It's time for another set of Bubble Keeper Week ramblings. I play in a few keeper leagues of varying depth, and I'll talk about a few of the decisions here first.

In my one cap league, it's a deep setup where 24 teams keep 30 players each, split between our pro and minors. I'm in contention and our keeper deadline already passed, so I will take you through that. There ended up being a few veteran players that were options for my last couple of pro spots. I made a couple of trades to make the decision easier, but at one point I was left with two spots for Corey Perry, Scott Laughton, Jonas Brodin, and Mike Reilly. Not the most inspiring set, but they all have reason to be optimistic about them heading into this season.

With Ondrej Palat gone from Tampa, there is a lot of power play time that should open up for the Bolts, and Corey Perry often found himself mopping up extra man-advantage time when injuries struck during the last two seasons. He has experience on the top unit, and provides a different skillset than the other finesse guys there. He may be 37, but he still puts up a point every second game, one hit per game, two shots per game, and explodes for some big PIM games every once in a while.

Scott Laughton is a younger player than Perry, but he provides a lot of the same cross-category contributions, albeit at a larger cap hit. It's still a bargain though with him locked in at $3 million for each of the next four years. The points aren't quite there consistently though for Laughton, but he does have one year at a 45-point-pace, and likely the upside for 50 with the right linemates and minutes. The issue is that with Kevin Hayes and Sean Couturier likely healthy to start the year, Laughton likely loses some of the 16 minutes of ice time he averaged per game last year. That will keep the point totals down, but the peripherals will still be excellent. Over a full (healthy) season, his peripherals should be along the lines of 120 shots, 50PIMs, 180 Hits, 55blocks, and 450 FOWs.

Of the two defencemen, I knew that Brodin needed to go right away because of his cap hit, but he's worth noting here as a defenceman that has paced for more than 30 points in each of the last three seasons, and does so while playing very tough minutes. With Jacob Middleton now in the fold for a full season, Brodin's load should be lessened in the defensive end as Middleton takes more defensive zone draws. With Matt Dumba possibly being moved out too, there should be some power play time opened up, which Brodin saw a decent amount of in 2021-22 (with poor results). There is some upside here with the stars aligning for a career year, but if you have to bank on a career year just to rank one player ahead of another, usually it's a mistake.

Mike Reilly was an option for me as I have mentioned a few times through the summer that I think he's a great player to have on your team to start the year. He should be running the top power play through camp, and into game one of the season, which will pique the interest of your fellow fantasy GMs. Flip him early though, because Matt Grzelcyk is due back early into the season, and it's not too often that NHLers miss recovery timetables. In my case, I moved him in the offseason to a middle-tier team, and I wouldn't be surprised to see him flipped again before Halloween.

In the end, I managed to find a home for both Brodin and Reilly (for late picks), keeping Laughton and Perry, and knowing that my cap situation would be more manageable with that group.

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Jumping to a more average-sized keeper league, this one is a 12-team setup where six forwards, four defencemen, and one goalie is kept. Stats used for our H2H matchups are: goals, assists, power play points, shots, hits, blocks, and faceoff wins for skaters, wins, saves, GAA, and Sv% for goalies. We have four of each forward slot, six defence slots, two goalie slots, and six bench slots.

My team won the championship last year, in part on the back of a bevy of Blues players who had a stacked slate during the H2H fantasy playoffs. As a result though, there are now a bundle of players that are keeper worthy, but not a lot of locks, and a lot of decisions to be made.

Goalie is the easiest spot to sort out, so I'll start there. Last year I owned Sergei Bobrovsky, Robin Lehner, and Ville Husso. All three would have been considered keeper options, but Lehner is now out for the season, and Husso got traded to Detroit where the wins will be harder to come by, and the ratios likely lower than I would like. If the goalie pool wasn't already saturated for keepers, I might try to trade Bob and keep Husso (knowing that he should rack up saves, and thus at least coast to a decent save percentage), but there just isn't the market to manage it.

On defence, the two locks are Seth Jones and Darnell Nurse. Without plus-minus in this league, both of these minute munching stat-stuffers are top-50 players. They're not players I even paused on considering keepers, and they're not being shopped. The next tier is where it starts to open up though, with K'Andre Miller, Ryan Pulock, Jeff Petry, and Erik Cernak. As you can tell by my group of defencemen, I hoard the guys that don't just contribute points, but they add peripherals as well. The hits and blocks are a lot easier to get from your defencemen, and it allows for flexibility from the forwards where more of the scoring comes from anyways.

That being said, Erik Cernak doesn't quite score enough to put him in the same conversation as the rest of the group, despite his peripherals upside being a little higher. He's a player I'll look to redraft (likely later than I could get any of the rest of them too) but not someone that fits as a keeper at this point. That leaves two spots for Miller, Pulock, and Petry. I have a soft spot for Miller and his toolbox, and though he may take the long road to a 400-game breakout threshold, his combination of peripherals and points at this point is enough to take the chance on him, especially with a few top-tier options locked in already. In the second half last year he doubled his shot rate, while still putting up two hits and one block per game. The Adam Fox roadblock will keep his power play, and overall scoring numbers from exploding, but the short-term upside of Pulock or Petry isn't so much higher that it becomes too risky to cut one of them.

Of the remaining two, Pulock and Petry put up eerily similar numbers on poor teams, but there will likely be a bit more offence to go around for each this coming year. Pulock's shot and block rate are higher, while Petry's vastly out-hit Pulock last year. Over the last three seasons, the numbers are still similar, but they do sway slightly in Petry's favour. Working against him though is the age – the seven-year age gap is nothing to sneeze at. Petry started off extremely slowly last year with only five points in the first half (34 games) before lighting it up in the stretch run at nearly a point-per game pace. Knowing which Petry we're going to get is the key, and I still don't have a solid answer here. I am going to be trying to trade both (eventually moving one and keeping the other) and will likely let the market dictate which one I eventually keep. If I can't find a deal for either, I lean towards Pulock because of the age and the trade value.

Up front things aren't any easier, and with more spots there are even more players to consider. The locks are Aleksander Barkov, Filip Forsberg, and Brayden Point. After that, there's a tight race for the last three spots. The Max Pacioretty injury knocked one of my options off the list, so the remaining contenders are:

Anze Kopitar

Matt Duchene

Ryan O'Reilly

Pavel Buchnevich

Brayden Schenn

(Others such as Adrian Kempe, Anthony Cirelli, Ryan Hartman, and Cole Sillinger have already been put aside)

Last year I won the league on the strength of having three solid starters, and dominating the peripheral categories. I would often win goals as well, but assists and PPPs were frequently where I lost ground. I will likely be looking towards the same approach this year, and that will help frame my keeper decisions. The key to winning three of the last five years in this league has been building from the centre position and out. The faceoff wins only coming from a select group of players means it ends up being a bit of a focal point. Players like ROR, Kopitar, and Schenn from the wing make a big difference there. Schenn especially was dominant last year, scoring nearly a point per game and adding a ton of hits.

Duchene's value last year was buoyed mainly by shooting 19%. If he was a 20-goal (70-point) player instead of a 40-goal (90-point) player, he's not even in this conversation. With the very real possibility that he takes a step back to being a 65-to 70-point player again, he's the first name crossed off the above list. It comes down to the three Blues and Kopitar for the last keeper, and while I plan to shop them all and see if there are any takers to make the decision for me, I need to have a decision made either way just in case.

Looking at the two pure Cs, Kopitar beats out O'Reilly in terms of value for next year, so he ends up being the first keeper of the group. Looking at the three Blues, Buchnevich provides the most scoring, while Schenn does the most in the peripheral categories. ROR has the faceoffs, and comes in around the mid-way point of both. They will all likely be re-drafted in similar areas, so it comes down to which one is the toughest to replace. With Barkov, Point, and Kopitar already listed as keepers, ROR and his FOWs might just be the most replaceable piece of the three.

Looking at faceoff data for the last three seasons though, ROR leads the pack with nearly 2500, where only six players are even over 2000. The volume is near unique, but it does become replaceable when he isn't as talented elsewhere as Kopitar or Barkov, who are third and tenth respectively on the faceoff wins list for the last three years. There can be too much of a good thing sometimes, and having the flexibility going into the draft of not having all four of my active centre slots already taken is a nice bonus.

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My last league where I need to make some keeper decisions is a smaller one with 10 teams, each keeping any six players. This one is the most convoluted one yet. Standard Yahoo H2H league with the usual categories, start two at each forward position, four defencemen, and one UTIL player, plus two goalies (bench of four).

In net, I had Igor Shesterkin and Jacob Markstrom. I shouldn't keep two goalies, so Markstrom would be out, but as one of the true workhorses around the league it's impossible to rule him out right away. Shesterkin should be a lock though.

On defence, Roman Josi is the jewel, and should be a lock alongside Shesterkin, but Rasmus Dahlin and Noah Dobson warrant consideration too. From February first and onward, Dobson had 35 points (nearly a 70-point-pace), fifth most of all NHL defencemen in that time period. If he can do that on a non-playoff team like the Isles were last year, then when they add Kadri and with the shackles off Barzal, he may even have an extra level he can reach. Tough to cut him or Dahlin, whose offensive upside is even higher, though he doesn't have quite the same peripherals.

The forwards are numerous, and there are the young point scorers like Elias Pettersson, Jack Hughes, and Jason Robertson; the multi-category studs in Timo Meier, Andrei Svechnikov, and Elias Lindholm; and a few other worthy considerations in Josh Norris, Drake Batherson, and Patrick Kane to top it all off.

Let me know what you would do down in the comments, because I go back and forth on these options more than any other league.

Right now I'm settled on Shesterkin and Josi for sure, possibly letting the rest of the goalies and defencemen go back into the pile, and keeping four forwards. That list would likely be Jack Hughes, Elias Pettersson, Andrei Svechnikov, and Timo Meier. Jason Robertson is the hardest one to cut, as I am convinced he is also a point-per game player, and he's no slouch in the hits or shots categories either. Patrick Kane is similar enough to Hughes and Pettersson, but a dozen years older, while Elias Lindholm just put up a career year and lost both of his wingers. Having Jonathan Huberdeau replacing one of them is great, but don't expect 80 points again just because he did it last year.

Obviously if I can trade some, I will, but I'm not the only team with a crunch like this.

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Once you've done your own research (with the guide, frozentools, and maybe even the Fantasy Hockey Geek tool), if you still can't sort out who to keep then ask a friend. The best friends you have for that are likely the knowledgeable group over on the DobberHockey forums. Or, just get in there and ask Cliffy before he finishes his Thursday article:

to that end, if you have keeper questions (please, not "Do I keep Cale Makar" or something similar) for the 2022-23 fantasy hockey season, send them over and I'll answer them in my next Ramblings.

— Michael Clifford (@SlimCliffy) August 16, 2022

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If you've exhausted all the options above, you can always find me on Twitter @alexdmaclean if you have any fantasy hockey keeper questions or comments. See you next Wednesday!