Buys and Sells for October 12th

Every week, or as often as I remember, I'll provide you with my poorly thought out ideas on whose stock is on the rise, and whose you should avoid like Enron. Three teams/players/things to buy, and three to sell. Simple stuff, folks. That is, if you could actually buy and sell teams and players. Oh, whatever. Never mind.

Part of Minnesota's defensive strategy is trying to blind their opponents. From all accounts, it seems to be working. REUTERS/Eric Miller

Solid Buy: Anyone that has anything to do with the Ottawa Senators. While the Sens lost last night, they're still 5-1 and they lost to a good Carolina team (see below). Don't fret Ottawa fans/fantasy owners, Martin Gerber's GAA is still 2.18, which is pretty sweet for someone you likely picked up off waivers and the trio of Spezza-Heatley-Alfredsson are still leading the league in points.

Solid Buy: The Minnesota Wild. I mean, jeez. They have allowed two goals in three games. If you have any doubts as to: a) how good Nicklas Backstrom and the Wild defenders are or b) that the trap can exist in the 'new' NHL, consider them erased. These guys are for real. If they did this against the scrubs of the West, imagine what they could do to (dare I say it?) Paul Stastny.

Value Buy: The Carolina Hurricanes and more specifically Eric Staal. I don't know what has gotten into these guys. Coming off a week where they went 1-1-1, losing to Montreal and getting shutout by Washington, they came into Toronto like bats out of hell. They are 2-0 so far this week, winning by a combined 12-4 margin. If you didn't think their nationally televised drubbing of the Leafs was impressive, surely you liked their solid 5-3 win over the previously undefeated Ottawa Seantors. Eric Staal leads the team with eight points in five games, and it's a good bet that there's going to be more where that came from.

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Sell! Oh God, sell!! The Atlanta Thrashers. This is a team that looks like they couldn't give two shits about what's happening on the ice. If, for example, the Islanders, Bruins or Coyotes started out the season this bad no one would have noticed. Since it's a team that, you know, obviously has a good deal of talent on it. The Thrashers are 0-4, have been outscored 17-4 during that time and frankly look like they don't care. At all. The surest sign of that came last night when Ilya Kovalchuk, of all people, stood up for a teammate who had just gotten decked. It's a great show of heart by the team's best player, but he gets paid to score. There are other guys you pay to protect the team and players such as Kovalchuk.

Scott Niedermayer and Teemu Selanne. What douchebags. Yeah, you won the Stanley Cup and are now Pretty Big Deals. That's irrelevant at this point. All this is right now is a poor display of selfishness. Either you play, or you don't. This is a team sport and you don't put yourself ahead of the team no matter who you are. It's October and you're still not sure if you want to retire?? Give me a break. The least you can do is take the year off, and if you miss hockey enough after that, comeback next year. At least the Ducks are smart enough to move on without you guys. Imagine if they weren't.

NHL TV. It's been a week and customer service is still as unresponsive and incompetent as the Thrashers' offense. Any time you guys want to let me watch games and not make it seem like you're stealing money would be great, OK?