With the trade deadline in your leagues steadily approaching, here are some thoughts and opinions on potential rental candidates to help you and your fantasy team win that glorious championship.

Just a reminder, every fantasy league is different when it comes to their format so, please consult your own league's rules and formatting before making any sort of trade or free-agent pickup.

What is a 'rental'? A 'rental' is someone you look to acquire around this time of year to help bolster your lineup's depth. This is someone on an expiring contract who helps address your team's weaknesses and someone who you may not be bringing back to your team next season.

*This list is not done in a certain order, so please don't look at it like that*

#1) Ben Chiarot – D – Montreal Canadiens

When it comes to salary cap leagues, Ben Chiarot is a very valuable asset to have on your roster. He makes $3.5-millon for this current season, and while his offensive numbers won't jump off the page at you. It's Chiarot's peripheral stats that truly make him stand out as a viable fantasy option in most salary leagues. With the ongoing struggles that Jeff Petry has had this season, it has allowed Chiarot to play more. His time-on-ice (TOI) per game this season is at a career high of 23:29 minutes. He ranks 30^th in the NHL in that category this season and for a guy who is on pace for only 20 points in a full 82 game season, it shows how important he is to that blue line in MTL. In a full 82 game season he projects to have 141 blocks and 176 hits, which would both end up being the most that he has ever had in a single season. This isn't a player that you are adding to help you win the goals and assists categories in your league, you're adding him to help deepen the stats that are harder to find at elite levels.

#2) Tuukka Rask – G – Boston Bruins

Jeremy Swayman owners are not happy with him being sent down to the minors in favor of bringing back Tuukka Rask to finish the year with Linus Ullmark. But adding a player with the pedigree of Rask for $1-million is something that every fantasy owner should be considering. Tuukka Rask has been one of the most consistent goaltenders in the NHL over the last decade. Since the 2011-2012 his worst goals-against average (GAA) was 2.56 which came in the 2015-2016 season, and a 0.912 save percentage which was recorded in the 2018-2019 season was his worst over that stretch. My philosophy when it comes to goaltending is that you want the ones that have a healthy blend of the following, a good contract, plays a lot of games, plays on a team that can win games. While the Bruins sit at 4^th in their division, they are behind 3 teams in FLA, TBL, TOR. You can still expect them to win a lot of hockey games as they have a very good roster from top to bottom. Something to keep note of when you're adding Rask is that the Boston Bruins have only played 35 games this year. That means they have a favorable schedule when speaking of volume of games left at the end of the year, leading into the playoffs or during your playoff run.

#3) Andrew Copp – C/LW – Winnipeg Jets

Last year was Andrew Copp's breakout season but if you can add him to your roster, it is worth it. He makes $3.64-million this year, he is currently slotted on the 2^nd line with Mark Scheifele and Evgeny Svechnikov. With players like Ehlers and Wheeler returning to the lineup in the future, his deployment may change slightly, but I believe those 2 players coming back effects Cole Perfetti and Evgeny Svechnikov more than it will Copp. He carries a TOI per game of 20:43, and when players start getting into the 20+ minute a night territory they begin helping balance out some of the lower TOI players that you possess. His points per game is down every so slightly from last year; he was at a 0.709 and this year he currently sits at a 0.706 points per game. His shooting amounts have also increased dramatically: last year he had 115 shots over 55 games (2.09 per game) and this year he is currently at 95 shots in 34 games (2.79 per game). His career shooting percentage is 11% yet this year he sits at 10.5%, so in theory there is room for some slight improvement. His real value comes from faceoffs, as he has a faceoff percentage (FO%) of 54.8%, which is an improvement on the 53% that he ended the year with last year. The thing that makes this standout is that the number of faceoffs that he takes has improvement drastically. He took 232 faceoffs (123 won, 109 lost) in the 2020-2021 season, and this year so far, he sits at a total of 389 faceoffs (213 won, 176 lost). Andrew Copp is a player who can slot in as a depth scoring option for your team, but he also helps provide value to your TOI category and helps improve your faceoff statistics.

#4) Tomas Hertl – C/RW – San Jose Sharks

With an expiring contract of $5.625-million, he is definitely the most expensive player on this list, but he is the one that will bring you a lot of value in a lot of different areas. He currently has 115 shots in 39 games (2.95 shots per game) which over an 82-game season would have him at 242 shots, this would be a career high for him. There are rumors that the Sharks may trade him to a contending team, if that is the case, I would expect his performance to improve as he is then playing in a better system. He currently sits at 31 points in 39 games (20 goals, 11 assists, 0.79 points-per-game. Across the last 3 seasons his ATOI (average time on ice) has increased, therefore his deployment has been improving each of the last 3 seasons. While you look at Tomas Hertl and think of a player who can put the puck in the net, he is also a very reliable faceoff taker as he has a total of 658 faceoffs taken this year (351 won, 307 lost, an average of 16.87 faceoffs taken per game) which has him at a 53.3% win rate in the faceoff dot. While he does make $5.625-million until the end of this year, for the amount of value he brings in the areas that I mentioned, he is worth acquiring at the trade deadline.

There are a lot of good rental players out there, the key is being able to find the ones who provide the most amount of value for how much of the salary cap that they are going to cut into.