Although the Canucks themselves did not announce the Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes contracts, Elliotte Friedman informed us what they would look like.

Pettersson: 3x$7.35M. Hughes 6x$7.85M

— Elliotte Friedman (@FriedgeHNIC) October 1, 2021

Cap leaguers obviously won't have the benefit of having these two players on entry-level deals any longer. However, keeping the cap hit under $8 million for both players has to be considered a small victory. Having Hughes locked in for six years will help with cap certainty, but Pettersson could be looking at a $10+ million cap hit in three years if he builds on his previous point totals. Both cap and non-cap leaguers should at least no longer worry whether they will start the season on time.

Canucks fans were waiting to see if Travis Hamonic would opt out this season. Yet as it turned out, no one is opting out. The Canucks will still wait on Hamonic while he deals with a personal matter, which won't help the right side of their defense if he can't start the season on time. The Canucks will score a lot this season, but they're going to have some real issues on defense.

I'm told that no NHL players have exercised their right to opt out of the 2021-22 season over COVID concerns. The deadline for doing so is 11:59 p.m. ET tonight, but the expectation right now is that no players will do so.

— Chris Johnston (@reporterchris) October 1, 2021

Unfortunately, Brock Boeser is expected to be out for at least a week. This was announced by Travis Green after Friday's preseason game. We will have to wait and see whether this injury affects Boeser's availability to start the season.

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Keeping Karlsson Short Shifts is back for Season 3! Elan and Lewis discuss the latest training camp developments. Go here to listen, where you can also pick your favorite podcast provider.

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As of now, based on where their games are at, Jeremy Swayman would be my Game 1 starter over Linus Ullmark.

— Fluto Shinzawa (@FlutoShinzawa) October 1, 2021

I don't usually waver from the opinions of team beat writers, who are a lot more familiar with their respective teams than I am. But I will say this: Although it's entirely possible that Jeremy Swayman will start the first game of the season over Linus Ullmark, remember to follow the money.

Ullmark was signed for four seasons at $5 million per, while Swayman has two more seasons on his entry-level contract. It's a similar situation to Sergei Bobrovsky and Spencer Knight in Florida. In single-season leagues, the goalie to draft higher is still the one with the contract. Even if Swayman takes the reins early, I'm still confident that the Bruins won't leave a newly minted $5 million per season investment on the bench while throwing their younger goalie to the wolves so quickly.

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Could the addition of Dougie Hamilton really improve New Jersey's offense as a whole? It's only the preseason, but the Devils dropped seven goals on the Rangers on Friday nights. In his preseason debut, Hamilton recorded two assists while taking five shots on goal. Fun fact: No Devils player took more shots on goal than Hamilton last season (180), and it wasn't particularly close. Jack Hughes was the closest at 142. The move to New Jersey won't necessarily help Hamilton's fantasy value, but expect Hamilton to help the New Jersey offense considerably.

Fantasy Impact: Devils Win Dougie Hamilton Lottery

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If you had trouble figuring out what Seattle's first-unit power play was because it didn't show on Frozen Tools, I managed to catch part of their game on Friday against Edmonton. Late in the second period, I noted Mark Giordano and Jared McCann on the point, with Jaden Schwartz, Jordan Eberle, and Alex Wennberg up front. In OT it was the same power-play unit minus Wennberg. The Kraken appeared to dress many of their regulars for this game (including Vince Dunn, Calle Jarnkrok, and Marcus Johansson), so this could be close to what you see once the games matter. Of course, this isn't final, but we've had to guess who their best power-play options will be up to this point.

Brendan Perlini scored his fourth goal of the preseason in just his third game with the Oilers. The former first-round pick is on a one-year contract at the league minimum after spending last season in Switzerland. He's been taking advantage of playing on a line with (checks Frozen Tools…) Kyle Turris and Devin Shore? I didn't even know Turris and Shore were still with the Oilers! Let's wait and see if this amounts to any icetime for Perlini with you-know-who. Perlini is traditionally a streaky scorer, so it's probably best to take his recent scoring with a grain of salt.

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I've been using Yahoo for my mock drafts this preseason, so I decided to give Fantrax a go for my next mock draft. Dobber Hockey has been a partner of Fantrax, and many of you play in Fantrax leagues, so I thought it would be important to point out that mock drafts are also available over there. One benefit to drafting over at Fantrax: unlike Yahoo mock drafts, your team is stored, so you will be able to see how the team you drafted plays out over the season.

The Fantrax mock draft involved picking 5 F, 3 D, 2 G, and 6 BN. Categories are A (3 pts), G (4 pts), Hits (0.25 pts), SHG (2 pts), SOG (0.5 pts), PPP (1 pt), goalie A (3 pts), GA (-1 pt), SV (0.25), SHO (5 pts), W (5 pts)

Here are my picks:

Pos	Player	Round	Overall
F	Nathan MacKinnon – COL	1	3
F	Alex DeBrincat – CHI	2	22
F	Andrei Svechnikov – CAR	3	27
F	Matthew Tkachuk – CGY	4	46
F	J.T. Miller – VAN	5	51
D	Neal Pionk – WPG	6	70
D	Drew Doughty – LAK	7	75
D	Ivan Provorov – PHI	8	94
G	Jack Campbell – TOR	9	99
G	Ilya Sorokin (R) – NYI	10	118
G	Cal Petersen – LAK	11	123
F	Brayden Schenn – STL	12	142
F	Dominik Kubalik – CHI	13	147
D	Matt Dumba – MIN	14	166
F	Alexis Lafreniere – NYR	15	171
F	Evgeni Malkin – PIT	16	190

You can view overall draft results at my personal blog.

Just like in every other mock draft I've participated in, I assumed that Connor McDavid would go first overall (which he did). I would then pick whoever was left over at #3 assuming the team with #2 would pick either Leon Draisaitl or Nathan MacKinnon. They went with Draisaitl, so I drafted MacKinnon.

I drafted Brady Tkachuk in Round 2 yesterday, and he was available at that point again in this draft. However, I didn't think he was as much of a priority this time since MacKinnon should be among the league leaders in shots (one of Tkachuk's specialties). So I opted to pick pure scorer Alex DeBrincat over Andrei Svechnikov because of a higher ADP. Then I was able to grab Svechnikov in Round 3 like I'd hoped. I need to move DeBrincat up the Roto Rankings because I think he has a real shot of being a top 10 scorer by the end of the season.

When is the sweet spot to draft defensemen? Comparing my last two mock drafts, it would probably be somewhere between 50 to 100. I've grabbed at least three defensemen in that range in my last two mock drafts. I think this would be a good spot for you to grab at least two, if you play in a league with 3-4 defensemen. This recommendation doesn't mean you have to wait until then to draft a defenseman, but picks 50-100 seem to be when a critical mass of PP1 point producers fall off the board.

I used the Zero G goalie strategy again, like I did yesterday (more about it here), so I'll get to see how this plays out over a full season. My goal was to wait until at least pick 100 to choose a goalie, so I cheated a bit in drafting Jack Campbell at pick #99. I did that because I knew I had to wait until pick #118 for my next pick. At least I wasn't drafting Campbell in the fourth round. By getting him in the ninth round, there's a lower opportunity cost if he's a bust or if Petr Mrazek takes the goaltending reins in Toronto.

Campbell, Ilya Sorokin, and Cal Petersen seem to be a decent goaltending trio to begin the season, and I didn't have to use a high pick on any of them. Sorokin's ADP of 57 at Yahoo seems quite high, considering where his ADP is on Fantrax (141) and where I drafted him (118).

My last-round pick was between Evgeni Malkin and Anthony Beauvillier. I took a chance with Malkin because I could not see him not get drafted at all. Even though Malkin is expected to miss the first two months of the season, he could always return early. At least I'm hoping so in one of my keeper leagues.

The question here is would you rather draft Malkin, knowing he will miss about half the season but likely provide your team with a second-half boost; or Beauvillier, who should be available for the entire season but likely won't produce at a point-per-game level like Malkin could? It's not a question with an easy answer, as it depends on a lot of variables, such as whether you have an IR spot and how deep the league is (based on waiver-wire alternatives). The later you can pick Malkin, the better. So if this were a league that allowed waiver-wire transactions, I'd draft Malkin, stash him on IR ASAP, and grab Beauvillier (or a comparable option) to fill the spot.

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