Every Thursday during the season, NHL.com fantasy hockey expert Matt Cubeta will provide you with an in-depth analysis of fantasy left wings in our weekly segment: "Turn Left Here." From updated left wing rankings to guys you should keep a close eye on and much more, Cubeta will be your fantasy left wing expert all season long.

In last week's edition of "Turn Left Here" we discussed how the left wing position is quickly becoming extremely deep for fantasy owners. And while that’s true, we've also seen plenty of elite left wingers underachieve in the early parts of the 2011-12 season.

Alex Ovechkin, our No. 1 overall fantasy player coming into the season, is currently rated 34th in Yahoo! Leagues. Hopefully his recent hot streak (7 points in his previous five games) will get him going.

Devils forward Zach Parise, our No. 3 left wing coming into the season, has gotten off to a miserable start with 4 goals and just 1 assist in 10 games. Bobby Ryan has been equally as disappointing with the same amount of goals and points as Parise and no points on the power play.

Detroit's Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg continue to struggle, with both players rated below the 159 rank in Yahoo! Leagues.

Ryan Miller is officially slumping. In his most recent outing against the Philadelphia Flyers, Miller was pulled from the game early in the first frame after allowing three goals in just 11 shots. All this after not looking very sharp in his previous three games. Four straight losses for a high-end netminder?
    
In his most recent "In the Cage" segment, NHL.com's fantasy hockey goalie guru Justin Goldman targeted Miller as trending downward and after his latest and most disappointing outing, there now has to be some cause for concern.  Miller has played well at times this year, particularly early on, but he clearly has not lived up to his billing as one of the League's elite goaltenders so far this season.

Every Wednesday during the season, NHL.com fantasy hockey expert Matt Cubeta will provide you with an in-depth analysis of fantasy centers in our weekly segment: "Center Stage." From updated center rankings to guys you should keep a close eye on and much more, Cubeta will be your fantasy center expert all season long.

It's time to shake things up.

With so many players now possessing dual-position eligibility in Yahoo! fantasy hockey leagues, we have decided to expand our weekly forward rankings. That's right, we're bumping it up from 30, to 40 for each position. Going forward, our updated NHL.com rankings will list the top 40 Yahoo!-eligible centers, left wings and right wings.

Simply put, there were just too many good players being left off the rankings because of so many of them being listed in multiple sets of forward rankings -- Chicago's Patrick Sharp is listed at C, LW and RW, despite the fact he has stated he does not want to play in the middle this season (hence Patrick Kane's emergence at the center position).

We want to put Sharp in each set of rankings because it is valuable to you if you have him on your fantasy team -- it will help you gauge his value at each position, because only you know where you want him to be on your roster. Maybe Sharp's a center for one owner, but for another, he could be a starting left wing, so we feel continuing to put him in each set of rankings is useful for everyone.

Every Tuesday during the season, NHL.com Correspondent Brian Metzer will provide you with an in-depth analysis of fantasy defensemen in our weekly segment: "On the 'D'-fence." From updated defensemen rankings to guys you should keep a close eye on and much more, Metzer will be your fantasy d-man expert all season long.

The Ottawa Senators are in what some would call a rebuilding mode, but their record during the first month of the season tells a slightly different tale. Their 7-5 mark might not be mind blowing, but it gets a lot more impressive when you consider the fact that they have just reeled off six consecutive wins and are doing it with major contributions from their youngsters.

Of those youngster,s none has been more impressive than third year D-man Erik Karlsson, who has notched an impressive 13 points (1G-12A) through his team's first 12 games.

Karlsson has long had fantasy owners, as well as his bosses in Ottawa, salivating, but no one could have predicted how quickly he would become a brilliant offensive defenseman. After seeing his young rearguard post 26 points (5G-21A) during his first season in the League, General Manager Bryan Murray tried to help the process along by bringing in Sergei Gonchar last season to assist in the grooming process. After all, Gonchar had been quite effective in assisting with the maturation of Kris Letang in Pittsburgh and it has paid off in spades for the young Swede.

Every Monday during the season, goalie specialist and founder of The Goalie Guild Justin Goldman will provide you with an in-depth analysis of fantasy goaltenders in NHL.com's weekly segment: "In the Cage." From updated goalie rankings to guys you should keep a close eye on and much more, Goldman will be your fantasy goalie expert all season long.

Before hosting the Ducks yesterday, the Columbus Blue Jackets held a team meeting to discuss their disastrous October. The result? A 3-1 win and a strong effort from Steve Mason, one that included some timely stops in the second and third periods.

There's no denying the unpredictable and ever-changing nature of hockey, especially in the "new" NHL, where blistering speed and high-end skill reign supreme and not much remains status quo.

One second too late or one deke too many could mean the difference between a thrilling win or a devastating loss, while one week on top of the world can quickly turn into a permanent slump.

A similar -- if not exact -- dynamic exists in fantasy hockey.

Just when you think it's safe to celebrate a win against an opponent, you find yourself scrambling to find a gem on waivers to remain in contention. Meanwhile, norms become aberrations and blips on the radar become stranglehold positions.

Given the complex, never-steady landscape, each week, NHL.com fantasy insider Sergei Feldman gives you The Real Spiel on some of the quirks and trends that permeated your week of fantasy hockey by way of in-depth analysis.

Every Friday during the season, NHL.com fantasy hockey expert Matt Cubeta will provide you with an in-depth analysis of fantasy right wings in our weekly segment: "Right of Way." From updated right wing rankings to guys you should keep a close eye on and much more, Cubeta will be your fantasy right wing expert all season long.

Watch out folks, last season's fantasy hockey MVP is making his move.

Ducks forward Corey Perry is slowly coming alive. After struggling out of the gate with no points in his first three games, Perry has started to deliver for his fantasy owners with points in each of his last six games, including his first multi-point performance of the season on Thursday against the Wild.

If you were fortunate enough to have Perry on your fantasy team a season ago you would know he's typically a slow starter. To start 2010-11, the versatile forward also was held pointless in his first three contests and then went on to record 8 points in his next six games -- this season he has 7 points in the six games following the pointless streak to start out.

Every Thursday during the season, NHL.com fantasy hockey expert Matt Cubeta will provide you with an in-depth analysis of fantasy left wings in our weekly segment: "Turn Left Here." From updated left wing rankings to guys you should keep a close eye on and much more, Cubeta will be your fantasy left wing expert all season long.

The left wing position is quickly proving to be quite deep.

While some of the typical superstars are still struggling in the early parts of the 2011-12 season, several unlikely players are stealing the headlines in fantasy leagues everywhere. Guys like Kris Versteeg, Joffrey Lupul and Milan Michalek may be playing over their heads a bit right now, but who's to say they can't keep this up?

Versteeg received a fresh opportunity playing for his fourth NHL team and is on Florida's top line -- maybe his fast start is legit and he's happy with his new team. Is it that far-fetched to think he can't score 30 goals and post 60-plus points?

Lupul has teamed up with the hottest player in the NHL in Phil Kessel to formulate one of the League's most deadly combinations after about three weeks of action -- maybe he stays healthy for the full season and helps Toronto to a winning season.

Talk about a turn of events. All but ruled out for Wednesday’s game against Philadelphia with an upper body injury, forward Max Pacioretty made an unexpected return to the lineup and scored a pair of goals, added an assist and was a plus-3 while leading the struggling Montreal Canadiens to a much needed win. 

Pacioretty’s gutsy effort will surely grab the headlines in Montreal but fantasy GMs need to take notice as well. Most of the hockey world knows Pacioretty best for the controversial hit he took from Boston Bruins defenseman Zdeno Chara, in which he suffered a severe concussion and a fractured vertebra. The Chara hit cost Pacioretty the final 14 games of the 2010-11 season and forced him to miss the Canadiens' first-round playoff series loss to Boston. But Pacioretty has returned to the ice this season and could be poised for a breakout year with the Habs.

If healthy, the 22nd overall pick of the 2007 Entry Draft could blossom into the rare type of multidimensional forward who can contribute to a variety of fantasy categories. He is a big body who plays physical, possesses a scoring touch and at just 22 years old, is just going to get better and better. In just 37 games last season, Pacioretty had 14 goals and 10 assists while firing 112 shots and amassing 39 PIMs.  Over a full season, that translates to the type of production across the board that makes fantasy GMs salivate.

Every Wednesday during the season, NHL.com fantasy hockey expert Matt Cubeta will provide you with an in-depth analysis of fantasy centers in our weekly segment: "Center Stage." From updated center rankings to guys you should keep a close eye on and much more, Cubeta will be your fantasy center expert all season long.

With nearly three weeks of the NHL season in the books, it's time to take a look at the top fantasy players at the center position according to standard fantasy leagues. Three weeks is still not a gigantic portion of the season, so you'll notice that we continue to show patience with our updated center rankings. However, we can begin to put more faith in some players' hot or cold starts -- guys like Jordan Staal, Vinny Prospal and Jamie Benn, for example.

You'll also notice that our updated center rankings will differ from Yahoo! League ratings because we're projecting how we expect players to perform for the remainder of the season -- Yahoo's rankings are based on what they've done up to this point. For example, Steven Stamkos remains our top-ranked center going forward, but in Yahoo! Leauges, Stamkos is currently rated 20th among centers.

With that said, let's take a look at the top-five performers at the center position up to this point. You'll see one player is finally living up to expectations, another is performing like he did last year, another is rebounding like we hoped he would, and the other two are reaching the expectations that many of us have had for the last couple of years.

We're talking about Jason Spezza, Patrick Sharp, Nicklas Backstrom and two centers that we'll be hearing from for many, many years to come: Claude Giroux and John Tavares.