Thomas Hickey - Time to Drop Him?
 

Thomas Hickey - Selected by Los Angeles Kings round 1 #4 overall 2007 NHL Entry Draft.
Will be 24 in February.
Can we officially say he will never be what some thought he'd be? His fantasy Value, if any, will be limited?

If you drop him who would be his replacement?

LOL, does it matter? The Ikea monkey would be a better choice at this point! :D

Move on. I dropped Hickey 2 summers ago. Became pretty apparent he would never get a shot there. Voynov is the one to have as a secondary fantasy d-man to Doughty in LA.

Yes it does matter. Hickey is a long shot but certainly has a place in some leagues. I'm in a league where 1200 players are owned and he is worth owning over some of the better WW guys.

Context is everything.

The OP essentially asked if Hickey is a bust or not, right? To me whether he is hung onto, replaced by Nick Ebert or dumped for an empty roster spot makes little difference to me since in my my mind none of them will contribute to a fantasy roster or possess any trade value at all. For me looking at it that way, context becomes irrelevant.

Sure Hickey was taken 4th in the 2007 draft, but in their final rankings the NHL Central Scouting had him ranked 26th out of only the NA skaters. That's without counting goalies and European players, so Hickey was projected to go by them in the mid to late 2nd round and his career since then has been that of a mid to late 2nd rounder. Talk about overreaching by the Kings. In hind sight it may have made more sense to swap their 1st and 2nd picks and have Oscar Moller taken 4th overall and Hickey at 52nd.

If it takes nothing to hold onto him then by all means, yes hold onto him. But to me he is a bust and will do no more for anyones team than a pop culture-15 seconds of fame-icon like the Ikea monkey, hence my original comment.

Drop him like he's hot. LAK is too deep at D.

As eric mentioned unless its a ridicuoulsy large league, there is no need to retain him. Cut the bait.

In most formats he should have been dropped a while ago. I'm just covering huge leagues like the one I'm in (24 teams, 23-man pro rosters, 27-man farm rosters = 1200 total) Hickey definitely has a place. He is a long shot but I prefer a 5% chance on a 30-35 point dman over a 60% chance on a 20 point dman.

Hickey as a point producer in LA is a bust...

But as a solid NHL D man, he could be there soon as more of a #2 pairing reliable minute muncher... Defence take longer to develop, and he is at the point that he will live better in the NHL now, rather than when he was so highly touted a couple years ago...

If he moves to anouther organization... his value jumps forward quite a bit too...