Every Sunday, we 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, Alexander MacLean, and Dobber

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1. Bits from my Top 50 Calder Trophy Picks article in the Fantasy Guide:

– Player I haven’t seen on many lists but is high up on mine: Jeremy Swayman (4^th)

– Biggest surprise (high): Alex Barre-Boulet (7^th)

– Most interesting entry: Alex Nedeljkovic (8^th) is there even though he finished third in voting last season. That’s right, he’s still rookie-eligible!

– The caveats: Owen Power (10^th), Matty Beniers (26^th) and Kent Johnson (30^th) each get removed from the list if they commit to Michigan – but each move up the list higher if they turn pro. (Note: This week, Power confirmed that he's headed back to school)

– Biggest surprise (low): Nicolas Robertson (39^th) – Toronto lineup too deep for him to make the team, let alone make an impact.

– The ‘who the hell is that’ entry: Logan Thompson (49^th) – Vegas goaltender had a huge season last year and Robin Lehner gets hurt often. I don’t think much of Laurent Brossoit. (aug16)

2. I’ll be perfectly honest: I am having a tough time finding much interesting about the Ducks this season. Trevor Zegras? Sure, although I don’t think he’s going to blow the doors off this season because the pieces around him aren’t there, at least not yet. And we know about how important having the right linemates is. The Ducks had the league’s lowest-scoring offense (2.21 GF/GP) in 2020-21, and they’re not making any massive upgrades for the coming season. I might be tempted to let someone else reach for Zegras and Jamie Drysdale in single-season leagues. Keeper leagues, different story, of course. (aug20)

3. Patrik Laine is on my Do Not Draft (high) list. Yahoo Fantasy just opened for business (more on that in a future Ramblings), and they have him ranked at #151. Remember when we were talking about him possibly being as valuable as Auston Matthews? His value has sunk like a stone, and I’m not sure it bounces back in a huge way in Columbus. Nothing against Jack Roslovic, who is a solid player in his own right, but he’s currently the first-line center on that team. That might be good for Roslovic’s value, though. (aug21)

4. King Henrik is calling it a career. Henrik Lundqvist finishes off with a 459-310-96 record, a 2.43 GAA, .918 SV% and 64 SO in 15 seasons, all with the Rangers. Remember that he signed with the Capitals during the past offseason but could not play due to a heart condition, so it’s a shame if this medical issue has cost him his career.

Lundqvist came in at #2 in our Top 10 Goalies of Decade article. Pekka Rinne, who also retired earlier this offseason, was the only goalie that finished ahead of him. I can remember adding Lundqvist off waivers during his rookie year, which was the season right after the lockout. At that time, I had no idea he would have the kind of career that he did.

If you’ve rostered him through the years, you’ll probably know that he consistently earned wins, as he had nine 30+ win seasons. Speaking of which, he was the fastest goalie to record 400 wins in NHL history. Dunk on wins all you want, but he earned a ton of them because he played a ton of games: three seasons of 70+ games, and five more seasons of 60+ games. He was a workhorse of a goalie.

The Rangers will be retiring Lundqvist’s #30 sometime this season. A few years from now, you might also see him in a Hockey Hall of Fame induction. (aug21)

5. Someone decided to pre-emptively drop Dylan Strome in my keeper league, which had more to do with paying top dollar for his value in an auction two years ago than anything. Strome is only 24, yet his production has fallen for two consecutive seasons (0.73 PTS/GP to 0.66 PTS/GP to 0.43 PTS/GP in 2020-21). Does that mean he will fade into oblivion? There are a few reasons that he might not.

For starters, Strome has played just over 200 games, and as a bigger forward (6-3, 200 lbs.) he may need more development time. Also consider that brother Ryan Strome didn’t start to break out until he was 26, which was two years ago. As well, Strome’s advanced stats (6.6 5-on-5 SH%, 1.6 PTS/60, 966 PDO) suggest potential for a modest bounceback. Strome could stand to improve in assists in particular, as only two of his eight assists in 2020-21 were secondary assists. He isn’t necessarily someone I will target in this league, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a bit of improvement. (aug20)

6. An annual offseason tradition, Dobber’s Offseason Fantasy Grades have already begun. You can check out the first one here: Anaheim (written by Alex) and get to the others tha have been published thus far by scrolling down at the bottom of the page for links. (aug20)

7. The Flames signed a pair of defensemen on Friday. Nikita Zadorov agreed to a one-year extension worth $3.75 million, while Juuso Valimaki agreed to a two-year extension worth $1.55 million per season.  I have an Offseason Fantasy Hockey Grades report for Calgary coming within the next several days, where I mention that both of these d-men could pick up increased minutes as a result of Mark Giordano leaving. Since Valimaki is on my keeper team, I’m hoping his increase is at least partially in the form of power-play minutes. I would guess second-unit minutes at best, though. (aug21)

8. How bad does Joel Farabee run? The guy finishes top-5 in goal rate in the league this year at 5-on-5, tied for 7^th overall with names like Marchand and Kaprizov, and how does the team reward him? They trade for Cam Atkinson. Ouch.

Not that it’ll kill his value or anything. Jakub Voracek is gone and JvR kind of seemed to fall out of favour. That leaves the team with a top-4 winger mix of Giroux, Atkinson, Konecny, and Farabee. Throw Hayes and Couturier as the centers and we’ve got something.

So what’s Farabee’s upside?

He had a high shooting percentage at 16.4 percent, but what’s interesting is how he got there. He actually shot higher at 5-on-5 (17.6 percent) than he did on the power play (16.7 percent). That 5-on-5 percentage will surely decline, but what if the power play number rises? He still may lose some goals on a per-minute rate, but I don’t think a huge crash is imminent.

Farabee’s shot rate at 5-on-5 – as a rookie – tied Dylan Larkin and was higher than Jordan Eberle and Mikko Rantanen. He was inside the 80^th percentile in the league, and he did that as a rookie. What is he going to do as a follow-up? If his shot rate climbs, we are less concerned with his shooting percentage declining.

As long as he doesn’t fall off, and I have no real concerns about that, he has 30 goals in his sights this year. He can bring close to a hit per game and a pile of shots. This is a guy who is going to be relatively cheap in drafts for probably the last time in his career this September. (aug19)

9. While I’m thinking of players that could come cheap in drafts, where does everyone sit with Nico Hischier? He has to be one of the more interesting players in the NHL, right?

Hischier was the first overall pick in 2017 but hasn’t cracked 50 points since his rookie year. He has largely been saddled on bad New Jersey teams, as his rookie year was the Taylor Hall MVP campaign. It has been all bad since, including his injury-riddled 2021 campaign.

The Swiss center is supposedly healthy and ready to go for this year. So what should our expectations be?

If I had to guess, I think we’re going to see a New Jersey team run their top-9 heavily, which could mean both Hughes and Hischier cracking 19 minutes a night. This is likely to be a situation like Tampa Bay or Toronto, where one line (Hischier’s) will take defensive duties and the other won’t. All the same, if Hischier is playing 19 minutes a night with Tomas Tatar on his wing, he could have a good year. It might come down to PP usage, but any forward skating 19 minutes a night is an immediate threat for 50 points and beyond.

There may not be a lot for peripherals here, and he’s certainly not much of a play in cap leagues. But I do think in non-cap formats, Hischier could be a depth center at the end of drafts that has 70-point upside. I don’t say that because I think he’s elite offensively, I say that because any forward skating that much each night has that upside. What do you guys think? (aug19)

10. Ty Dellandrea is an interesting player this year. Ostensibly, he could be a center for them, and he did play there a bit for them last year. That could be a big boost for the team because there isn’t always the confidence in Pavelski playing center, Benn/Seguin switch off sometimes, and Hintz has his injury issues. If Dellandrea forces himself onto the roster out of camp, he could be in a dual role, as I have him above; Hintz taking faceoffs on one side, Dellandrea on the other.

He had a decent rookie season. An above-average shot rate, about 1.8 hits per game, and paced out for 10 goals in a full year, all despite playing 12:30 a night, is just fine. If it had been a full year and he scores 10 goals, has 100 shots, and posts 150 hits, we probably are a lot more excited about him right now. The small sample could work in the favour of the smart drafter.

He comes in handy in cap leagues, of course. He is still on his ELC, and could provide a good amount of hits and faceoffs this year for cheap. Then again, bringing in Luke Glendening doesn’t help here, as he might be the Swiss Army Knife that Dellandrea was supposed to be. I guess we’ll see how training camp goes. I am bullish on his fantasy value and think if he makes the team, it’ll be with meaningful minutes. (aug19)

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11. Oliver Bjorkstrand and Jack Roslovic – The pair on Blue Jackets have flown under the radar for a while, and Dobber is reasonable with his projections in the Guide. However, I think they have another gear above what they are projected for, and out from under John Tortorella, their ice time should start to see a bit more of an offensive slant. The power play should also prominently feature both players, which would be a boon to their overall numbers, as they only had a combined 16 power play points last season, and the unit only clicked at a 15% success rate. I’m taking the over on both for the 69.5-point threshold. (aug18)

12. Andre Burakovsky – Not one of the biggest names in Colorado, but perhaps the top option in the second tier, Burakovsky has paced for about 65 points in each of the last two seasons. At six-foot-three and 200 pounds, he’s a little shy of being considered with the big players for the 400-game breakout threshold, however, he did only pass that 400-game threshold in the second quarter of last season, and in the second half he caught fire, and was playing at a 77-point pace. His shooting percentage has been elevated over the last two years, with both marks coming in over 18%. That is very high, but he has always converted at a solid clip, putting up a career 13% mark with the Capitals, and being put in a better position to succeed with Colorado. Even if the shooting percentage does drop, it should be countered by the fact that he was actually unlucky overall on the ice last season. His goal numbers may dip a touch, but overall, I expect the point totals to jump. (aug18)

13. Marco Rossi – Take a moment to think of a fantasy relevant center playing in Minnesota over the last number of years. There are a couple, but it gets scarce after Eric Staal, Joel Eriksson Ek, and maybe Mikko Koivu. The 19-year-old Rossi not only has the potential to be better than all of them, but he has the potential to do it right away. He battled with Covid symptoms last year, and that was all that kept him from pushing for the top line gig then, because he was one of the most NHL ready players to be drafted in 2020. With another year of growth, and a full offseason of training under his belt, expect his skill to be on full display in training camp. He is my early pick for the Calder Trophy. (aug18)

14. Thatcher Demko – In a vacuum, Demko would be an excellent player to have as the second goalie on your fantasy team, and a reasonable option for your number-one guy. However, there are a lot of outside factors that bring down his value. Vancouver’s defense is one of the worst in the league at suppressing quality shots against, and despite a few new names, that is unlikely to change. The team also brought in goalie Jaroslav Halak to be the backup behind Demko, and that is a big upgrade on Braden Holtby. With Halak available to vulture more starts, and the team again doing their best imitation of an old sieve, Demko isn’t someone that presents a lot of upside this season. His saving grace though is that his floor is relatively sturdy, having only put up a really bad start in eight percent of his appearances last season. (aug18)

15. What will Vancouver's top-6 look like? They had key injuries last year, as well as that serious COVID problem, and that left J.T. Miller at center full time. He was already taking a lot of faceoffs with EP on the ice, but this is something different. Miller centering his own line was a real thing, and it worked out fairly well.

So do they leave Miller on a line with Pettersson, or do they move one of them to their own line and run Horvat-Pettersson-Miller as three centers.

My own feeling is leaving Miller/EP together. They are great together, Miller is great at faceoffs, and Dickinson seems like he’d make a good, defensive 3C if they want to try it out. That would leave the top-6 looking something like this:

Pearson-Horvat-Garland
Miller-Pettersson-Boeser

That seems like a very talented top two lines and both should be able to score a pile of goals. A lot changes if Miller gets moved to 3C though. They might even want to do that given the influx of wingers including Garland and possibly Podkolzin. What do you think? How does this play out? (aug17)

16. The Nashville Predators signed Juuse Saros to a four-year extension worth $5M a season. After signing David Rittich for a year, the team now has their goaltending duo signed for the 2021-22 campaign. With Rittich coming around, I wonder if this doesn’t mean a lot more starts for Saros. The only reason Rittich got as much run as he did in Calgary is because their goaltending situation was a disaster for most of the time between Miikka Kiprusoff and Jacob Markstrom. My guess is that if Rittich ends up with 30-40 starts in Nashville, Saros either got hurt or wildly underperformed. If Rittich gets 30-40 starts, Saros probably has little value.

The bigger question, I think, is what the quality of the team in front of Saros is going to be. This was a team in the bottom-10 by scoring last season and they didn’t add a single roster player. The closest is Cody Glass, who hasn’t looked like an NHLer to this point of his development. Ryan Ellis is gone and there may not be much for prospects to replace anyone in the lineup aside from Philip Tomasino. This was the definition of an average team last season that needed a god-tier run from Saros to do well. Does Ellis out and Tomasino/Myers/Glass in really help them enough to make up significant ground in 2021? Doesn’t seem like it.

I am still bullish on Saros as a goalie but it is a position that is reliant on the quality of the rest of the entire team. Nashville seems heading towards some soft rebuild and that puts Saros’s value in question, as it has been even before Pekka Rinne retired. He is a good goalie but this isn’t a great team. (aug17)

17. Prior to this past week, I went through the rosters that I put together in the 2021 Fantasy Guide and found a few general observations with each team that I shared in my weekly Ramblings – I only got to Pittsburgh at the time. Below are a few of the rest I posted in my past week's Ramblings.

San Jose: I came away from putting this roster together by being very impressed with what I saw from Alexander Barabanov. I think he starts the season on the second line (no power-play time, initially) and it’s his job to lose. Not the greatest upside but a decent dark horse if acquired via the waiver wire. (aug16)

18. Vegas: For the first time, the Golden Knights have a very deep roster. I feel like both Peyton Krebs and Jack Dugan are NHL-ready, but now I fear they are still a year away. Both will see at least a dozen games, but will be hard-pressed to get called up for even a half-season. Especially with Alex Tuch returning in the second half. It’s the center situation that was the struggle: Chandler Stephenson, William Karlsson, Nolan Patrick, Nicolas Roy, Peyton Krebs and Brett Howden. I moved Howden to the wing and Krebs to the minors. That still places Roy as a fourth-line center, which doesn’t seem right. Another thought is to have Keegan Kolesar center the fourth line, bring Evgenii Dadonov to the fourth-line wing and use Roy as a third-line winger to play with Patrick and Mattias Janmark. (aug16)

19. Remember Viktor Stalberg? That’s a name I’ve not heard in years but it cropped up on my feed when he announced his retirement. A big player with speed and upside, he topped out at 22 goals and 43 points at the age of 25 and looked like he would only improve from there. But nope, wound up in Nashville and couldn’t stick in the lineup, eventually petering out of the NHL altogether. (aug16)

20. I had removed Seth Jones from the Top 100 Roto Rankings just before the trade to Chicago. For a 26-year-old defenseman, his scoring numbers had been trending in the wrong direction. (Here is August’s Top 100, the latest Roto rankings)

2017-18: 0.73 PTS/GP
2018-19: 0.61 PTS/GP
2019-20: 0.54 PTS/GP
2020-21: 0.50 PTS/GP

[Fantasy Take: Seth Jones, Adam Boqvist Traded in Blockbuster Deal]

Now that he has been acquired by a higher-scoring team with a more effective power play, I have to rethink that decision. If you follow the money that the Blackhawks paid to Jones after acquiring him, he will be the guy. And since franchise icon Duncan Keith was moved out prior to Jones moving in, there will be no doubt who will run the first-unit power play. Jones was a 25+ minute defenseman over his last three seasons in Columbus, which I don’t think will change in Chicago now that they have what they view as a true #1 defenseman.

Prorated over a full 82-game season, Jones would have averaged about 12 power-play points over each of his last two seasons. That’s a number that stands to improve in Chicago, where Patrick Kane and Alex DeBrincat should each easily reach over 25+ power-play points themselves. That should drive a reversal on the scoring decline, perhaps even up to 50 points.

Jones is also valuable in multicategory leagues because of decent contributions in shots, hits, and blocked shots (depending on the league). He should be able to accumulate these stats based on minutes. Overall, Jones should be universally owned in 12-team leagues as a D2 or a D3. There’s enough potential for him to be back in the top 100. (aug15)

21. Dallas’ signing of Braden Holtby was a curious one, particularly since it happened so quickly after the Canucks bought him out. [Fantasy Take: Backup Goalie Signings]

At the time, his acquisition signaled the following possibilities:

1. Ben Bishop still might not be ready to play
2. Jake Oettinger may start the season in the AHL
3. Anton Khudobin might be on the trade block

Mike Heika of the Dallas Stars’ website was taking questions last week. GoaliePost.com inquired about this four-man logjam. 

@GoaliePost: You don’t think they’d try to trade Khudobin now and go Oettinger and Holtby/Bishop next season? Oettinger looked fairly capable last season.

@MikeHeika: I don’t think that’s their plan. I think they made the decision to try a combination of Holtby/Khudobin feeling each veteran could push the other. I think they want to start that way and know that Oettinger is a great safety net. They will have to be open to change if needed.

Based on Heika’s answer, it seems as though 1 and 2 are probably truer. Obviously this is not good news for Oettinger owners, who no doubt look at a nearly 30-game sample of a 2.36 GAA and .911 SV% and believe that he is really ready.

Among 47 goalies who played at least 20 games, this is how Oettinger ranked in the following categories:

– 41.4 QS% (29 GP, 12 QS) – 39^th (Holtby ranked dead last with a 33.3 QS%)
– 13.8 RBS% – 23^rd
_  0.09 GSAA/60  – 22^nd

Oettinger has a strong goals-against average, but that is likely aided by the strong Dallas defense in front of him. If you consider the above goalie metrics, he is probably a league-average goalie at this point. He is probably NHL-ready at this point, but perhaps the Stars are reverting to their original long-term plan here. He is still only 22 (will be 23 during the season), and it’s possible that the Stars organization didn’t expect him to play in 2020-21.

Have a good week, folks – be safe!!

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