Every Sunday, we’ll share 21 Fantasy Rambles from our writers at DobberHockey. These thoughts are curated from the past week’s 'Daily Ramblings'.

Writers/Editors: Ian Gooding, Michael Clifford, Cam Robinson, and Dobber

1. How about a few, or many, bold predictions for the year? Most will be fantasy-related, some won’t be, but they’ll all be related to hockey and we’ll try to keep it positive. Let us begin:

Filip Zadina reaches 20 goals: While this will be his first full NHL season, I believe he’s more than ready for the challenge. He has 25 goals in his last 80 AHL games and looked every bit ready towards the end of his stint last season. Adequate linemates are the only real concern for me. (jan12)

2. Nick Suzuki falls just shy of a point-per-game: At the end of the season, I think people are going to be mad at themselves for letting Suzuki fall as long as he did in many drafts. He was on pace for nearly 50 points at the pause with nearly a hit per game. He is going to be leaned on heavily this year as the team is making a push for what it hopes is a deep Cup run. (jan12)

3. Joel Farabee leads the Flyers in goals: Even though he had just eight goals in 52 games last year, Farabee’s shot rate put him near the 75th percentile of the league and he had good transition numbers. A solid year for a rookie. Now, it seems like he’s got a top-6 role and should land with plenty of playmakers. The power play is the issue because he may not have a role but this wouldn’t be a bold prediction without some obstacles. I think we see a big year ahead. (jan12)

4. Kirill Kaprizov reaches 50 points: For all the hype around Kaprizov, I am stunned at his draft slotting. I have now done five drafts, from as shallow as eight teams and 160 players drafted to 12- and 14-team leagues with hundreds of players drafted. I have yet to see Kaprizov go anywhere near the top-100, and has often been around 150 or later. I am not one to often venture out on a limb, but his price is too low. (jan12)

5. Robert Thomas finishes second in St. Louis scoring: As with others, the concern is power-play minutes here, but Thomas finished fifth among Blues forwards in scoring last year and did so playing third-line minutes with middling players. Now, he gets the chance to add 3-4 minutes of ice time per game to his repertoire and also gets competent linemates to play with. What is he going to do now that he has a near-full tool belt? I am excited to find out. (jan12)

6. Morgan Rielly leads all defensemen in points: What concerns me about this is Toronto seems to be effectively splitting their two PP units, and we’d like to have Rielly eat all the top PP minutes if possible. Regardless, he’s going to play heavy minutes on a great offensive team in a weak defensive division, and he’s a great offensive player in his own right. I think we end up seeing him around or just over a point-per-game this year. (jan12)

7. MacKenzie Blackwood finishes as a top-10 fantasy goalie: With the news that Corey Crawford was retiring, Blackwood suddenly became a very important fantasy commodity again. They are in a very tough division but this team – when healthy – should be able to boast two decent scoring lines and have vastly improved the blue line. If only because he should get as many games as he can handle, Blackwood is of a lot of interest.

8. Our Dobber Panel for the 2021 season was released last Sunday. I wanted to share my thoughts on a few things.

I have Connor Hellebuyck as listed to disappoint because he’s being locked in as a top-3 goalie and that’s worrisome. He has the workload, yes, and he’s great, yes. He is also on a poor defensive team and will face McDavid/Draisaitl or Matthews/Tavares every third game. That doesn’t even get into the revamped Montreal offense or Vancouver’s terrifying power play.

Hellebuyck was the best goalie on the planet last year and had a GAA outside the top-10 and a save percentage tied for eighth. Anything less than superhuman gives us fairly pedestrian numbers. I will bet against a superhuman effort from any goalie, any season. (jan12)

9. It’s only one game out of 56, but I’ve already noticed the “maybe Ottawa won’t finish last in the North Division” takes on Twitter. Even though it’s far too early for that prediction, there’s lots of reason to be optimistic in Canada’s capital. Future number one center Tim Stutzle already has his first NHL goal and by placing him mostly with veterans Derek Stepan and Evgenii Dadonov, and not with two players you’ve never heard of unless you’re a Senators fan, coach D.J. Smith is already optimistic about the rookie’s ability to put up points. (jan16)

10. First-overall pick Alexis Lafreniere has also made his NHL debut. In his first games, Lafreniere finished with 13:21 of ice time, second-unit power-play minutes, and played on a line with Filip Chytil and Julien Gauthier. It’s only one game, but the deployment shows that the 19-year-old might need some time before he’s a must-start in all leagues. (jan15)

11. The best debut overall was the one that finished past the bedtime of many on the East Coast on Thursday. Kirill Kaprizov checked all the boxes for a successful debut, recording two assists in regulation before scoring this sensational overtime winner on the Kings.

If you’ve held onto Kaprizov for multiple years wondering if he’d ever make it over to North America, your patience was rewarded handsomely, and that performance should be a sign of things to come. Long one of the league’s most vanilla teams, the Wild appear to have landed a superstar that will finally make their team a must-watch. Rookies are difficult to project, but you need to run to your waiver wire right now if he is somehow still unowned in your league.

Once we add it all up, Kaprizov finished with a plus-3 in nearly 22 minutes of ice time, which led all Minnesota forwards. His linemates were an aging Zach Parise and Nick Bjugstad, but I wouldn’t worry about that a ton. Kaprizov appears capable of driving the play on his own. (jan15)

12. Rasmus Andersson was a guy we’ve talked about at Dobber – along with Noah Hanifin – as the potential PP1 replacement for Calgary. It looks like it will be Andersson, and he was incredibly cheap all through the draft season. Whether he’s ready for the role or not doesn’t matter – I will always draft a fifth or sixth defenseman who is due for a TOI increase and top PP minutes. If he falters, his replacement in Hanifin may already be on the waiver wire himself. (jan14)

13. I am not a Patrik Laine owner in my keeper leagues, but I am an owner in nearly every other league I drafted this year. I will be honest and say I’m not sure why I have so many shares of him because he wasn’t necessarily a big target of mine. It was just that I had him rated higher than where he was often going and I wasn’t going to pass up the value. Putting a lot of eggs in one early-round basket may be a mistake but I would rather bet on a young, proven, elite goal scorer than just about anyone else. (jan14)

14. Travis Konecny was a player that I had lined up to pick in multiple drafts, only to see someone else grab him within about five picks of me. I’m already shaking my head at the missed opportunity, as Konecny connected for a hat trick and an assist with a plus-3 on Friday. Don’t forget that Konecny was the Flyers’ leader in both goals and points last season. (jan16)

15. We got a two-goal game from Josh Anderson in his Montreal debut, no better way to start his stint. His center, Nick Suzuki, added a goal of his own in that game. Both players looked great and if they can be a legitimate scoring line behind one of the best even-strength lines in hockey, it changes the outlook for this entire franchise.

For his part, Alexander Romanov finished second in TOI among Montreal defensemen with nearly 23 minutes, adding an assist with three shots and four blocked shots along the way. He looked, legitimately, very good. His assist was a nice stretch pass to Tomas Tatar for a breakaway and he had several noticeable outlets. He, along with the second line, are what makes this team different from last year. (jan14)

16. Cam raised a good point in his Ramblings on Wednesday: with Nils Hoglander, er, landing on Bo Horvat’s line, it will probably be up to Elias Pettersson to take the top matchups from the opposition. Not for nothing, but Pettersson is pretty good defensively as well so I think he’s up to the task.

I do think this could be good for Pettersson. It is not as if he’s matching up with Patrice Bergeron or Anze Kopitar every night. He’s matching up with Connor McDavid, Sean Monahan, Mark Scheifele, and the like. All good-to-great offensive players, none being great defensive players. It could be a good thing for Pettersson if this leads to more minutes overall. (jan14)

17. On Josh Norris: I've been pumping up the 21-year-old all offseason.  Norris was terrific as an AHL rookie last season – recording 31 goals and 61 points in 57 games. That led to a first-team all-star nod.

Now it appears he may work his magic next to Brady Tkachuk – another player I like to take a big old step forward this season. Ottawa has long been a near-barren wasteland for fantasy. Those days are quickly closing. (jan13)

18. Last year, former OHL scoring champion, Kevin Labanc, signed a one-year, one-million-dollar deal in a ‘bet-on-myself-help-the-team’ type of deal. It did not work. Well, he’s now a first-line player in SJ and I think he’ll find a way back to being an interesting fantasy option.

The Sharks still don’t have him on the top power-play unit, so that will hold back a real pop. But he did play at a 56-point pace while seeing PP2 and L3 deployment in 2018-19, so we know he can juice up the stats even without three-plus minutes on the man-advantage. I like San Jose to rebound after a disastrous 2019-20 season. Labanc needs to be a big part of that. (jan13)

19. These were my last two (gamble) picks in my 15-team dynasty league, 34 players on each team – points-only, best 12 F, 4D, 2G count. I like how Jonatan Berggren is playing right now overseas. His gamble is his injury history, so we’ll see how that goes. My last pick was Brogan Rafferty. The good thing about grabbing a 25-year-old is that you find out right away if it didn’t work out. No sitting on him for five years and then dropping him. Naw, if he fails I can figure that out in one year. (jan11)

20. Remaining RFAs to sign: Jack Roslovic, Dmytro Timashov, Henrik Borgstrom and Aleksi Saarela. The deadline for an RFA to sign is February 11. It looks like Roslovic is awaiting a trade, and I can see Borgstrom staying overseas for this year. As for the other two – they are in a precarious position and I think they would be wise to get a deal done if they want to nail down an NHL career. (jan11)

21. Let’s review Marco Rossi. His seven-day quarantine after the WJC ended, but the Wild didn’t clear him to play. They announced that he is out indefinitely with an upper-body injury. So what happened? Did he get hurt in his last WJC game? Did his Austrian team have him playing while hurt? Since being drafted, he played in one game in Switzerland before getting COVID-19. Then he was pointless at the WJC, albeit with the worst lineup around him in the tournament.

I still had him ranked third for my dynasty points-only league after Alexis Lafreniere and Tim Stutzle – but I drafted seventh. I hoped, with all this news, that he would slip to me. But no, he still went fourth. So people aren’t adjusting their value of him based on the last couple of months. I did bump him down a little in my Fantasy Prospect Rankings, mainly because Stutzle was able to do so much with so little and Rossi was not. It was just a tiny tweak, as I generally don’t allow a short tournament make any significant adjustments to my thinking.

The Wild plan to give Rossi a six-game look and see if he earns a full-time spot. I still think he will. But this latest news has me dropping his odds from 65% down to 51%. I drafted him Saturday night in my Keep-12 league, using my third-round pick on him, so I certainly hope he plays as I could use the depth. (jan11)

Have a good week, folks – be safe!!

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