Sharks’ games, so trying to stream him regardless of his 44 percent might be a failed experiment.  Considering Konopka leads the League in fighting majors and has a 0 percent scratch percentage he looks even better.  However, can Konopka score if you need him to take a regular shift on your fantasy team?  The short answer is no but we will elaborate.

Step Three: Do they actually score?

Now we know not all the guys on this list are strictly enforcers.  A guy like Steve McIntyre fails to make the list since he barely plays and therefore is not amongst the League leaders in fighting majors.  Of the true enforcers, some of these scoring paces would surprise you. Tim Jackman has been more valuable than Daniel Carcillo or David Clarkson and here is the exact reasons why:

Clearly if you drafted Ryane Clowe your team has PIMs covered.  Matt Hendricks and Derek Dorsett have been pleasant surprises and seem to have taken leadership roles on their teams.  Cody McCormick also seems to have come out of nowhere and actually saw some regular shifts with Jason Pominville previously out with a concussion.

Step Four: Will they hurt your plus/minus

A few years ago I wanted to grab Colton Orr but got scared away by his -15.  If you are planning on playing a player just for his PIMs, the last thing you need is a hit in a hard to maintain category.  The following players will hurt you in that sense:

Clearly Clarkson has been severely affected by the titanic that is the New Jersey Devils. BJ Crombeen has been on the wrong side of zero which hurts his value considering the decline of his production from 11 three years ago to just two this season. If you are struggling with this category, Hendricks and McCormick look even better.

Step Five: Trusting your gut

By far the most important thing to remember is to follow your gut with these situations.  If you like Deryk Engelland better than Matt Carkner, go with it.  Just use my countless hours worth of research to help guide you to a victory.

*All statistics through November 19th, 2010.

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