Yesterday in my Ramblings, for Bubble Keeper Week, I wrote about several pairs of forwards that have relatively the same ADP and draft rate on Yahoo. The purpose is that there aren't many uniform ways to rank players, and in a space where everyone has the same access to the same information. Yahoo ADP seems to be the easiest way to include the most people into the conversation.

Anyway, we continue our work today by going through defencemen and goalies. Again, these will all be players with an ADP of 130 or later and I'll group them by the rate at which they're drafted. We all on the same page? Good, great, grand, wonderful. NO YELLING ON THE BUS.

K'Andre Miller vs. Alexander Romanov

It was an uneven year for Miller, who started the season strong but seemed to wear down as the months wore on, past April or so. That isn't a red flag or anything; he was a rookie playing a team with playoff aspirations in a COVID-shortened campaign. That unevenness led to him being unable to drive the play in either direction, unlike the comparison here (from Evolving Hockey):

It isn't to say it was all bad. Miller was second on the Rangers blue line in zone exits with control, behind only Adam Fox. According to Corey Sznajder's data, that puts him in company with players like Ryan Ellis and Hampus Lindholm league-wide. Those aren't bad names to be compared to in transition offence as a rookie. Where he struggled a bit was giving up the blue line, and those kind of extended shifts in the zone are going to make defensive metrics very unflattering, and the offensive ones as well as a result. He is just a player still rounding into form: not elite at anything yet, but the building blocks are there. He just needs to put them all together. At the least, he should provide triple digits in both hits and blocks, and that's not nothing.

On the flipside, Romanov can bring even more peripherals. Despite 180 fewer minutes in total ice time in 2021, Romanov brough 198 hits+blocks while Miller brough 170. Percentage-wise, Romanov brought 16.5% more peripherals in 20% less ice time. So, even if Romanov doesn't get more ice time, if Miller doesn't either, Romanov probably beats him in the one area Miller is expected to have an advantage over most players. Both players should also get some secondary PP minutes, but Romanov's issue is there isn't a clear path to 21 minutes a night. He is stuck behind at least Chiarot and Edmundson to start the season, and that means maybe 17 minutes a night again. Even if he plays the right side, he's still stuck on the third pair. For that reason, even if Romanov out-peripherals Miller, Miller should out-point Romanov. If Romanov can't get more ice time, I don't think the extra 40 hits+blocks are worth maybe half the points Miller produces.

Verdict: Miller

Adam Boqvist vs. Josh Morrissey

This is a battle of one player on a new team, and one player welcoming in a bevy of competition.

Boqvist is now in Columbus, a centrepiece of the Seth Jones trade. He looked like a cornerstone piece for the Blackhawks, but they want Jones, now, to help with the current Cup window, not Boqvist in three years. In that sense, it's not about Boqvist or underperformance, but rather it speaks to how highly he's thought of in the league. There is reason for that, too, beyond his first-round pedigree. In his rookie season, in a limited sample, Boqvist was at the top of the league in shot assists, or passes that lead to teammate shots – literally in the 100^th percentile. His zone exits with control were near the 90^th percentile. Again, a limited sample, but a great start.

Looking at 2021, it was much of the same. Boqvist led Chicago defencemen in primary shot assists by a significant margin. Across, his PSA rate compared to Morgan Rielly and Charlie McAvoy. Those are… great offensive comparisons. By zone entries with control, he was among the league leaders percentage-wise. His 2021 campaign was a continuation of his small-sample 2020 campaign. Now we have two small-ish samples of great transition/playmaking numbers, on top of his first-round pedigree, on top of his great draft+1 year. It just really seems as if Boqvist is on the cusp of being a special defenceman, it's just a wonder if it all comes together with this Columbus core or not.

Morrissey averaged 41 points/82 games across 2018-20 but that fell off in 2021 to 31 points/82 games. What might not help here is that he got significant minutes at times through the year because of injuries and a thin blue line. That is probably going to change with the additions of Nate Schmidt (who provides PP1 competition) and Brenden Dillon. What is interesting to note about Morrissey is that after a couple seasons averaging under a hit per game, he was at 1.4 hits per game in 2021. That could be a huge advantage for him over Boqvist as the latter doesn't hit or block shots very much. If these players have similar point totals, Morrissey wins in a landslide because of this. If Morrissey only puts up 30 points, though, it becomes more of a conversation. The problem is I still don't think Columbus is going to be very good offensively, so Boqvist could be great individually and still not put up a ton of points. That makes me nervous for the next couple seasons.

Verdict: Morrissey

Alex Nedeljkovic vs. Carter Hart

This feels like a lot of recency bias. Alex Nedeljkovic was a finalist for the Calder Trophy after a wonderful rookie season, it's true. We would also be remiss not to mention that he's 25 years old, Carolina had goaltending problems for a long time, and it took five years of pro play to get a 23-start season in the NHL. It isn't as if this is Spencer Knight who's blown the doors off at every stop and has a path to being a starter on an elite team. Ned has had some bad AHL seasons, which is why he didn't become even a part-time starter until he was 25 years old. So, yes, there was a good little stretch here for him, but 23 games are nowhere near enough to say whether he'll be good or bad in the future.

Then there is the team he's going to. Sure, Detroit is absolutely on the rise. They still don't have a very good team, though, and the East is much deeper than the West. Even at the most charitable, Detroit won't be a top-10 team in the East this year, and that puts a lot of stress on a goalie. The Wings did get better as the season wore on and they might be able to score enough to get him some wins. But they gave up so many shots last season that Jonathan Bernier had a save percentage (.914) well above league average (.908) but his GAA was 2.99, compared to a league average of 2.74. That is what shot volume against does to a good goalie: makes him worse than average in fantasy. Again, Detroit will be better, but without significant improvements, Ned is staring down the barrel of below-average GAA and wins, even if he plays well.  

Carter Hart feels like he's being thrown to the wayside by fantasy players. Here is a guy who had two good seasons as a 20/21-year-old, spanning 74 games. He then has a bad 2021, admitting how hard the COVID impact hit him, that spans 27 games, and he can sometimes be had as a third goalie in 12-team leagues, often as a late second goalie. I get that his 2021 season was really bad, but this feels like an over-correction. He has had a normal offseason, will get a normal training camp, and Martin Jones is not a threat to take over the starter's gig. At worse it'll be some sort of time share, but I think even that is a stretch.  

Before his brutal 2021 campaign, Hart's two seasons saw him post a high-danger save percentage similar to that of both John Gibson and Andrei Vasilevskiy. The team is deep up front, added Ryan Ellis in the offseason, and has some young guys coming up. The Flyers have the makings of a good team, could be great, and Hart figures to be the starter for all of it. This is an easy one.

Verdict: Carter Hart

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Filip Chytil role:

GM Chris Drury talking to reporters today, says Chytil and Barron are viewed as centers coming into training camp.

— Colin Stephenson (@ColinSNewsday) September 9, 2021

That is both good and bad news for Chytil. The good news is that he'll get first crack at the 3C role, something that the Rangers need desperately for him to fill competently. The bad news is that excludes him from ever playing with guys like Zibanejad and Panarin at even strength, and that means not nearly as much upside as someone like Lafrenière. This probably has more impact in the real game than it does in the fantasy game.

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David Backes has retired:

We've signed David Backes to a one-day contract.

Now that @dbackes42 is a Blue again, he has some news to share. #stlblues 👇 https://t.co/9ptjo8uAsj

— St. Louis Blues (@StLouisBlues) September 9, 2021

This ends the career of a player who really helped cement my interest in fantasy. I had played it – or, more exactly, played hockey pools – my whole life but I got really interested in fantasy around 2010. At that time, Backes was an absolute multi-cat machine. He had a seven-year stretch from 2008-2015 that is quite unlike almost any other we've seen. Here are his 82-game paces in that span:

• 25 goals
• 31 assists
• 56 points
• +10
• 117 PIMs
• 14 PPPs
• 559 face-off wins
• 244 hits
• 64 blocks
• 197 shots

That kind of profile just doesn't exist anymore, mostly because penalty minutes have taken a dive over the years. The closest I can think of are Brady Tkachuk or Tom Wilson, and they'll never post anything close to his face-off wins. I know he accomplished a lot as a hockey player in the real world, but that's honestly what I'll always remember him for: he was a fantasy unicorn, and maintained that level for the better part of a decade.

Good luck to Backes and his family on their next chapter.