NHL Playoff Pool Position Primer: Left Wing

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More Position Primers: LW | C | RW | D | G

Today, we take a look at the fantasy hockey left wing.

This position seems to be especially deep, well as deep as wingers can get, when considering that most of the elite players made the big show. If we go by final rankings, only Rick Nash would be considered a 1 or 1A left wing not making the second season. Other hopefuls like RJ Umberger, Brenden Morrow, Patrik Elias and Andy McDonald round out the useful fantasy players who won’t help us in the playoffs.

A quick look at the the primer would tell you that we favor top-line players, like most drafts. The top six players are first liners on elite teams, sorted by their likelihood of making the second round.

From there we move to the top liners with risk. Right now Zetterberg looks iffy for game one which could indicate the Detroit Red Wings chances going into the post-season. Due to uncertainty he drops a rank to the same tier as Vanek, Cammalleri and Lucic. While both Lucic and Cammalleri face each other in the first round, they still both carry a great deal of risk — Cammalleri with injury; Lucic as somewhat unproven and with a lot of his value in PIM.

After the second tier, or 1A rather, we find ourselves looking at some guys who probably fluctuate between the first and third lines and who on lesser teams easily look like marquee players. In addition, this tier brings some jam to their game and can pickup some PIMs should your pool call for those. Generally, I try to take a guy like Hartnell or Clowe and hope that they make my bench as a player of this caliber as a spot start is usually a very good use of depth. Of course, starting any of these players never hurts either.

Our last tier groups players that are basically a bunch of plugs — the guys who fill in on the top line but are not top line players. On a better team these guys are the offensively gifted second-third line players. A guy like Kunitz likely finds himself in this category but could break out as he has done in both of his Stanley Cup Championship seasons.

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