On Saturday, Team USA announced its roster for the World Juniors. Do you think this roster can knock off the host Canada? Looks like a solid group of forwards, especially on right wing.

One notable omission is Leafs top prospect Nick Robertson, who will be staying in Toronto to attend Leafs camp. Dave Hall discussed Robertson and many more prospects that appear on Dobber's Top 300 Keeper League Skaters in this weekend's edition of The Journey. On a side note, since this news was announced, bidding has gone from zero to crazy on Robertson in my auction league.

Sweden also announced its team.

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Within the next few days, I will be publishing the Top 100 Roto Rankings for December. In the meantime, please leave any feedback that you have on the November rankings. I don't imagine there will be too many changes, so I'll consider any ideas. I'd like for fantasy owners to be confident in these rankings, so it would be great to draw on the collective knowledge that we have in the Dobber community.

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Here are the top 10 Frozen Tools searches from the past week:

As I have in previous weeks, I'll dive into a few of these players and why they might be of interest.

Filip Hronek

You might know Hronek as the defenseman with the highest offensive upside in the Detroit system, or simply as having the worst plus-minus (a frigid minus-38) among defensemen in 2019-20. Yes, that's why you don't like plus-minus. A good defenseman gets stuck on a bad team and it bleeds value from your fantasy team. I'm not here to go on about that today, though. Except to say that although Hronek's plus/minus has nowhere to go but up, you should probably knock him down a notch if your league counts plus/minus.

What you do need to know is that Hronek led the Red Wings in overall icetime (nearly 24 minutes), as well as points and power-play time among defensemen. He only recorded ten power-play points in all of 2019-20, so you might be thinking about picking him later rather than earlier. However, keep in mind that only two Wings (Dylan Larkin and Tyler Bertuzzi) recorded more power-play points. With no major threats to his power-play role in the immediate future, there's lots of room for Hronek to grow as the Red Wings get better.

Erik Gustafsson

Fantasy Impact: Flyers Sign Gustafsson

Gustafsson is a low floor/high ceiling player whose value could be all over the map. Look at how much different his 2019-20 production was compared to his 2018-19 production.

Because he's not a high-volume shooter, Gustafsson will never be valued in roto leagues the same way someone like Brent Burns or Dougie Hamilton will. His inclination is offense, so there's going to be interest in fantasy leagues. It appears that the Flyers have brought him in on a one-year, "prove it" deal because they're not getting the production they'd hoped from Shayne Gostisbehere. With Ghost still on the books for three more years, he probably shouldn't be ruled out completely. Note that his power-play time didn't decrease by much, yet his power-play points were cut in half. To a lesser degree, so did his overall icetime and his points per game. So it's hard to know what to really make of him in 2020-21. Does he quarterback Philly's first-unit power play, or does Ivan Provorov?

Since Gustafsson and Ghost are similar players, it's possible that this evolves into an offensive specialist platoon situation. If one scores and the other doesn't, then the one who isn't scoring might be spending time in the press box. They're not in the lineup for their defensive skills, so it's scoring or bust. I'd lean toward Gustafsson in this case, since Ghost's numbers have declined the past two seasons and the Flyers will want to give their new defenseman a try. Just understand the risk, and try not to reach for Gustafsson.

Nathan MacKinnon

A while back (as in two weeks ago), I asked Twitter the question about which player should be drafted first overall in points-only leagues. The runaway winner of this poll was Connor McDavid, which I won't argue with. However, I had a few mentions that the league was roto, the top pick should be MacKinnon.

I've been putting this off for a bit, so there's no time like the present to do this. Let's compare the two using standard roto categories:

2019-20 season

Last three seasons

The scoring was better for McDavid last season (pay more attention to the points per game), and it should be projected to be that way this season. The same goes for the power-play points last season, so already he has built a strong case. Yet MacKinnon took about 100 more shots last season and has taken nearly 250 more than McDavid over the past three seasons. In addition, MacKinnon appears to be a little bit better in both plus-minus and hits. So it's not that simple, right?

MacKinnon's dominance in the shots category seems to be offset by McDavid's dominance in the assists category, which works out to about 30 more than MacKinnon over the past three seasons. Do you sacrifice a little bit in overall points and power-play points to be slightly better in 2-3 other categories? The points are harder to find on the waiver wire than hits (pick a physical player) or even plus/minus (pick a player on a good team), which is why I'm going to recommend McDavid first overall. Currently it is Leon Draisaitl, who I would now place behind both McDavid and MacKinnon. Expect an update for the December Top 100 Roto Rankings.

This is one where I might rather have the second overall pick than the first overall pick. Assuming one of these two is picked at first overall, I'm picking the other one with the second pick. That takes the pressure off me. Then in a snake draft, I'm one pick ahead of that owner in the second round. Call that backing into a championship if you will, but whatever it takes to win.

Top 100 Roto Rankings – November 2020

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For more fantasy hockey discussion, or to reach out to me, you can follow me on Twitter @Ian_Gooding