The last player that was scheduled to have an arbitration hearing agreed to a contract on Saturday. Travis Sanheim signed a two-year contract with an AAV of $4.675 million with the Flyers.

That contract makes Sanheim the fourth-highest paid defenseman on the Flyers, behind Ivan Provorov and newly acquired Ryan Ellis and Rasmus Ristolainen. Those should be the Flyers' top four defensemen for the coming season. Yet with the Flyers also adding Keith Yandle on a one-year deal, those additions should all but remove Sanheim from any power-play time (he averaged only 33 seconds per game in 2020-21 anyway). Sanheim's minus-22 was the second-worst on the Flyers last season, but expect that number to improve with all the offseason blueline additions.

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Yahoo Fantasy Hockey just opened for business a few days ago. So I decided to try my hand at a very early mock draft. No prep, no rankings, just straight out of my head while I was watching (part of) a movie at the same time.

Here is the team I drafted. This was a 12-team league with standard Yahoo settings. Numbers indicates round, then overall pick.

1-4 Nikita Kucherov (TB – RW)

2-21 John Carlson (Was – D)

3-28 Connor Hellebuyck (Wpg – G)

4-45 Johnny Gaudreau (Cgy – LW,RW)

5-52 Brock Boeser (Van – RW)

6-69 Anze Kopitar (LA – C)

7-76 Jack Campbell (Tor – G)

8-93 Darnell Nurse (Edm – D)

9-100 Filip Forsberg (Nsh – LW)

10-117 Joe Pavelski (Dal – C,RW)

11-124 Neal Pionk (Wpg – D)

12-141 Jonathan Marchessault (VGK – C,LW)

13-148 Vincent Trocheck (Car – C)

14-165 Filip Hronek (Det – D)

15-172 Tristan Jarry (Pit – G)

16-189 Travis Konecny (Phi – RW)

For full results, go to my personal blog Goods Fantasy Hockey.

I was able to choose where I picked between 1 and 12, aside from a few people that had arrived before me. I decided on pick #4, since my first tier of players is Connor McDavid (the best of that tier), along with Nathan MacKinnon, Nikita Kucherov, and Leon Draisaitl. So needless to say, I was glad that Kucherov was able to fall to me at the fourth pick. I certainly won't have the luxury of the ideal spot in any real live drafts, though.

Every year I say I'm not going to draft a goalie high. And then in at least one draft I get sucked in. I happened to pick Hellebuyck right around where I had drafted him in the Roto Rankings. One of these years I'll summon the courage to start drafting goalies after pick 100, and see how it plays out. If it means I have to pull for Mike Smith all year, then so be it. Goaltending is such a roll of the dice anyway. Goalie runs that start way too early could also get in the way of this plan, though. Remember it’s lack of supply and FOMO that drives goalie values relative to other positions.

A general comment about this draft: I felt like I could grab a goalie when I needed one. I felt like I could grab a forward when I needed one. But by about the middle rounds, I felt like I was playing catchup with defensemen and could never recover. Once a second- or third-tier defenseman was picked, they all seemed to fly off the board. Even the autopickers were grabbing them! The Yahoo algorithms must be getting smarter. That might be something to keep an eye on in your own draft… or at least the next mock draft.

Just before pick 100, I started to draft Top 100 Roto Rankings players that I thought had fallen. But does that mean they are candidates to be moved out of the top 100? Since these are initial rankings, perhaps Yahoo will revalue these players. Though I have to say there were no obvious glaring players that were ranked way too high (ie. no Martin Marincin).

Since I don't expect to be drafting for real for at least another month, I plan to take another crack at this shortly. Even if you've done many of these, it still helps so that you get into the right mindset. In the meantime, here are a few players that I initially believe are ranked too low, why they may be ranked where they are, and why I think that might be too low.

How do you think I fared? Let me know in the comments below.

Darnell Nurse

I wrote about Nurse back when he signed his eight-year extension with the Oilers. In that article, I mentioned that Nurse scored 16 goals, which was a career high. Over a full 82-game season, that would have prorated to 23 goals. That would have been quite an outlier for a defenseman whose career high over five prior seasons was 10 goals. I can understand fantasy owners being cynical that he can match that pace, which I'd have to agree with. Especially since he's never scored 10 power-play points in a season and will also likely start the season on the Oilers' second power-play unit.

Even if the scoring falls, Nurse provides strong peripherals. Yahoo now counts hits as a standard category, and he has reached the 100-Hit mark in each of his last six seasons. He also shoots a ton with at least 100 shots in five of his last six seasons, and he would have been on pace for over 200 last season. Whether you like it or not, plus/minus is also a standard category, and he reached a career-high plus-27 last season (only Leon Draisaitl had a higher total on the Oilers).

Neal Pionk

Perhaps another defenseman who is downgraded because he might be on the second power-play unit? Josh Morrissey was on the ice for 59.2% of the Jets' power-play time last season, while Pionk was on for only 43.5%. This was the power-play distribution, even though Pionk outscored Morrissey both on the power play (10 PPP to 9 PPP) and overall (32 PTS to 21 PTS).

Like Nurse, Pionk contributes well beyond the scoring categories. Pionk also regularly reaches 100 Hits, as he has in each of the last three seasons. He also takes his share of shots, reaching 100 shots in each of the past three seasons. Maybe I didn't need to draft both Nurse and Pionk, but I couldn't resist adding Pionk at pick number 124. Yet if Pionk is on the first-unit power play, he could be in for a monster season roto wise.

Jonathan Marchessault

This team would do quite all right in the shots category. Before the shortened 2020-21 season, Marchessault had reached 200 shots in his previous three seasons. In fact, over the past four seasons, only five players have taken more shots than Marchessault. That high volume of shots is what places Marchessault in the Top 100 Roto Rankings. So I'm quite happy picking him at number 141.

Marchessault is not an elite scorer, but he has consistently ranged between 0.7 and 0.8 PTS/GP for each of the last three seasons. As well, he delivers at least one hit per game, all a part of the in-your-face style of game he plays that helps Vegas push the play into the opponent's side of the ice.  

Vincent Trocheck

I think Trocheck was drafted this low in a lot of leagues last season after a trade to Carolina and what turned out to be a 38-point season (in 62 games). Fine, draft him after pick 150 then. Yet he just came off a season where he was on a 75-point pace (43 PTS in 47 GP). That should be a top 100 player, in my opinion. There's additional value beyond the scoring, as he has reached 100 hits in six consecutive seasons and double-digit power-play points in five of his last six seasons.

Trocheck detractors may note that he had he slowed down late in the season (no goals in his last 14 games, four assists in his last nine games). That might have been shooting percentage regression, as he had shot 18.1% before this slump when his career shooting percentage has been in the 9-10% range.

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