It is Bubble Keeper Week here at Dobber Hockey! This started years ago for a number of reasons but there are two that stick out, specifically. First is that this is (normally) a dead zone for hockey information. Free agency is mostly over and we're just waiting for training camps to start (though the World Juniors has changed that equation in 2022). Second, and most importantly for us, this is the time keepers start being submitted in most leagues. Some leagues may have gone past this already but we're trying to find that sweet spot of most NHL rosters being set and fantasy rosters needing to do the same. That is why we have Bubble Keeper Week and we're here to help the readers.

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Before we get to keepers, have you ordered your copy of the 2022-23 Dobber Hockey Fantasy Guide? With our projections, some keeper questions can be answered. We also have long-term upside, depth charts, line combinations, and a whole lot more. The best part is this will be updated until the season starts, so there's no worries about new signings/trades not being reflected in the guide. Help support what we do by purchasing a guide today!

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Dobber continued the Bubble Keeper train yesterday in his Ramblings by going through some questions that his followers had for him. I urge people to go check that out to see the queries involving lots of players from across the fantasy value spectrum. We also had Tom Collins use his Top-10 column to discuss keepers in points-only leagues. Those are the kinds of articles that we'll be posting all week long.

Today's exercise is going to be about a league I'm in. While we call it a dynasty league, it's not quite that because you don't have to roll over every player on your roster every season. Our rosters are allowed to have 25 active players and we can keep up to 18 players year over year. Beyond that, we can have four players on the injured reserve list and five players in the minor leagues. To qualify for the minors, a player must genuinely be in the minors (AHL, Europe, Junior, etc.) or has played under 40 games for his career in the NHL. For that reason, Matt Boldy, with 47 games played, is not considered a minor league player anymore. Cam York, however, with 33 games played, will be considered a minor league player at the start of the 2022-23 season. The benefit of this is that you can have young guys playing in the NHL that are minors-eligible and thus you can swap them in and out of your lineup, giving you more than 25 active players.

It is a head-to-head salary cap league, so having those guys on entry-level deals that can be top-100 players for around $1M is very important. It is also a multi-cat format which includes the following categories for skaters:

• Goals
• Assists
• Shots
• Special Teams Points (PP and PK)
• Hits
• Blocks
• Takeaways
• Faceoffs

For goalies, the categories are as follows:

• Wins
• Goals Against Average
• Save Percentage
• Shutouts

For the rosters themselves, we start three at each forward position, four defencemen, three utility skaters, and two goalies. In a 12-team league that starts nine forwards, might have 1-2 more forwards in utility, and a few more on the bench, so we're probably looking at around 175 forwards drafted each year. Conversely, we probably have around 75 defencemen drafted and that puts a bit more onus on finding quality forwards. It can vary, but that's how I approach things.

Those are the parameters we work with. The league is comprised of people from around the fantasy industry so we are dealing with people that follow hockey, and fantasy hockey, very closely. I made the playoffs last year – 6 of 12 teams make it and I finished 6^th – but was bounced in the first round. I am in the process of turning the roster over to a younger one and that probably means some pain for the next couple seasons.

With that out of the way, here's the roster. Remember that I was adding/dropping players trying to win my first-round matchup last year so there are a couple players here that will be an automatic drop (apologies to Derek Grant). These are my starting skaters and the bench:

And this is my IR list, my minor league players, and my goalies:

The reason there are only four minors players is Arthur Kaliyev, Alex Newhook, and Moritz Seider passed that 40-game mark as the season wore on and lost their minors role.

Alright, let's break this down and start working out which 18 players we're keeping, or if we're even keeping that many guys. A reminder that the salaries haven't updated, so guys like Ben Chiarot and Cal Petersen will be making more while Kris Letang is making less.

We'll begin with the easy part: the automatic keepers. These are the guys that are either healthy superstars, very good players on good contracts, or valuable players on their entry-level deals. Minor league players don't count against the 18, as you can leave them in the minors, so we won't list Beniers, Peterka, York, or Dostal, though all four will be kept. This is how I see it breaking down, with defencemen/goalies in parentheses, along with this year's cap hit (remember some ELC players have bonuses added):

• Cole SIllinger ($1.63M)
• Jake Guentzel ($6M)
• Brandon Hagel ($1.5M)
• Pavel Buchnevich ($5.8M)
• Arthur Kaliyev ($1.04M)
• Alex Newhook ($1.49M)
• Kris Letang (D, $6.1M)
• Cale Makar (D, $9M)
• Moritz Seider (D, $1.7M)
• Artem Zub (D, $2.5M)
• K'Andre Miller (D, $1.28M)
• Carter Hart (G, $3.98M)

Out of the gate, we have 12 players as guaranteed keepers, totalling roughly $42M in cap space. It is a pretty good mix as we have seven forwards, five defencemen, and a goalie. Our blue line is well taken care of, so I won't be racing to keep Chiarot or Ty Smith. Having nearly half the roster kept with $40M left to spend is a good place to be. Once we draft more minors-eligible players, I'll be able to move Beniers and York to the main roster for cheap cap hits and then only need 11 more skaters/goalies with roughly $37M to spend on those guys. More than doable.

Smith is an interesting case. Anyone that has watched him no doubt sees the offensive upside he possesses. However, as I wrote last month when he was traded to Pittsburgh, his defensive issues are glaring. It isn't a problem for a young blue liner to favour one end over the other and that's something players generally have to learn as they mature. With that said, no coach is going to put up with a rearguard constantly giving up the blue line or turning pucks over in their own end. He is still technically on an ELC but I have questions as to how much he'll play. Also, with player bonuses, he's over $1.26M for his cap hit, according to Cap Friendly. It's not a huge cap hit, but it makes him roughly as expensive as K'Andre Miller, who will be much more valuable in this format for 2022-23.

Alright, we have up to six more spots to fill. Let's look at some contenders, or put another way, the bubble keepers.

• Brad Marchand – If he were healthy, it'd be a slam dunk. However, he'll be out until around Christmas with double hip surgery and there's no telling how he'll play when he returns. We have had a wide range of outcomes like Nikita Kucherov being pretty close to himself when he came back in 2021 from his hip surgery, while Tyler Seguin looked like a shell of his glory days in 2021-22. Keeping Marchand and sticking him on IR isn't a problem, the problem is activating him in December, needing to clear over $6M in cap space to do it, and having no guarantees he'll be effective.
• Nico Hischier – He carries a hefty cap hit, doesn't shoot or hit a lot, and has zero seasons with more than 60 points. With that said, it looked like he hit another level last year, he'll take a pile of faceoffs for this team, and the roster is improving around him. Can he reach 20 PPPs and crack the point-per-game mark? If he can, that, with the faceoffs, might make him worth the $7M+ he'll earn.
• Oliver Bjorkstrand – He could be kept but going to Seattle makes me a bit nervous. They do look like a much-improved roster but a split TOI approach on the power play is a concern. Having a Bjorkstrand/Beniers duo is tempting, though.
• Luke Kunin – He is earning $2.75M this year and he'll need over 200 hits again to be close to worth it. If he can manage 15 goals and 40 points, he's a slam dunk.
• Ben Chiarot – An offseason raise puts into question whether he'll be worth his new cap hit. He is basically Artem Zub but nearly twice the price.
• Martin Necas – The injury to Max Pacioretty brings him back into focus for us. There's a reasonable chance he gets top-6/top PP minutes, and at least has a top-6 spot open for him. Is that worth the $3M he'll earn?
• Ryan Strome – A bit of an uptick in salary here and a downgrade in team quality. The same could be said of teammate Frank Vatrano.
• Nils Höglander – Vancouver brought in Ilya Mikheyev and Andrei Kuzmenko to help with winger depth. Depending how we view Vasily Podkolzin, there's a non-zero chance Höglander is a fourth liner at times this year. Even at a cheap price, he's not a guarantee.
• Nazem Kadri – Tough to say whether he'll stay or go until he signs somewhere.
• Joel Farabee – I have a lot of belief in his talent but a neck surgery, combined with a contract that starts this year at $5M a season, puts his keeper status in serious doubt. There's also a question of whether Philadelphia will be any good in a deep Eastern Conference.
• James Reimer – With Petersen getting a big raise and Chris Driedger in a similar three-goalie rotation to Reimer, I'll just go with the cheapest guy if I have to.

Alright, out of those 12 guys named, we can keep up to six of them. This is how I see it breaking down.

We are keeping Kunin for $2.75M. While I think his upside is limited, he could earn a top-6 role with San Jose and he's averaged 17 goals every 82 games over the last three years. If we can get 15 goals, 30 points, and 200 hits, we'll take it.

We are also keeping Necas. This may not have been the case two weeks ago but with Pacioretty out until well into 2023, he could have a top-6 role on a Cup contender. Despite the raise, I think the talent is there with him and his teammates to make the $3M worth it. I wrote at length last week about Necas's offensive issues and why he's not guaranteed to rebound.

Despite the potential for a very small role, Höglander is on our keeper list. He is still cheap and I believe in his talent. Corey Sznajder's tracking data has him with strong scoring chance contributions, good defensive zone work, and strong forechecking:

As I said earlier, this is a team I'm flipping over to younger players. Even if Höglander doesn't have a great 2022-23, he will still be cheap on a bridge deal after that, and I believe in his talent long-term. That's worth $1.13M for now.

Ok, we are up to 15 players kept, which means we have up to three more players we can hold onto. At this point, we have about $30M in cap space left with 10 total roster spots to fill. Readers can understand why I'm reticent to keep guys like Hischier, Bjorkstrand, and Farabee at this point. We still have Kadri to deal with and he could be a keeper if he doesn't get the monster pay raise like we all expected.

For now, I will say we are keeping one of Hischier or Kadri. We will have to wait and see where Kadri's AAV ends up, but we don't have many centres kept and despite that being a deep position, we need more help here. I'll pencil in Hischier for now, but he could be taken out if Kadri signs for, say, $6M a season in Calgary.

For posterity, we'll also keep Marchand. We can stuff him on the injured reserve and deal with the problem when we have to. It allows me to go looking for more values in the draft anyway. The nice thing about an expensive player is that if you have to drop him, there are always competent expensive options on the waiver wire of a cap league.

The final guy is going to be Reimer. Listen, I'm not a fan of this spot either but keeping just one goalie out of 18 players in a 12-team league feels like a recipe for disaster. If he gets traded near the deadline, or even before the season, he could end up in a better spot. At least he's cheap enough where it won't crush my team if he doesn't perform well. As a rebuilding team, it doesn't matter much anyway.

Adding Hischier (for now) and Reimer adds $10M to our cap hit. With Marchand on IR, we have 17 players, eight spots to fill at the draft, and roughly $20M in cap space. Add Beniers and York, and we're up to 19 players, six spots to fill, and roughly $16.8M in cap space while playing the Minor League Player Rotation Dance that we discussed earlier in these Ramblings. We will probably dumpster dive on a couple peripheral defencemen, prioritize a cheap goalie in the draft, and see where the rest takes us.

We are going to let go of guys like Bjorkstrand, Strome, Vatrano, Farabee, and Chiarot. Whether it's changing franchises, getting a raise, having injury concerns, team quality, or a mix of these issues, there are big questions around each of these guys and they're not cheap enough to make me gamble on them. Who knows, I could end up drafting one (or more) of them back on my team when we are making our selections. But those guys are the bubble keepers I will have to let go; there's only so much cap space and the risk is too great.

Alright, readers, where were my missteps? Is there anyone kept, or not kept, that is a mistake? Are there players I should be looking to trade in the offseason? Should we keep Bjorkstrand over Buchnevich? Should we keep Vatrano over Necas? Is letting go of Ty Smith a mistake? Does anyone think Cal Petersen will rebound and be the number-1 goalie for the Kings? Let us know in the comments.