Scout Report – Week 8 Preview

This season our scouting department will be giving an update prior to the start of each game week to give you all the information you need to get your team top of the standings.

Roster Moves

A fairly quiet week on the signing front with just Ryan Foss joining Fife being the only new player added to the game. Foss joins after splitting last season between Norfolk of the ECHL and HC 19 Humenné in Slovakia. His time in the East Coast gives us a good idea of his offensive capabilities and 0.71 points per game is a good standard. Will he get the playing time in Fife to show it though? He is added into the game with a 6.5M value.

In terms of selections a lot of our GM’s spotted that Glasgow’s Deven Sideroff was our top scorer in week 6 and then immediately traded for him. In total he was added to 23 additional teams, which is one shy of the record from last week for Jake Durflinger. Lets see if this weeks top scorer, Steven Seigo, can beat that record. Chances are he may do that as his 64 points in week 7 has taken him to the top overall scorer as well. Manchester’s Jake Durflinger and Joe Morrow continue to be traded in by GM’s and are second and third overall for the week. Morrow is now up to 98 selections and is clear in second behind Sheffield’s Matt Greenfield, who has 126.

The most traded out players all had injury issues. Cardiff defensive duo Cody Donaghey and Evan Mosey did miss some time over the last few weeks so were traded out by 8 and 9 GM’s respectively. Mosey however was back on the ice last week against Manchester. Some of our high priced players have also been traded out with their points production not being enough for their value. Scott Conway was traded out by four GM’s with his 110 points only good for 32nd overall so far. Greenfield has 102 points (37th overall) although Sheffield did miss the first two weeks of the season, so maybe the four GM’s to lose faith have done it a bit too early?

Who’s Hot?

Going forward we will highlight those players who have hit form over the last few weeks. We covered the top scorers last week but this week we can have a look at the special teams statistics so far. In FHL UK each point scored on the powerplay or short handed gets a small premium on top of the standard goal or assist.

Here are the top ten scorers so far with a full list attached as well. You’ll notice a lack of Dundee, Fife and Sheffield players in the list as their special teams play hasn’t clicked yet. Coventry do have six players all on 4 or 5 points so have spread their points around a bit more.

Who’s Not?

In this section we will look at those players performing below their projections based on value and whose form has dropped off. We mentioned earlier on about some high value players who haven’t performed as expected so far. So lets have a look at those 15 highest valued players so far, who are all valued at over 9.5M or higher, and see who are the lowest scorers so far. It could be worth trading these players out for a cheaper alternative who is scoring just as much.

Hunter Shinkaruk looked great in pre-season but hasn’t been on the ice since due to injury but he is still in the team for 37 GM’s. Sacha Guimond was predicted to be the top scoring defenceman for Sheffield this season but has scored just 35 points so far. There are much cheaper and higher scoring options on the Sheffield blueline as it stands. His team mate Daniel Ciampini has only scored 1 point more and is seeing his ownership drop gradually week upon week. Belfast’s Gabe Bast was expected to be one of the top scoring players in the league, never mind just defenceman, after his brilliant season a few years ago. He has just 46 points which is good for 121st place overall, so for 10.0M isn’t worth using a large amount of your budget.

Upcoming Schedule

As usual we have a Wednesday game to start the week off and the only team to have three games this week are the Dundee Stars, who travel to Sheffield for their first game. After that they return home to play Nottingham on Saturday before travelling to Fife on Sunday. The Steelers have two home games this week as they host Cardiff on Saturday after hosting Dundee. The Belfast Giants have two away games over the weekend as they travel to Guildford and Coventry.

After having three games last week, the Glasgow Clan are the only team with just one game this week, although it is at home against Fife. One team we haven’t mentioned yet are the Manchester Storm who host the Coventry Blaze, who are still unbeaten in league play, and then travel to Nottingham on Sunday.

For your captains pick it is probably better to favour with either a Dundee player with their three games, or a Sheffield player with two home games.