Sometimes when I need inspiration for these Ramblings, I go through our Frozen Tools to look for players that may be of interest to the readers. Generally, this is through our most-viewed tool which can help us identify who is a popular player at any given moment. However, I also dig into some other of our analytical tools as well to see if anyone just pops out at me.

Here are some guys that have been popular searches recently.

Christian Dvorak

I can probably guess why this guy is a popular Frozen Tool search. He has been rumoured recently as heading to Montreal in a trade, with a sprinkling of potentially Boston as well. Both of those teams lost a key centre in the offseason and didn't really replace him; Jake Evans and Erik Haula are not replacements for Phillip Danault and David Krejci. It is the offseason and whenever two important franchises have trade interest in a player, they show up in our Frozen Tool lists.

This is an interesting player at this moment in time. Dvorak is three years younger than Danault and his AAV is about $1M lower per year than his as well. He also is making less than Krejci would get on a short two-year deal, as well as being considerably younger. He has a reasonable contract (under $4.5M a year), is in his prime, and his contract expires before he turns 30. For any team that believes they're in their Cup window, this type of player makes sense.

But what can Dvorak do?

He is probably better offensively than we think. From Evolving Hockey, he was near a full standard deviation above average driving offence, which is pretty good considering how bad Arizona was:

Dvorak isn't necessarily a great playmaker, or at least he didn't have the chance to showcase those skills with the 'Yotes. He does like to carry the puck, though, and he's above-average by finishing ability. If he goes to, say, Boston, he doesn't need to carry a line with Taylor Hall and Craig Smith; they can do a lot of the lifting. He just has to get these guys to the offensive zone and find a passing lane with which to shoot. He can do that.

Just don't get too excited out of the gate. How high is his upside playing 15-16 minutes a night without top PP minutes on the Bruins? Probably the 50-point range. He also doesn't bring a ton of peripherals and if he's in Boston and not Montreal, will defer a lot of faceoffs to Patrice Bergeron. Just a thought.

Cal Petersen

Goalies are fickle so there isn't a huge need to go too deep here. But I talk about the Kings a lot and should probably talk about their goalie for once.

Among 56 goalies with at least 2500 minutes played at 5-on-5 the last three years, Petersen is top-5 by high-danger save percentage. That is a very good indicator of his skill, even if it's a small sample (50 starts). He was also top-10 by goals saved above expected, and that's a cumulative stat. That means the more minutes a goalie plays, the higher (or lower) his number can get. In this sample, Petersen has 3100 minutes of TOI; no other goalie in the top-12 has fewer than 4000 minutes played. He has been sterling.

Again, these are all small samples and the bulk of his games came in the shortened 2021 season where half the division was pretty bad. Of course, the will play every team in the league next year, but they're also still in a pretty bad Pacific Division. With some good fortune, they can be a playoff team in that division.

With Petersen the presumptive starter, a bad division, and an improved roster with only more high-end prospects coming, the future is bright for Petersen, who doesn't turn 27 until October. More seasons like the ones he's just had, and he'll be a top-12 goalie in fantasy. I will be a buyer this fall, presuming his ADP doesn't get out of control.

Jack Hughes

He is absolutely one of the most fascinating players in the fantasy game, and real world, this season. I say this because of this one tweet:

There's a star in Jack Hughes. I just know there is. Something is telling me there's something great there. pic.twitter.com/vo6J8BvpJN

— Byron Bader (@ByronMBader) April 21, 2021

Am I a sucker for a Paul Kariya comparison? You bet I am.

Jokes aside, some of Hughes's non-boxcar stats were phenomenal this past year: his offensive and defensive impacts were roughly one standard deviation above average or better, putting him in the 80^th percentile at both ends; he was above-average in high-danger passes as a 19-year-old on a non-playoff team; his primary shot assist and shot rates were both well above average, comparable to Kevin Fiala and Mikko Rantanen; his carry-in percentage on zone entries was 78 percent, just a shade behind Connor McDavid's and Brayden Point's 79 percent (Corey Sznajder Patreon here for all this data). He had just a tremendous season doing everything but racking up massive point totals.

I think the problem just boils down to his line mates. Not that they're terrible, but McDavid plays with Draisaitl, Rantanen plays with MacKinnon, and Point plays with Kucherov (Fiala… has to do a lot of heavy lifting for Minnesota). Those guys are all playing with other elite offensive players. If Hughes is playing with Andreas Johnsson? Or Jesper Bratt? Not quite the same.

Hughes certainly looks to be a superstar on the rise, but I don't think that the team around him is quite there yet. He will have a good season, I just don't think in eight months we're looking back at a 90-point season and wondering how we all missed it. He is capable of that, but he doesn't have the line mates to make it a reality just yet.

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A signing! Congrats to Logan Stanley

Winnipeg has signed Logan Stanley to a two year contract with an AAV of $900,000.

— Murat Ates (@WPGMurat) August 4, 2021

That is of interest to cap-league owners. The blue line has been bolstered so him getting a massive ice time increase is not certain. All the same, he landed 63 shots and 49 hits across 37 games playing just 13:13 a night. What could he do with even, like, 17 minutes a night? Just a player to keep an eye on when training camps open in six weeks.

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Have you grabbed your copy of the 2021 Dobber Prospects Report yet?

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Here at Dobber Hockey, we love our fourth-year breakouts. One of the guys that fits this bill – though he doesn't have quite enough games played – is Anaheim's Max Comtois. I talked about him briefly at the end of the season but a little bit more is required.

Want a few fun facts about Comtois's 2021 season? Of course you do:

• A higher points/60 rate at 5-on-5 than Patrick Kane
• Tied in goal rate at 5-on-5 with Nikolaj Ehlers
• Higher primary assist rate at 5-on-5 than John Tavares
• Higher expected goals rate at 5-on-5 than Anthony Beauvillier

Comtois probably needs to shoot more, but the Ducks were a low-event team as it was. It isn't entirely on him; even the team leader in shot rate (Rickard Rakell) shot less than guys like Kyle Palmieri and Denis Gurianov.

He is not a transition player that is charged with a lot of zone entries. This team didn't do much right offensively but they are still growing, and all this fails to mention that Comtois was in the 85^th percentile for hit rate as well.

I truly believe that 20 goals, 40 points, 150 shots, and 150 hits is in order for Comtois this year. He has upside beyond that, depending on Anaheim, but this isn't a guy to overlook just because of his line mates. He can do enough on his own to be worthwhile in fantasy.  

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I am not going to dive too deep into this at the moment because I think these two guys probably deserve a Ramblings all on their own. All that said, Drake Batherson and Josh Norris, amirite?

They are being brought up because that duo played a fair amount with Brady Tkachuk, particularly at the end of the season. The trio put up at 53 percent expected goal share on a bottom-10 team, a testament to how good they are as a line together. Norris finished the season with 16 points in 18 games, Batherson had a six-game goal streak at one point, and Tkachuk just keeps doing what he does. If these three are together as a line next year, how good can they be?

Maybe the better question is: how high are we drafting each of these players. I think most people are on board with Brady Tkachuk in the top-20 of non-points-only formats, but what about the other two? Batherson has 170 hits in 99 career NHL games while Norris had 72 hits in 56 games last year. Each of the players on this line are capable of, at minimum, 150 shots and 100 hits next year. How much more they have is up in the air, but it is exciting to think about how good they could be.