By JIMMY D / Release the hounds! Identify NHL rabbits | Jimmy's archive

If you ever lived in a rural area and owned a rabbit hound (or lived next door to one), you know how the yappy little dogs can run for hours chasing bunnies.

Yapping and chasing, chasing and yapping and never stopping but never really getting what they want. In a decade, I never saw a beagle once with a rabbit in its mouth.

But Jimmy digresses. What does the exhausting and fruitless pursuit of these poor beagles have to do with fantasy sports?

Listen closely and you will hear the rabbit hounds in your pool or fantasy league making noise about Mike Comrie, Mats Sundin and Paul Stastny. Because these poolies only care about what happened last night and all three of these players packed a mean bite in the season’s first week.

Should you be a pool beagle and go barking after these players?
Comrie has been paired with Bill Guerin and Ruslan Fedotenko to produce a quick start for the Isles. Sundin had a useful start in a mostly losing cause last week for the Leafs, which is par for the course for both Mats and the Leafs.

Paul Stastny had a night (goal and four assists) like his Hall of Fame dad Peter used to have at the Colisee back in the 1980s. And now the hounds are on the trail. If he goes pointless with a minus three tomorrow, they are no longer game for the chase.

Identify the beagles in your pool and you can usually throw them off the trail by offering them a fast-starting player that you figure will not sustain the pace. And they will probably overpay in trade because they get caught up in the running and yapping.

You might get a Pavol Demitra, Martin Havlat, Marian Gaborik or some other established fantasy stud who happened to not score in his first two games. Trading a hare for a tortoise this early in the season is a great way to stockpile talent for the long haul.

Jimmyville Hockey

Ho hum, another new fantasy season and Jimmy is already dominating his pool competition. NHL started last week and Jimmy managed a 7-0 whitewashing in his head-to-head pool.

Joe Thornton, Chris Drury and Milan Hejduk had excellent starts and Hab stopper Cristobal Huet and unheralded Tampa backstop Johan Holmqvist each managed wins in Jimmy’s goalie categories.

This pool is a bit different in that penalty minutes are a positive category instead of a negative and shots on goal are an offensive category. So having Thornton and power-play bomber Dion Phaneuf on the roster is great news.

Jimmy also plucked Francois Beauchemin and Andrej Meszaros off waivers to bolster his blueline with power play points and plus-minus.

RIP Chargers? Not so fast

The obituary on the San Diego Charger season may have been submitted a bit too early. After a bumbling 1-3 start and humbling home loss to the mediocre Chiefs in Week 4, San Diego went to Denver with the season on the line.

And they humiliated a good Bronco team 41-3 behind a silly day from running back Michael Turner, who carried 10 times for 147 yards and a score. Those stats dwarfed LT’s numbers, but anyone who is offering LT around in your NFL pool on the cheap because of the slow start should be engaged immediately. This Charger team is simply too talented to remain short-circuited.

The same can’t be said for the Saints, who came off a bye week and wet the bed 16-13 at home against Carolina. Drew Brees tossed two more INTs and Marques Colston continued to struggle. The Saints now travel to Seattle next week, who come off a humiliating 21-0 loss at Pittsburgh and will be looking to march the Saints back to the Bayou with an 0-5 record.

And if you still have any Brett Favre lovers in your pool, but have been waiting to see if his un-Favre-like passing numbers would continue, it’s time to peddle him to an opponent. He tossed a TD and two INTs against the Bears Sunday, squandering 17-7 and 20-10 leads against a banged-up team that was ready to mail in the season.

Things might be returning to normal in Detroit as well where the overachieving Lions looked a lot like the underachieving Lions of old in a 34-3 loss at Washington. Jon Kitna managed barely 100 yards passing and he heads into the bye week in a funk.

If you are in a head-to-head or other format where you must set weekly rosters, remember these teams are on bye weeks: Denver, Detroit, Buffalo, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, San Francisco.

Lots of hockey to focus on and your baseball playoff pool is taking shape as well.

Stay busy, stay lucky.

Jimmy D