Andrei Kuzmenko: Will New Diet Increase Fantasy Hockey Success?
Andrei Kuzmenko is one of the hardest players for me to evaluate heading into the 2023-24 NHL Season from a fantasy hockey perspective. ESPN has Kuzmenko ranked as the number 100 overall player in fantasy. For as much hate as I give Sean Allen, that actually feels kind of right. Kuzmenko feels like a player that just has such a high variance of how things could go.
Kuzmenko, 27, was really productive during his inaugural campaign a the NHL level. The Canucks winger posted 74 points in 81 games. I don’t totally know how to describe it but Kuzmenko has an odd style where it kind of looks like he’s passing the puck and before you know it it’s turned into a goal. He’s really good at making those split-second decisions while carrying the puck in the offensive zone.
The Russian forward could suffer from a sophomore slump. Kuzmenko sported a 27.3% shooting rate which seems really unsustainable. Elias Pettersson is the best player on the team and he was at 15.2%. If that number for Kuzmenko comes back down to earth, maybe the point total does too. Rick Tocchet seems like he wants to enact a more defensive approach too which could hurt his fantasy output. He also provides nothing in the hits and blocks categories.
With that said, there are reasons to buy Kuzmenko. Last year he was free. This year he won’t be free and he’s going to need to produce to become a value in fantasy. How seriously should we take the reports of his diet change? Kuzmenko claims he ate like trash when first coming to America and that’s now been taken care of. What if Kuzmenko has another level to climb but we only saw glimpses of his actual ceiling?
The positive is that Kuzmenko is locked into a premier role. Last year he was at a touch more than 16 minutes of ice time. This year he’s primed for first-line minutes and first-line power play with Pettersson centering him. That wasn’t the case a season ago as he had to work his way up the pecking order. We know Pettersson is going to produce. The guy had 102 points last year. If Kuzmenko is on the receiving end of more of those, we could be looking at a top 50 play in fantasy.
Tread lightly but I think there are reasons to be optimistic about Kuzmenko from a fantasy perspective. I would be willing to take the chance here.
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