Hello everyone and welcome in for another article. This is the eighteenth instalment of a weekly article I’ll be writing all season long in which I try to determine the truth about puzzling players. I pull suggestions for which players to write about for these articles from the Apples & Ginos community on Discord and the Apples & Ginos Patreon members. Be sure you check out those spots to catch up with me and I would be more than happy to answer any questions you have about Anthony Beauvillier, Pierre-Luc Dubois, or any other French Canadian hockey players. Let’s get it!
Anthony Beauvillier, LW – VAN
The only current NHL player returning to the Canucks in the Bo Horvat trade, Beauvillier has made a seamless transition to his new team netting four goals and two assists in his last five games. Beauvillier is seeing top line and top powerplay deployment alongside Canucks’ star Elias Pettersson, raising both his ceiling and his floor for fantasy purposes. From Vancouver’s perspective, they have nothing left to play for and therefore have no reason not to give Beauvillier all the minutes he can handle and see exactly what kind of player they have in him.
Beauvillier has always been a player who shows good-not-great underlying statistics, making him a very solid complementary player and a roster-able one when getting prime deployment. All things told I don’t view him dissimilarly to teammate Brock Boeser in terms of the underlying stats; I’m happy to roster Beauvillier while he’s hot and getting these minutes, but I wouldn’t hesitate to send him back to the waiver wire if that situation changed.
Pierre-Luc Dubois, C – WPG
I feel very confident in my assessment of Dubois at this point in the season. He’s putting up very consistent shots/60, iSCF/60, and CF/60 numbers that are almost perfectly in-line with what he did last season. He’s run hotter this season in terms of the “luck metrics”: individual points percentage (IPP), shooting percentage (S%), and on-ice shooting percentage (oiSH%), which explains the jump in his point production.
I’d place PLD’s most likely outcome somewhere in between last year’s 61-point pace and this year’s 79-point pace; a point pace in the low 70s feels very safe given Winnipeg’s clear improvement as an offensive squad this year. I will say that if you are looking ahead to the fantasy playoffs at this point in the season then Dubois is quite possibly a sell-high candidate given that the Jets do not have a strong schedule through the most common fantasy playoff weeks. I’d consider selling Dubois for Valeri Nichushkin or Jeff Skinner among others.
Ryan O’Reilly, C – TOR
O’Reilly’s trade to the Maple Leafs has predictably piqued the fantasy community’s interest in him and as a result his rostership is skyrocketing. O’Reilly garnered an assist in his first game as a Maple Leaf and the second-line deployment alongside Toronto stars John Tavares and Mitch Marner has immediately shown up in his team-level advanced statistics. While O’Reilly is no longer the same offensive threat at age 32 that he was in his mid-twenties, there’s real reason to be interested in his potential upside if he continues to skate 16-17 minutes a night in the Toronto top six. I’d place him at a 60-point pace rest of season with upside for more if things truly click with Marner and Tavares.
Tristan Jarry, G – PIT
Let’s be clear: I’ve intentionally tied a significant portion of the Apples & Ginos brand to the act of fading goalies and avoiding predicting their performance in any meaningful way. That being said, Jarry has been one of the most consistent goaltenders of the past four seasons, registering a .919 save percentage in three of them and only dipping down to a .909 in the COVID-shortened 2020-21 season. If Jarry can maintain his health he’ll be heavily utilized from here on out as the Penguins currently sit in the final wild card spot and need to pile up as many wins as possible to assert their position in that playoff race.
Volume is the most predictable aspect of goaltending performance and Jarry definitely has that locked down. I’m not looking to acquire Jarry unless the cost is truly minimal, but I have very little worries about him other than injury risk at this point. I personally am not overly worried about the injury risk, but if you’ve got everything else shored up on your team for the playoffs then maybe you want to explore what other goaltending options might be out there that get you volume during your fantasy playoffs.
Anthony Duclair, RW – FLA
It looks like there’s a pretty solid chance that Duclair makes his season debut for the Panthers on Friday night against the Buffalo Sabres, and there’s good reason to be interested. As you’ll recall, Duclair posted 31 goals and 58 points in 74 games a year ago playing primarily on Aleksander Barkov’s wing. My personal line of reasoning is that the Panthers are a much deeper team with Anton Lundell as the 3rd center rather than top line winger, and if coach Paul Maurice agrees Duclair could return to a top line role sooner rather than later.
I wouldn’t pencil Duclair in for that 30+ goal pace right away as he returns from injury, but there’s a very good chance that Duclair becomes a hold on your fantasy rosters as soon as next week. The Panthers don’t have a great schedule next week (3 GP with no off-nights), but I’m willing to take the flyer on Duclair if he’s in the top six once the new lines become public.
That’s all for this one folks, I hope you had as much fun reading it as I had writing it! Make sure you follow Apples & Ginos on Twitter and join the Apples & Ginos Discord server for more content and to ask any fantasy hockey questions you may have.
Much love,
Nate
Apples and Ginos 