The Athletic’s Shayna Goldman posted a column this morning which discusses players for fantasy hockey poolies who she believes will receive a “scoring bump” or might hit a scoring slump this upcoming season, and she offers both a compliment and a jab regarding the Red Wings’ captain…
Dylan Larkin, C, DET: It was a bounce-back year for Larkin in Detroit, but the second half of the season was particularly tough for the Red Wings. Growth from some of their young stars, Moritz Seider and Lucas Raymond, some key free agent additions, and ideally more stable goaltending should help avoid that late-season collapse. This season, the Red Wings shooting center should be in a better position to succeed, which should help him continue to show that a lackluster 2020-21 was just an outlier.
And she suggests that one David Perron’s going to have a difficult time in Detroit because the Red Wings are apparently still a bad team:
David Perron, RW, DET: We always remind managers to set “The Bad Team Effect” aside as much as possible and look for the best players. But when a player like Perron goes from the Blues’ versatile forward group to the Red Wings, we also have to acknowledge that the quality of the team around him could weigh on his scoring. This is a very good player who we expect to be very productive at even strength and on the power play, but just keep those new surroundings in mind and anticipate him scoring a few points fewer than the projection.
Continued (paywall); Shayna is a frickin’ brilliant multi-talented columnist, so I’ll simply say the truth here: I disagree.
