The Early Warning Signs
By: Ryan Dadoun
Every rookie is an obvious gamble going into the season. It's natural to be filled with optimism about a young players future, but sometimes you can find out in a hurry that a player won't be living up to your rookie season expectations. One of the first signs of trouble is if a team doesn't use a player the way you thought they would. The best recent example of this is Steven Stamkos. Tampa Bay had Stamkos play an average of just 9:47 minutes in his first three games and the Lightning continued to severely limited his ice time through the first half of the season. Stamkos wasn't going to put up top-six numbers if he wasn't getting top-six playing time. Although he did rebound in the second half of the season, we were no more than three games into the season before we were hit with the warning signs that Stamkos wasn't going to live up to fantasy owners' initial expectations. With that in mind, there's one rookie that you should already be worried about.
Alex Pietrangelo-D-Blues- He was a healthy scratch on Friday and he might not play in Saturday's game either. "We’re trying to win games right now," coach Andy Murray explains. When are they not? Well, if the Blues aren't sure if Pietrangelo is ready to help them when games and they intend to ease him into the league slowly as a seventh blueliner, he's not going to have much fantasy value this season. Obviously, nothing's set in stone after one game, but this is a situation you'll want to watch very closely.
Here's a couple others you should keep a particularly close eye on:
Victor Hedman-D-Lightning- Already pegged for the Stamkos treatment, he'll probably play on the third defensive pairing at the start of the season.
Evander Kane-C-Thrashers- He earned a spot on the Thrashers opening day roster but coach John Anderson is still trying to figure out how to use him. He'll get a bit of penalty killing and power-play time but he'll probably be given third/fourth line minutes overall.
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