Bubble Keeper week is back for another July November edition this year. Most poolies don't have their eyes on fantasy hockey because both the draft and free agent frenzy are already a month in the rearview mirror, while the start of the season is still a ways away. Luckily for us writers, there are still some of you crazy enough to be seeking something new in the middle of the second offseason of 2020. In the spirit of keeping things interesting, we are now right in the middle of analyzing as many possible bubble keepers as we can manage, and the first half of the week has been an excellent run of articles from the DobberHockey staff. Hopefully some of you can find something useful in this article as well.

For this week's Capped, since the typical top-150 keepers list wouldn't necessarily be as accurate in our leagues, we are looking at a few players outside of that list, but these are also players that are just outside of the top 200 on my Cap League Rankings list for the next iteration that will be posted in two weeks.

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The one with the new team:

Devon Toews (D) – New York Islanders

Cap Hit: $4,100,000

Devon Toews is a late bloomer coming off of his sophomore season at the age of 26. His developmental curve looks solid to this point, and is reliable all over the ice. An excellent add for Colorado and signed to a fair contract that shows he is expected to contribute as a top-four piece. However, on Colorado the defence core is so stacked that there isn't a lot of room for Toews to shine. The offensive minutes will be soaked up by Cale Makar, Samuel Girard, Ryan Graves, and possibly Connor Timmins or Bowen Byram if they make the team. It will likely fall to Toews, and Ian Cole to form the shutdown pair.

As a fantasy asset, the move to Colorado will change a few things for Toews. First, is that he will likely take over most of the minutes skated by Nikita Zadorov. This means similar quality of competition, but more defensive zone starts, less power-play time, and more time with the penalty kill. As a result, we could see Toews top a hit per game for the first time in his career, while he will pace for over 100 blocks. However, his offensive stats will slow down from last year.

Personally, I'm going to be treating him as a 30-point, assist-heavy defenceman that won't see much, if any, powerplay time. This is under the assumption that Cale Makar and Ryan Graves remain as the effective top pair that they were last season. For a contrasting opinion, Dobber has Toews penciled in on the top line with Cale Makar, and as a result his offensive numbers flourish. Toews has a decent floor, some realistic upside, and a contract that puts him in the middle of the pack. If there are better keeper options it will likely be obvious, and otherwise he is a solid option to be a middle defenceman on your fantasy team, but he's not someone that I would be selling valuable assets to acquire right now.

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The one with more opportunity:

Frank Vatrano (RW) – Florida Panthers

Cap Hit: $2,533,333

There are always various options when it comes to how a team wants to line up its powerplay units, though with the Florida Panthers the first three names (Aleksander Barkov, Jonathan Huberdeau, and Keith Yandle) should be written into the lineup card in pen. There are four main options for the last two spots, Vatrano, Brett Connolly, defenceman Aaron Ekblad, and newcomer Patrick Hornqvist. Hornqvist will likely get some exposure, however his skills are fading and he's constantly missing time with injuries. Vatrano also makes the most sense to replace the departed Evgenii Dadonov and Mike Hoffman as he can take over the left-handed one-timer slot – a spot that none of Hornqvist, Ekblad, or Connolly could fill as right shots.

Over the last two seasons, Vatrano has established his floor as a 40-point player, and with some added powerplay time he could see that start to tick higher. Last year he only had two powerplay points all season, and though a few of his underlying numbers were high, pushing for 50 points this coming season would be realistic with some added powerplay production. At his price tag, he's worth keeping in most leagues.

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The one with less opportunity:

Travis Sanheim (D) – Philadelphia Flyers

Cap Hit: $3,250,000

One thing I noticed in my research for my article in the 2020 DobberHockey Fantasy Guide (pick it up here if you haven't already!) is that head coach Alain Vigneault very much likes playing right and left handed defencemen together and other their proper sides. For Sanheim that means competing for time with Ivan Provorov, Erik Gustafsson, Robert Hagg, and possibly also Shayne Gostisbehere. Meanwhile, by replacing Matt Niskanen's and Justin Braun's with the more offensively inclined Gustafsson, a lot of defensive zone minutes have opened up. As with Toews above, Sanheim has a 30-point floor, while the likely deployment would be as a second pairing defenceman who will be taking more than his fair share of the defensive burden. Unlike Toews, Sanheim's fantasy upside seems to be capped closer to 30 points as he doesn't have the possible top line opening, not quite as strong of a forward group to leach secondary points off of. It might be worthwhile to see if there are better options elsewhere that can offer more upside.

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The one that even I wasn't sure what to do with:

Connor Brown (RW) – Ottawa Senators

Cap Hit: $3,600,000

Brown is an enigma, as he is coming off of a career season where he played almost 20 minutes a night, but the team around his is going to be changing quite a bit, and he just signed a new contract. A 50-point player in his prime with a new contract paying him a $3.6 million AAV would typically be an easy keeper option in cap leagues. However, the more you dig the more curious the numbers are for Brown. Over the course of his career he has averaged 1.6pts/60, and last year he was up to 1.8. His secondary assist rate was high, but aside from that all of the other underlying metrics are within normal ranges. The 39 percent offensive zone starts is concerning, especially for a team that is going to have even more youngsters to shelter.

Next season, we can't expect Brown to keep up his 20 minutes per game, especially with the addition of Dadonov. However, Brown wasn't producing on the power play anyway, and with 17 or 18 minutes per game at even strength he should be able to produce in a similar capacity to last season. With that kind of ice time his 1.8pts/60 would mean 42-45 points on the season. Like Sanheim, his ceiling is limited because of the defensive responsibilities and the lack of powerplay exposure. Brown makes a predictable secondary keeper option if you don't have high upside players available, but just about any other 26-year-old that has scored at a 50-point pace, and is being paid $4 million would be a better option.

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All statistics are all pulled from FrozenTools, and all contract info from Capfriendly. Follow me on Twitter @alexdmaclean.

Stay safe!

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Previous Capped Articles:

Previewing the 2021 RFA Group

Looking Ahead to the 2021 Unrestricted Free Agent Class