The 2020-21 Dobber Hockey Fantasy Guide is now available in the Dobber Shop! Grab your copy now to start perusing projections, depth charts, player profiles, content for cap leagues, and a whole lot more. It will be updated through to the start of the regular season, whenever that will be, so don't worry about getting recent information. Settle in and get started on the 2020-21 campaign!

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Julius Honka was added back to the roster by the Stars over the weekend, as he agreed to a one-year deal for $700K. Dobber wrote about it in his Ramblings yesterday but I wanted to go a bit more in depth.

Honka is one of those players that has divided the online hockey community for years. There were high hopes for him; he was a 14^th overall pick and his NHL point probability ratings were consistently high until a few years ago. He had shown flashes but – and this is just my opinion – he is reminiscent of Michael Matheson: depending on the night, he could be the best or the worst defenceman on his own team, but it's the latter much more often than the former. The flashes he shows keeps people (myself included) coming back for more.

I am in agreement with Dobber that there's not likely to be much here fantasy-wise. Either John Klingberg or Miro Heiskanen will run the two PP units, and both guys, among others, are way ahead of Honka on the depth chart for minutes.

The other aspect of this is it makes me wonder about Stephen Johns. He had been fighting concussion problems for years, returned, then left the lineup again. There is nothing official from anywhere, it just makes sense for the Stars to get some more depth on the back end, particularly from right shots.

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Also just spit-balling here: I bet the Devils have some major trades in the works. Not necessarily major in raw star power, but maybe in dollars or term. As it stands right now, per Cap Friendly, the team has just 16 of 23 roster slots filled. They have just seven forwards signed that are not on entry-level contracts.

I bring this up because we have Tampa Bay still with the triumvirate Cirelli/Cernak/Sergachev to sign with no room to sign them. Most teams have basically finished their off season. There are only a dozen teams that can even take on a cap hit over $3.5M now, and that doesn't factor in those teams' own players needing signing (like the Islanders with Barzal) or internal cap limits. Of course, money can be moved around, but Tampa is looking to shed money, not take it on. Their pool is dwindling, and the fact that New Jersey has so many roster spots open makes me wonder if we don't see one or more Bolts players head to the Garden State (assuming they waive their NTCs, of course).

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Greg Wyshynski and Emily Kaplan of ESPN brought some updates on the 2020-21 season. The full report can be read here. I will summarize some parts I found interesting:

• The NHL plans on having fans in the stands at some point during the season. How many fans, which arenas will allow it, and at what point this will happen is all, obviously, still to be determined. The focus will be on having fans, where permitted, for the postseason. Remember that the NHL relies on gate revenue more than other sports.
• It appears the teams that did not get to the play-ins will get some extra time to ramp up for their season. That could mean something like an extra week of training camp.
• While an 82-game season seems unlikely, they won't go fewer than 48 games. In other words, we won't see some 30-game season, which was a comparable length over in MLB. But it does mean that if they start, say, February 1^st, it won't be six months of regular-season hockey. They could start February 1^st and with a bit of compression, finish a 50-game schedule by early May. That would get them close to on track for a normal 2021-22 (which, well, there is a lot of time between now and October 2021).
• Nothing is certain yet, but the leading plan is some sort of hybrid bubble. This would entail four cities – let's say Toronto, Boston, Chicago, and Los Angeles – taking in portions of the 31 teams. Players would stay in hotels and be tested routinely as with the summer playoffs, but there would be designated breaks where they can go visit family and friends. It would likely entail a pair of games at each site each day so while there won't be all-day hockey, games starting before supper in the east seems likely.

There is a lot more in that article so again, I recommend readers go through the whole thing. It seems regular-season hockey will return early in 2021 but the form it will take will be quite different than we're used to.

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I wrote about Jakub Voracek last week but as I'm looking over the Philadelphia roster, something else hit me: what if he starts the year on the third line?

We saw Joel Farabee skate on the second line in the playoffs, but I have to think that as long as Oskar Lindblom is set for the 2020-21 season, we'll see Lindblom-Hayes-Konecny back together. The assumption could be a top line of Giroux-Couturier-Voracek, but if Farabee really pulls it together, is it that far-fetched to see Voracek bumped in favour of Giroux-Couturier-Farabee? That seems eminently possible as Voracek's ice time has been pulled back for a couple years now.

It is really hard to see James van Riemsdyk having much season-long fantasy value.

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One player whose fantasy value I wonder about is Adam Boqvist. Our Dobber Hockey guide has him on the top PP unit for the Blackhawks and I think that should be the case as well. I just want to be a bit careful about what to expect if that does happen. The entire Blackhawks defence corps had 22 power-play points last year combined. The year before, that number was 32. The year before, it was 37. None of those three seasons saw a single defenceman reach 20 PPPs, and only Erik Gustafsson in 2018-19 had more than 15. Even if Boqvist were to step onto PP1 the first game of the season and stay there all year, 20 PPPs should be seen more as the upside rather than the expectation.

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Speaking of Chicago defencemen, and a former one in particular, I am very much interested in Olli Maatta for multi-cat leagues this year. He had 229 combined hits and blocked shots through 65 games last year, and 213 in 60 games the year before. He averaged 18:30 per game in TOI through those 125 games. If he gets top-pair minutes with Drew Doughty, plus penalty kill time, I think we see far higher hit and shot blocking totals.

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One player I'm having a hard time pinning down for next year is Robby Fabbri. Allow me to explain.

Fabbri is a guy I have long thought much of as a prospect. My expectations have been a top-6 winger every step of the way. Injuries and a deep St. Louis roster prevented us from seeing that potential reality. He was traded to Detroit, and appeared to make good on all that promise, posting 14 goals and 31 points in 52 games, averaging two shots per game. The thing is, he seems to have been carried by Dylan Larkin, because his numbers away from Larkin were atrocious (via Natural Stat Trick):

What this doesn't show: the quality of line mates when not skating together. Larkin often skated with Tyler Bertuzzi or Anthony Mantha (when healthy). Fabbri, being a winger, did not. That is why when we look at his without you/with you chart from Hockey Viz, we see the numbers 59/71/39 (in red) being considerably better away from Fabbri than with him. Those numbers belong to Bertuzzi/Larkin/Mantha. Everyone else is, more or less, in a muddled mess of 'bad':

So, I still don't really know what to make of Fabbri. He should be fine, fantasy-wise, as long as he stays with Larkin. The Wings are turning the ship around, but if Joe Veleno doesn't step in as a 2C, this team still doesn't have a second scoring line for Fabbri to play on. Slotting determines value for a lot of players, but that is magnified when there are few good players on the roster. He still has a lot of holes defensively so trying to stick him with bad players is probably going to lead to a lot of unhappy nights at the rink for Jeff Blashill.

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Is this the year that Jordan Kyrou finally breaks out, or will he be stuffed down the roster? Will he be on the roster at all? Once upon a time, I thought Fabbri/Kyrou were the future at the top of the roster for the St. Louis Blues. Now, both futures are up in the air. Prospects, man.