ESPN

It's about that time, the final weeks of the season when NHL teams are either fighting for playoff positioning, trying to sneak into the postseason as a bottom seed or getting a look at some players in line for jobs for 2006-07. In fantasy hockey, it's the time when -- as the old cliché says -- a contender needs to separate itself from the pack, by means of category chasing or adding players to bolster any remaining weak spots on the roster.

If you've remained in the hunt for your league title this long -- even if you're facing a 10-point deficit, I'm talking to you -- don't give up hope now. One of the great parts of the final month of the fantasy hockey season is there are always unknowns emerging on teams juggling their rosters either in preparation for the playoffs or for next season. Remember, like in baseball and football, playoff hockey teams rest their star players once they wrap up postseason positioning, and a lot of those players probably are going to be the same ones found on the top teams in a fantasy league. That creates opportunity for owners paying attention, and it hurts teams that have been coasting during the baseball preseason.

For rotisserie owners, this deep in a season, most teams probably are beginning to get locked in their positioning, but there are always opportunities to move up. I've got one league in which three teams have been within five points of first place for the past month; my team is in the hunt, but penalty minutes is about the only category in which my team can improve significantly. Faced with that scenario, an owner should be looking to nab any player who could help in that area, replacing only the players whose stats are irrelevant to your current standings. In that league, I added Steve Bernier and Craig Rivet, two players who should average better than a penalty minute per game while offering some scoring, and subbed them in for Nils Ekman and Marc-Andre Bergeron, two solid scorers but ones who don't offer many PIMs and won't hurt me in terms of the drop-off in production.

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