Last month we talked about two players that are of great interest this fantasy season in Josh Norris and Drake Batherson. At the time, the reasoning was that they could be part of a great line in Ottawa with Brady Tkachuk and their ADP could be depressed. At the time, though, we didn't have ADP data so it was a bit more conjecture than anything else.

We do have ADP data now, however, so we can be a bit more accurate here. We'll be using Yahoo's stuff, but beware of mock drafters and keeper league owners messing with that a bit. For now, it's just a gauge, not a concrete bit of information.

One thing that Yahoo! has is "percent drafted" or the rate at which a player is drafted in a league. While ADP can be wonky, we can see who is reaching for players that may not be rated inside the top-150 or whatever. So while Nico Hischier and Yanni Gourde have relatively the same Yahoo! ADP (159.4 vs. 159.8), Hischier is 6% drafted while Gourde is 24%, so Gourde is being selected much more often at that ADP than Hischier. Makes sense? Here are our two topics of conversation:

• Norris: 181.5 ADP, 21% drafted
• Batherson: 177.7 ADP, 38% drafted

If we want to make sense of these numbers, we have to compare them to others. Here are some centres that are going after pick 160 and are around 21% drafted or less: Nazem Kadri, Jordan Staal, Trevor Zegras, Joel Eriksson Ek. Those four guys have one 60-point season between them in the last decade. Zegras and Eriksson Ek haven't been around long, but you guys get the idea here. There are other centres around this ADP with much higher draft rates like Dylan Larkin and William Karlsson. Those aren't the ADP comparables for Norris. It is guys like Staal and Zegras. Those are the ADP comparables for Josh Norris.

In that sense, for Norris to be worth roughly his draft pick, he doesn't need much. A 40-point season with triple-digit hits is enough, and last year, his rookie year, he paced for 51 points and 105 hits. For him not to be worth his draft slotting, he should be maybe 20% worse than his rookie season. If we're predicting that for Norris, then the Senators are in a world of hurt as a team.

What, exactly, can Norris bring? Well, the 50-point mark should be a good barometer for him. He earned more ice time as the year went on, going from just under 16 minutes a night through March to 17:20 a night from April onward. I think we see a continuation of that trend up to about 18 minutes a night this year. Though Norris is just a second-year player, he's already 22 years old. From traditional aging curves, he's entering his prime. He handled heavier minutes down the stretch just well, and he should get more. He wasn't a fixture of the top PP unit until later in the year and he could get shutdown minutes playing with Tkachuk. That is all good news for his production.

As for his production, there weren't any huge red flags. He did shoot 16% at 5-on-5, which will decline. But if his shot rate climbs, he could easily offset the drop in shot conversion. Also, if he gets more PP time, that'll help float his shooting percentage as well. All that said, he's not really a goal scorer; his game is playmaking. He was about 25% above league average in primary shot assist rate, according to Corey Sznajder's data, second on the team (again, as a rookie). His zone entry percentage was also above average, and this led to above-average shot quality driving on offence both at even strength and on the power play:

We have a player who, as a rookie on a bad team, was above-average in shot assists and zone entries, and was above average both offensively and defensively in shot quality impact. Those are all very good signs for a player with a first-round pedigree, and dissolves the notion that his AHL production (over a point-per-game player) was a fluke.

I don't know if Norris becomes a huge goal scorer. The thing is, if he plays with Batherson/Tkachuk, they don't need him to be, and they might not even want him to be. They may want him to just play facilitator, so I'm nervous about goal totals. Anything more than 20 is probably gravy. With all that said, he can post 20 goals, 50 points, 100 hits, and 500 face-off wins, and there is a ton of upside beyond that if they're a line and they click.

Batherson is a different story. He has a pedigree of being a great goal scorer, including the shortened 2021 season. Though he was outscored by Norris in 2019-20 in the AHL, he outshot Norris on a per-game basis. In the 2021 campaign, Norris was about a full shot per 60 minutes lower than Batherson, so if we're to pick one of the two to break out for a 30-goal season, it's the Drake.

He doesn't have Norris's first-round pedigree but he does have a lot of production behind him. His first year in the AHL, as a 20-year-old, he was over a point per game with 62 in 59. He followed that up with 54 points in 44 AHL games in 2019-20. That's 116 points in 103 AHL contests over two seasons at 20/21 years old. He then had 17 goals and 34 points in 56 games in the NHL this year. His shooting percentage was high (15.3%) but not extreme. His on-ice shooting percentage at 5-on-5 (under 7%) and IPP (65.4%) were both reasonable-to-low, so there's a balance here. His shooting percentage may drop, but it's fair to assume everything else will improve, either slightly or greatly. Just a small progression there could add 4-5 points to his pace from last year.

Then there is Batherson's profile: he's a dual threat. Last year, his primary shot assist rate and personal shot rate put him in the same company as names like Alex Tuch and Pavel Buchnevich. As a rookie, those aren't bad names to be comparable to in terms of playmaking and shooting. It is only one shortened rookie season, but like Norris, it seems to be a continuation of the play he showed in the minor leagues. This could be confirmation bias in a way, but I do think they're just two good offensive players that are getting better and better with each passing month.

The ADP comparables for Batherson are, like Norris, advantageous for the smart drafter. When looking at RW-eligible players at an ADP of 160 or later and somewhere in the 20-50% drafted range, we get names like this: Jeff Carter, Blake Coleman, Alex Killorn, and Yanni Gourde. Some decisions will be made here because Coleman can score 20 goals and put up 200 shots/hits, Killorn is PP1 for Tampa Bay, and Gourde could be the 1C in Seattle. These aren't as clear-cut as Norris, but Batherson has a real chance at 30 goals, 200 shots, and 150 hits. That is unlike everyone on that list, except for Coleman, who won't get Batherson's likely PP role. That is the difference here.

Finally, the reason for all this: this trio could be a line together this year. Over their final 10 games, Tkachuk-Norris-Batherson was by far their most-used combo. As a trio, for the season, they put up 2.8 expected goals per 60 minutes and a 53.1% expected goal share. This was on a team that finished the season at 47.9%. They were very good and though they didn't fill the net, they're still young guys growing into their roles. (We would be remiss not to mention that with the three of them on the ice, the team scored over a goal per 60 minutes more than the team average.)

When drafting fantasy leagues, stacking lines/teams is smart. Drafting a bunch of Tampa PP guys, or Vancouver's PP guys, or whatever the case may be, this can help put rosters over the top. Knowing which lines to stack is not easy, because the really good ones (Boston, Colorado) are all going to be high draft picks.

This is a case where significant draft capital won't be necessary. Tkachuk probably goes in round 2 and then no one else until at least the 13^th round. This is a chance to stack a line that is very much on the verge of a break out. I am excited.

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Have you picked up your copy of the 2021 Dobber Hockey Guide yet?

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Last week I talked about Oliver Wahlstrom potentially being the RW1 on the Island. I outlined why, but I didn't include Kyle Palmieri, because I figured they wouldn't have the room to sign him. Well, they did sign him, and they're nearly $4M over the cap. I figure that means we've seen the last of Johnny Boychuk.

It seems people are down on Palmieri, but this guy averaged 30 goals every 82 games for five years, had one down season driven by shooting percentage, and it seems he’s being written off. The concern here is not his talent, it's ice time. His TOI fell off the face of the Earth in New York and if that doesn't improve, well, there may not be much of a bounce back. But I believe in him, and I'll dig into him more as draft season wears on. All I see is him being drafted as often as Connor Brown and Josh Bailey so we need to recalibrate just how good he can be.