Be patient!!!! There are a lot of hockey fantasy players e-mailing me and they are in a panic because their top players aren’t performing as well as they think they should be. IT’S ONLY TWO WEEKS!!!! If you can find someone in your pool that is panicking, then take advantage and grab the best player that you can for someone who is hot now, but you know can’t last. Below is the first round of the Experts Draft and their stats as of the morning of Wednesday October 17th.

G A PIMS +/- GAA WINS SAVE %

Roberto Luongo 3.17 3 .897
Sidney Crosby 2 2 4 -3
Miikka Kiprusoff 3.40 2 .877
Dany Heatley 6 4 2 +2
Joe Thornton 3 4 4 +1
Alex Ovechkin 3 2 2 +1
Jarome Iginla 4 4 14 +6
Martin Brodeur 3.26 1 .879
Jaromir Jagr 1 5 2 +1
Evgeni Malkin 1 4 4 EVEN
Marian Hossa 1 0 0 -3
Vincent Lecavalier3 3 0 +4
Evgeni Nabokov 2.40 3 .896
Henrik Lundqvist 2.02 2 .934
Marc-Andre Fleury 3.82 2 .876

Some forwards are off to really good starts in Heatley, Iginla and Lecavalier and Lundqvist is the only goaltender doing well in all categories. I agree that Thornton, Jagr, Malkin and Nabokov are off to okay starts. So eight of the top 15 selections are off to really good or okay starts. That’s not a good percentage for the first round. If this happened in the middle of the season, no one would say anything as the stats would be blended in, but rest assured that Luongo, Kiprusoff and Brodeur will be over .912 in save percentage by the end of the season with very good goals against averages. There is no way that Crosby will average only a point a game and be a terrible minus player and Hossa only has one goal and you know he’ll be near the top of scoring.

I’ll state the point once more. BE PATIENT!!! It is still only two weeks. Nik Antropov is leading the NHL in plus/minus with nine. Enough said.