Roto Exclusive : Guest Contributions and Featured Articles

Kris Versteeg – Last season was looking like his breakout campaign but then the All-Star Game
happened. Before the All-Star Game Versteeg had scored 43 points in 47 games but the well dried up
afterwards as Versteeg scored just 11 points the rest of the way and also missed 11 games due to injury.
Versteeg has typically been a healthy player thus far in his career so fewer missed games will help his
cause. More than that Versteeg stands to benefit from some improved luck. Through the season’s first
47 games last year Versteeg scored seven goals and eight assists on the power play, combined with just
two goals and one assist in the final 24 games. Many of these games were without Kulikov, an important
part of the Panthers’ power play. A healthy Kulikov should help Versteeg maintain his power play
production for the full season. Moreover, Versteeg could simply benefit from a few bounces that allow
him to record a few more assists than he was able to muster during that stretch run.
TRENDING DOWN
Brian Campbell – Campbell is a fairly solid regression candidate for this season. Simply put, the
fluctuation in defenseman scoring is too volatile to depend on any defenseman fully. Yes Campbell is
arguably the most important part of the Panthers’ offense and yes he will receive as much prime ice
time and as many touches as possible but he still had to get fairly lucky to rack up 49 assists last season.
There is no major reason other than general fluctuation to expect Campbell to regress but consider that
Campbell’s 31 power play points (30 of which were assists) made for a career high. The regression in his
power play production alone could kill some of his value.
Jose Theodore – Roberto Luongo wants to go to Florida, the Canucks want to trade him there and the
Panthers like the idea of this trade as well. Sooner or later a deal is going to get done, whether it makes
any sense or not but even if it doesn’t Theodore and his owners are still in for a rude awakening. Last
season was Theodore’s best in four seasons and even then it wasn’t very good. He only won 22 games,
which I guarantee is fewer than you thought he won, while
his goals against average and save percentage were merely
league average. Any regression by the Panthers as a whole
will most certainly reduce Theodore’s value even further.
The fact is that Theodore is highly mediocre and there is a
very good chance that his backup is actually the superior
goaltender and that doesn’t even mention the fact that the
best goalie prospect in the game is lurking on the Panthers’
AHL affiliate.
Filip Kuba – Last season Kuba got to ride shotgun on Erik Karlsson’s magical breakout season. Kuba does
deserve some credit for being providing the sort of dependable, defensive minded approach that a
player of Karlsson’s ilk needs to be successful but that doesn’t mean he will find himself in as good a
position again this season in Florida. So Kuba can kiss goodbye to the 30+ points and plus-26 rating that
Karlsson helped him to last season. There’s always a chance that he fills a similar role next to Campbell
or Kulikov this season but even then it’s a reasonable bet that both Campbell and Kulikov will fail to
score as many points as Karlsson did last season on his own.
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