Over the weekend, these Ramblings covered Yahoo’s opening of their fantasy hockey lobby, as well as their rankings for individual positions. Having gone through the three forward positions, it’s time to move to the blue line to go through their defence rankings and where some may be too high or too low.

Keep in mind that these are done using Yahoo’s standard roto settings: goals, assists, plus/minus, shots on goal, penalty minutes, and power-play points. I am also assuming 12-team leagues.

Kris Letang – 35^th overall

A month ago when discussing how to approach drafting teammate defencemen, I said there would be no chance Letang should be drafted as a top-12 defenceman. It’s not a matter of talent; he has the talent and the situation to be a top-5 fantasy defenceman almost regardless of format. Rather, it’s simply a matter of being able to stay on the ice for 70 games, let alone 82. It’s kind of sad because this was a potentially Hall of Fame career that is being completely derailed by injuries.

It’s also a matter of risk tolerance taking Letang as your first defenceman in a fantasy league, particularly if you have to use one of your first three or four picks. If he can play 70 games – something he’s done once in the last five 82-game seasons – he can absolutely be worth this pick. The question is whether he can even get close to 70 games. It’s not worth the risk to me, but there will be people out there will to take that risk.

PK Subban – 40^th overall

At the risk of sounding boring, this is a ranking that seems kind of right. This is a player that, in a full year, should be able to post double-digit goals and 50-plus points. He can post solid peripherals like at least two shots on goal per game, a healthy amount of penalty minutes (even in a down year last year he probably would have cracked 50 in a healthy season), and hopefully that plus/minus can rebound, though there’s no telling with Pekka Rinne in net.

My one concern with Subban is the power-play production. His 16 PPPs last year were a five-year low and that includes the lockout-shortened season. He averaged 2:30 per game with the man advantage last year, and 165:25 overall in 66 games. For reference on how much less he received in Nashville than Montreal, the year before he played 309:28 with the man advantage in 68 games. In fact, he averaged over two minutes less on the power play with Nashville than he did with Montreal the year before. That is a gigantic decrease and is the big reason why his upside is 20 PPPs if he played a full year.

So long as he’s healthy, I don’t think there’s a lot of downside to this selection. He has four straight years with at least 0.61 points per game, which works out to at least 50 points per 82 games for four years. That is a solid base to work with. I just don’t think there’s the same upside in Nashville that he had in Montreal just because he’s no longer the only a focal point on the blue line for the PP, Andrei Markov aside. In that sense, this is a selection done more out of safety than upside, which is just fine as a blue liner taken inside the top-10 at the position.

Oliver Ekman-Larsson – 79^th overall

While the overall ranking is still kind of high, this positioning puts him outside the top-15 defencemen selected. That means Ekman-Larsson – a player who has averaged 47 points per 82 games over the last four years with 18 goals included – may be available as a second defenceman in your leagues. That is very solid value.

Last year was undoubtedly a down season for Ekman-Larsson. In 82-game seasons, it was a five-year low in goals, a four-year low in points, a five-year low in shots on goal, a five-year low in power-play points, and a career-worst plus/minus. In short, it probably can’t get worse than his 2016-17 season.

It’s important to keep that season in context, though. First, he played with a broken thumb suffered on November 29^th. Up until that point, he averaged 2.3 shots on goal per game. Not his normal rate that we had been accustomed to, but considerably better than the 1.67 he averaged after that game. We also found out his mother had been battling breast cancer, a battle to which she would eventually succumb. It was a down year for him on the ice, but an even tougher one off the ice.

In a Ramblings back in April I went over the fact that Radim Vrbata was likely taking a lot of shots away from Ekman-Larsson on the power play. Compound all the other issues that he was going through and it’s little wonder that he had such a down year. This is a young but improving team, and they added a few pieces that should help the team at both ends of the ice like Derek Stepan, Niklas Hjalmarsson, and Antti Raanta. With a fresh year coming and an improving team around him, Ekman-Larsson is a very good option to grab as your second defenceman in almost any format.

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Oscar Klefbom – 121^st overall

Last year, Klefbom had to split top-unit duties with Andrej Sekera, one reason why even though he played all 82 games he had just 16 power-play points. Sekera suffered a knee injury during the playoffs however and will be out probably until December. That means Klefbom will be the go-to on the Edmonton blue line for their power play for at least the first two months, and I would bet he will be for most of the year as well.

This is the list of defencemen to manage at least 10 goals, 20 assists, and 200 shots on goal last year:

Notice that Klefbom is the youngest out of all these names. It’s easy to forget that the young Swede is only going into his age-24 season and is just hitting his prime. He is hitting this prime while also being the focal point of a blue line, both at five-on-five and on the power play, for a playoff team featuring the best player in the world (no offence intended to Sidney Crosby).

Last year in this format, Klefbom was a top-30 defenceman and that’s about where he’s being drafted this year. Keep in mind, he was a top-30 defenceman while not being the go-to guy on the power play for the full year, and likely suffering from a bit of bad luck at five-on-five. If he is available as a third defenceman in any format, this is an automatic selection, and I’d have no problem grabbing him as a late second defenceman.

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Those are just some of the notable names that stuck out to me. There is a lot of time in the next five and a half weeks to go over more of them. In the meantime, here are some quick thoughts on a few other players and their Yahoo rankings.

Shayne Gostisbehere – 136^th overall

What a difference a year can make. This time last year, the man known as Ghost a.k.a. Swayze was routinely being drafted as a top-12, maybe top-15 defenceman. Now, Yahoo has him as about a top-30 option.

Like other Flyers skaters, Gostisbehere has heavily reliant on power-play production last year; 23 of his 39 points came with the man advantage. If he wants to reach the heights that fantasy owners have in mind, the team needs to start scoring more at five-on-five. Even with his struggles last year, he was still often used on the top PP unit, so that at least provides some sort of safety net for him. He was overvalued going into drafts last year, but I feel this is much too far a drop, and is a great value at this ranking.

Jacob Trouba – 156^th overall

A couple weeks ago I wrote about why Trouba could be a very good value this year. I was hoping that he’d be ranked a little lower than he is; that 156^th overall puts him exactly as the 36^th defenceman off the board. I’d feel a lot better about drafting him as a fourth defenceman on my team than a third.

Regardless, Trouba probably improves on his production last year and there isn’t a lot of downside to this selection. He won’t reach the heights he’s capable of until he’s on the top power-play unit and that’s unlikely to happen soon. He can, however, provide solid across-the-board production in roto leagues.

Jake Muzzin – 196^th overall

After back-to-back 40-point seasons, Muzzin disappointed greatly with 28 points and a dismal minus-21 rating. Now, that plus/minus isn’t really his fault; though the team controlled nearly 55 percent of the adjusted shot attempts at five-on-five with him on the ice, he received .893 goaltending behind him. No one is going to have a solid plus/minus with sub-.900 goaltending.

Assuming that on-ice save percentage rebound, Muzzin should be much better this year fantasy-wise in roto leagues. He could be a top-36 defenceman with a big plus/minus rebound even if he doesn’t improve much production wise. Plus/minus can be very fickle, but I think we saw the bottom last year and that means him being drafted outside the top-40 defencemen is a reasonable value.