Focusing on Keeper pools, one of the most important factors to consider is stocking your roster with players that are on the rise and not on their way down. If your team is competing for the league title, you should limit the number of players that you will need to be rid of sooner than later. In writing last week about bubble players, it made me think about how the better teams in my pool don't have as many bubble players as those in the middle or bottom of the pack and it isn't just a coincidence. A good rule of thumb, if your team isn't in contention is to rid the roster of any player trending down. Easier said than done of course, but it should be the aim if you wish your team to improve.

Dobber does a much more in-depth look at projections for these players and teams in the 2020-21 Annual Guide available now. I always find it an enjoyable and interesting exercise to look at these teams and players and come up with my thoughts and opinions, but would never bet against Dobber.

The easiest way for me to do this is to focus on each team in the West and look at players on the roster that we should all be looking to keep (risers) or looking to move (fallers) in the next one to two years. I'm not going to speculate on prospects or rookies, but on players with NHL experience (over 25 GP) who are trending up or down.

Anaheim

Risers – Sam Steel, Maxime Comtois, Sonny Milano, Troy Terry, Josh Mahura are all players that should start to pay dividends this year or next as they start to play more minutes and get better opportunities with the man advantage. They range in age from 21 to 24 and have varying degrees of what their ceilings could be, but all have solid futures if everything goes right for them.

Fallers – The glaring example of the Ducks is Ryan Getzlaf and this article isn't just focused on age, but focused more on diminishing returns. The best-case scenario for Getzlaf is to be moved to a contending team and be surrounded with better talent as he can't carry the offensive production for a team any longer at 35 years of age. He's been a point per game player for most of his career but the last two seasons have been 0.72 pts/game and 0.61 pts/game. Adam Henrique, Rickard Rakell and Jakob Silfverberg are all in holding patterns, but when the younger players above start to produce they will replace the playing time of these three, so be aware.

Arizona

Risers – Lawson Crouse, Conor Garland, Nick Schmaltz, Christian Dvorak, and Jakub Chychrun are all under 24 years of age and could or should see their best years in a year or three. Garland, Schmaltz and Chychrun probably have the highest ceiling of this group.

Fallers – Phil Kessel, Derek Stepan, Alex Goligoski, Jason Demers and even Oliver Ekman-Larsson are looking at the best years of their careers in the rearview mirror.

Calgary

Risers – Dillon Dube, Andrew Mangiapane, Rasmus Andersson and I still believe Matthew Tkachuk are players to focus on in Calgary who have their best seasons ahead of them. I'm bullish on Sean Monahan, Johnny Gaudreau and Elias Lindholm matching their career highs, but I don't doubt they will improve upon their totals from last year.

Fallers – Mark Giordano, Mikael Backlund and David Rittich are on the opposite list as abilities and/or opportunities will be reduced in the next season or two. For Backlund, it will be a case of Dube and Mangiapane eating up more minutes while Rittich is clearly in a backup role for the foreseeable future in Calgary and probably capped at 35 games outside of an injury to Jacob Markstrom.

Chicago

Risers – Kirby Dach, Alexander Nylander, Adam Boqvist, Collin Delia are the big risers on the Blackhawks in my opinion. I'd love to say that Dominik Kubalik and Alex DeBrincat should be included on this list, but I'm not sure that Kubalik will score 30 goals again or DeBrincat will score 40 again. Delia is only included as long as Chicago doesn't sign or trade for another starter in net.

Fallers – Duncan Keith is my only player on the roster currently that I would classify as trending down. I'm not prepared to include Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane or Dylan Strome yet, but they are all on the edge of a hill.

Colorado

Risers – Nathan MacKinnon, I still think has a career year in him, even more so than what he has already accomplished. It's tough to say that Cale Makar will improve on a 72-point pace season, but he should easily match or exceed 50 points again. But these are two players that aren't going to be available in most pools at any price. The third riser in my opinion is Samuel Girard who at only 22 years of age and three seasons in the NHL has seen his ice-time and production improve each season.

Fallers – Tyson Jost is only 22 years of age and I hate to write him off at such a young age, but any thought of 50 or 60 point seasons is probably unlikely in the future, at least in Colorado. Other players on the cusp of trending down are Gabriel Landeskog (who seems much older than his 27 years), Ryan Graves and Brandon Saad.

Dallas

Risers – Denis Gurianov, Roope Hintz and Miro Heiskanen are all players that saw plenty of ice time in the playoffs and flourished, especially Gurianov and Heiskanen.

Fallers – It's tough to list so many players on a team that went all the way to the Stanley Cup Finals, but Jamie Benn, Joe Pavelski, Alexander Radulov, Tyler Seguin, Ben Bishop, Anton Khudobin and John Klingberg have all peaked in terms of production in their NHL careers. Seguin and Benn will still have plenty of opportunity for the next two to three years, but the others will see their roles diminish, especially in the case of Klingberg having Heiskanen on the same blueline.

Edmonton

Risers – Tyson Barrie, Darnell Nurse, Kailer Yamamoto and Jesse Puljujarvi should be the beneficiaries of this Oilers team’s offence over the next few seasons (and in Nurse's case the injury to Oscar Klefbom). Barrie's situation is only for one season, so the rise could be short-lived. Yamamoto and Puljujarvi need to be fixtures in the top six to help this team improve.

Fallers – James Neal, Zack Kassian, Alex Chiasson and one or both of Mikko Koskinen or Mike Smith, will have a younger, better player replace them in the next one or two seasons (you would hope if you're an Edmonton fan).

Los Angeles

Risers – Alex Iafallo, Adrian Kempe and Cal Petersen are players that will be given opportunities to sink or swim in the next season or two as the Kings wait for their embarrassment of prospect riches to get ready for the NHL. The ceiling is not as high on these three risers as some of the other players we have listed, but the chance is there for all three to improve significantly.

Fallers – Dustin Brown, Drew Doughty and Jonathan Quick are all on my list that have seen better days in the NHL. There is hope that if Doughty can hold on for a few more seasons close to where he is that he could be surrounded by better players and see an improvement in his numbers. Anze Kopitar might be on the minds of a few others, but I'm not prepared to put him in this category yet, although, at 33-years old, he could quickly fall into it.

Minnesota

Risers – Kevin Fiala and Joel Eriksson-Ek are two Wild players that have their best seasons ahead of them and neither player should be hurt by the addition of Kirill Kaprizov on the roster. Fiala has the highest ceiling of the two and should be a point per game player at some point.

Fallers – Zach Parise, Marcus Johansson, Mats Zuccarello, Ryan Suter, Cam Talbot and Alex Stalock are all players that I can't see having seasons even close to their career highs and the Wild would be wise to start replacing them sooner than later. I did have Matt Dumba listed here temporarily but he is only 26 years old and was coming off a fairly significant injury before last season, so I will give him the benefit of the doubt last year.

Nashville

Risers – Juuse Saros and Luke Kunin are the only Predators on my riser list and both are here more for the opportunity they will be given than my actual faith in them rising to the occasion.

Fallers – Ryan Johansen, Matt Duchene and Pekka Rinne are all on the downside of their best years and with Johansen and Duchene it's not to say they aren't capable or won't put up decent numbers, it's just that they are unlikely to. When a player (Johansen) scores 14 or 15 goals five seasons in a row, are they likely to score 14 or 15 in year six? Or do they have another 30 goal season in them? I will wager on the 14 or 15. Duchene has always been a 50-point player trapped in the body of a player that should post 70-80 points but only does every six seasons and the odds are not great he will in the next six seasons.

San Jose

Risers – Looking at the Sharks roster, the only player that I see that has a chance at having a career year is Ryan Donato and that is a modest 25 points. That's not to say the roster is rife with fallers, but it is trending in the wrong direction.

Fallers – Erik Karlsson, Brent Burns, Devan Dubnyk, Martin Jones and Patrick Marleau have all struggled the past season, with the most alarming being Karlsson and Burns who should be the centrepieces of this team. The club brought in Dubnyk but there is no guarantee he will get his game back to even be an improvement on Jones. Marleau was brought back to finish his career in San Jose.

St. Louis

Risers – Zach Sanford and Robert Thomas have seen their stock rise in the past few months or year and should be able to have their best seasons in the league in the next year or two. I was expecting Vince Dunn to be on this list and perhaps the departure of Alex Pietrangelo will let him play more than 16 minutes per night, but until then temper your expectations.

Fallers – Tyler Bozak and Justin Faulk are the only Blues that I would include on this list as the other veterans continue to produce and Torey Krug should be ok with the Blues for 45-55 points.

Vancouver

Risers – Thatcher Demko, Jake Virtanen and Elias Pettersson should all see more productive seasons moving forward with the most contested take being Virtanen's inclusion here. Love him or hate him, he has increased his production in each of the past three seasons and has improved his play (not as much as most would like to see). Other considerations were J.T. Miller, (but I think he had his career year last season), Brock Boeser and Quinn Hughes. With Boeser, I do have concerns about his abilities to get back to being a sure-fire 30-35 goal scorer in the league and Hughes, much like Makar will have trouble rising much more. It's like Hughes and Makar entered the league at peak ability. Let's just hope they can each maintain it for 10 more seasons.

Fallers – Tanner Pearson, Alexander Edler, Tyler Myers and Braden Holtby are on my list in Vancouver as fallers that are fantasy relevant. I don't see Pearson duplicating his 20 goals from last year as he was fortunate notwithstanding his low PDO of 97.8 (you will have to believe me on this one). There is no reason to think that Holtby will turn his game around with a team that gives up a lot of quality chances in Vancouver.

Vegas

Risers – Cody Glass and Alex Tuch are two Golden Knights that I believe will have better years ahead of them and that is even with a 20 goal and 52 point season that Tuch has already had. Even if Tuch doesn't get back to 50 points he still should be a very effective player moving forward for Vegas.

Fallers – Marc-Andre Fleury and eventually William Karlsson. The playoff performance and subsequent re-signing of Robin Lehner metaphorically put a fork in the relationship between Vegas and Fleury and I still expect Fleury to be moved at some point. When Cody Glass is ready, he will need to play in the top six and William Karlsson is the top center ahead of Glass at this point, so when it happens, Karlsson will lose some minutes on the power play. I do worry about the deployment of Alex Pietrangelo and Shea Theodore, otherwise, Theodore is a slam dunk as a riser.

Winnipeg

Risers – Jack Roslovic, Josh Morrissey and Nikolaj Ehlers are three Jets that I consider risers in terms of what points they can put up in the next few seasons. I think Roslovic will be limited in his top six opportunities but should grow into a consistent 35-45 point player while Morrissey eats up more power-play time and continues to play 23 to 24 minutes per game. Ehlers has two 60-point seasons to his credit but posted 58 points last year in 71 games which is a 67-point pace. He certainly can be a point per game player in Winnipeg if he can get more power-play time.

Fallers – Blake Wheeler and Paul Stastny are both 34 years old and are sliding slightly down the hill. I have to give Wheeler credit last season as he had an awful start with only 12 points in his first 21 games and I wanted to write him off, but he rebounded and had 53 points in his last 50 games. Stastny is still a very useful player that will help the Jets quite a bit but he probably won't see 40 points again.

Thanks for reading and if you have any questions or players you'd like me to look at please message or follow me on Twitter @gampbler15.