The NHL playoffs start tonight, but there are still some last-minute playoff drafts that need to be wrapped up.

Of course, selecting players is straightforward at the beginning of the draft. You take top players on teams expected to go far. However, those players are spread across everyone’s playoff teams. It’s drafting the sleeper picks later in a draft that can make the difference between a victory or a defeat.

Just look at last season. William Karlsson has almost twice as many points as Mark Stone, Jean-Gabriel Pageau‘s 13 points were higher than teammate Jordan Eberle‘s 11, and Cole Caufield finished with 12 points, third-highest with the Habs. Heck, Nicolas Roy had more points than anyone on the Leafs or Oilers.

Below are 10 sleeper picks for this year’s postseason, with the caveat that there can only be a maximum of one per team. Everyone’s idea of a sleeper pick varies, but I read one article on the weekend that listed Bryan Rust, Tony DeAngelo, Matt Duchene, Evander Kane and Robert Thomas as sleeper picks for their teams. Since most of those players are more than likely selected with high compared to their teammates, that doesn’t seem to match the idea of a sleeper pick.

For my definition, I’ll be looking at players who probably won’t be taken with the top five picks from that team, and will probably be much lower than that.

10. Ryan Suter

The Dallas defense is led by John Klingberg and Miro Heiskanen, so you can be forgiven for overlooking Suter. However, Suter quietly put up a half-decent season, finishing with seven goals, 32 points and 13 power-play points. His ice time was 23:39 per game, reversing a downward trend that had been happening for several years. He saw 2:06 minutes of power-play time per night, which was 44 per cent of all of Dallas’ power-play minutes. He also routinely plays with either Heiskanen or Klingberg, and playing with offensive defensemen will help a player pick up a few extra points.

9. Rickard Rakell

Each year when I write this column, I like to put in a reminder to look at a team’s entire roster. I have seen numerous times in playoff drafts when people show up having printed the top 10 point-getters on each playoff team. When you use that method, you miss players who spent a big chunk of the season injured or who were traded. Rakell, for example, is 18th on the Pens for points, but he finished with 13 points in 19 games after being dealt from Anaheim. He’s playing with Sidney Crosby, so expect him to get points if Pittsburgh wins a couple of rounds.

8. Tyler Toffoli

Toffoli seems to be something of an afterthought in Calgary, maybe because he was dealt to the Flames in February, a month before the NHL trade deadline. So the hype quickly went from Toffoli to more recent acquisitions. He has 23 points in 37 games with the Flames, with eight of those points coming on the power play, where he mostly plays with the top unit. He also has the experience of a couple of long playoff runs (14 points in the Habs’ trip to the final last year and 14 points when the Kings won the Cup in 2014).

7. Mark Giordano

Recommending a Leafs player for a playoff pool is tough as some Leafs' fans will go insane each postseason. Last year, one playoff pool I was in saw Joe Thornton, Wayne Simmonds and other fourth-line Toronto players taken in the pool. So is any Leaf player really a surprise pick? However, Giordano has been excellent for the Leafs in a supporting role with 12 points in 20 games, which puts him second among the Leafs’ defensemen for scoring over that period. Those 12 points also put him in the top 20 for defensemen in the league since March 23, ahead of Tyson Barrie, John Klingberg, Adam Fox and a host of other players that will get drafted much higher than Giordano.

6. Artturi Lehkonen

You could be forgiven for not wanting to go with Lehkonen, as he has never had more than four points in a postseason (including last year’s 17 games played with the Habs’ run to the final). However, with nine points in 16 games, Lehkonen has easily been more productive in Colorado than he ever was in Montreal. He can move around the lineup (even getting some time on the top line with Nathan MacKinnon when Mikko Rantanen was out). Lehkonen’s ice time with the Avs is almost two minutes a night higher than it was in Montreal, and he’s also getting some power-play time (he rarely got any man-advantage time with the Habs). Keep in mind that Lehkonen has never played with the Avalanche when the team has been fully healthy in their top-six, so it’s difficult to know exactly who he will be playing with in the postseason.

5. Anthony Mantha

Mantha doesn’t have much playoff experience, with last year’s five games the only ones the 27-year-old has seen. He spent the first chunk of the season in a bottom-six role until he missed 45 games after shoulder surgery. When he got back into the lineup, he was put in a top-six role with Nicklas Backstrom on the second line. For the last few games that Alexander Ovechkin has been injured, Mantha has been inserted into the top line. The only thing holding him back is that he doesn’t get much, if any, power-play time.

4. Justin Faulk

Faulk is one of those players who excelled this year but hasn’t been getting his due as he led the Blues in goals and points by a defenseman. His 16 goals were one off his career high and were the fifth highest in the league among defensemen. His 47 points were two away from a career high and tied with John Klingberg for 23rd in the league for rearguards. His plus-41 was tied for third-highest among dmen. He also managed to put up 149 hits and 101 blocked shots and saw time on the second power-play unit.

3. Anton Lundell

Many poolies may be focusing on Mason Marchment as the “sleeper” pick on Florida, but Lundell also deserves some love. Lundell had 44 points in 65 games, and his 0.68 points per game were the fifth-highest among rookies this season (minimum 20 games). Lundell missed 11 games in late March with an illness and has struggled somewhat since then (six points in 13 games). About 63 per cent of Lundell’s five-on-five minutes were alongside Marchment, so if you’re going to take the latter, you want to choose the former as well. 

2. Nick Paul

Paul has been excellent since moving to Tampa, with 14 points in 21 games. That’s pretty good considering his career high in points coming into this season was 20. Some of that production has come from playing alongside Nikita Kucherov and Steven Stamkos at times. One thing to remember is that Tampa Bay’s bottom lines thrive in the postseason. Last year, the line of Blake Coleman, Ross Colton and Barclay Goodrow scored some big goals. However, Coleman was the only one of those three to finish with more than 10 points. Looking at Tampa’s line of Corey Perry, Colton and Paul, Paul has a great opportunity to contribute to a long playoff run.

1. Frank Vatrano

While Andrew Copp is the sexy sleeper pick with the Rangers, don’t overlook Vatrano while you’re at it. With the Panthers, Vatrano had 19 points in 49 games, but that production jumped to 13 points in 22 games with the Rangers. His ice time also increased from 12:12 per night in Florida to 15:18 per night in New York. Some of that is thanks to some power-play time on the second unit in New York (he rarely saw PP time in Florida). He’s been used mostly in a top-six role with the Rangers, most of the time on the second line with Chris Kreider and Mika Zibanejad, but sometimes with Artemi Panarin as well. If that usage continues throughout the postseason, you can expect big things from Vatrano.