Every Sunday, we share 21 Fantasy Rambles from our writers at DobberHockey. These thoughts are curated from the past week’s 'Daily Ramblings'.

Writers/Editors: Ian Gooding, Michael Clifford, Alexander MacLean and Grant Campbell, filling in for Dobber

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1. The Vancouver Canucks have decided not to trade J.T. Miller after all, instead signing him to a seven-year extension worth $8 million per season. Cap leaguers should consider the new contract a very reasonable cap hit, even if it is a significant raise over his current $5.25 million cap hit.

Miller finished this past season with a career-high 32 goals and 99 points (1.24 PTS/GP), which was 31 points clear of the next-highest-scoring Canuck. Although trading him for future assets might have been the better long-term play, Miller is arguably the most valuable Canuck at the moment and a necessary part of any plan they have to contend now.

Over his three seasons in Vancouver, Miller has more points than any other Canuck, and it’s not even that close : 202 GP – 74 G – 143 A – 217 PTS. (sep3)

2. Now that we know that Miller is staying in Van City, we can more easily project his point total. For the first time in his career, Miller took 200 shots in 2021-22. In addition, take away the shortened 2020-21 season and he has reached at least 100 hits over his past six seasons. Pushing for 100 points again might be a reach, but at minimum we should expect at least a point per game plus the previously-mentioned peripherals. He’s a top-20 option in the Roto Rankings, and Vancouver has proven to be the right environment for him to continue to create those type of numbers.  

During Bubble Keeper Week, I mentioned that Miller is my centerpiece keeper on one of my keeper teams. To summarize why, he was a top-10 scorer while being tied for third with 38 power-play points while finishing in the top 50 with 171 hits. In other words, he currently holds elite status in multicategory leagues.

As far as Canuck-related ripples related to the Miller signing, just a reminder that Bo Horvat is on the final year of his contract (more on Horvat below – I wrote that part before the Miller signing, but I don’t think much changes for Horvat this season). I don’t think much changes as far as the Canucks’ plans to sign Horvat, as he is their captain and he has played in Vancouver for his entire NHL career. The Canucks are coming up on Sunday in the Offseason Fantasy Grades articles, where I’ll break down their situation a little more. (sep3)

3. Sam Gagner has signed a one-year contract worth $750,000 with the Jets. Gagner needs 32 more games to reach 1000, which he should be able to reach in Winnipeg as long as he’s not a frequent healthy scratch. Gagner has been a power-play specialist in the past, although he has chipped in just six power-play points over the last four seasons. In other words, this signing shouldn’t matter a ton in fantasy leagues. (sep3)

4. Ryan Murray has also signed a one-year contract worth $750,000 with the Oilers. You may recall that the Oilers had a chance to draft him 10 years ago and instead took Nail Yakupov. Murray didn’t turn out to be the franchise defenseman that he was projected to be back then, but he certainly would have been a better pick than Yakupov. That being said, 2012 sure wasn’t a banner draft year (HockeyDB). (sep3)

5. I wrote about Claude Giroux last month as a player that I thought was ranked too high by Yahoo (55th) relative to the Top 100 Roto Rankings. Sure enough, other live mock draft participants didn’t seem to think he’s worth drafting in the 50s. If you are pre-ranking players (which I recommend anyway in case you have to autodraft for whatever reason), I stand by my earlier analysis that you should move Giroux down your rankings. If you are looking for a right wing, Vladimir Tarasenko, Kevin Fiala, and Nikolaj Ehlers are all RW-eligible, have a similar ADP to Giroux, are all younger than Giroux, and are all projected to outperform Giroux. (sep3)

6. Anyone relying on Jake Oettinger this season no longer needs to worry about his contract status. The Stars signed Oettinger to a three-year extension worth $4 million per season. This amount certainly seems affordable given the upside that Oettinger showed in last season’s playoffs (7 GP, 1.81 GAA, .954 SV%, 7 QS).

The Stars still have some unfinished business, as fellow RFA Jason Robertson still has yet to be signed. Although he might appear to be a tight squeeze with the Stars showing just over $6 million in cap space, one likely scenario is to send Anton Khudobin to the AHL once the season starts.

Back to Oettinger. As much as he seems to be on an upward trajectory, I believe he is being drafted too early in many leagues. His Yahoo ADP is currently 47, which is higher than that of Frederik Andersen, Thatcher Demko, and Tristan Jarry. Oettinger could be among the top 10 in terms of starts, which isn’t something that was possible in 2021-22 due to starting the season in the AHL. However, we have to be careful not to credit Oettinger too much for his playoff performance, as history has shown that an outstanding playoff run doesn’t always carry forward to the regular season. Note that the inconsistent Jack Campbell and James Reimer had a similar quality start percentage over a similar number of games played compared to Oettinger (56.3 QS%).

Oettinger’s ADP on Fantrax is 82, which is more in line with his ranking of 87 on the Top 100 Roto Rankings. Do you think that’s too high or too low? Feel free to leave feedback. (sep2)

7. Draisaitl or Matthews at 2^nd overall?

I’m going to revisit my first mock draft of the season, which I wrote about here. For anyone thinking that Leon Draisaitl is far and away a better pick than Auston Matthews, let me share the results of this poll below, which suggests there’s at least a strong debate.

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Assume Connor McDavid is picked 1st overall in your single-season draft. Who are you picking 2nd overall?

Leon Draisaitl: 41.6%
Auston Matthews: 53.9%
Other: 4.5%

154 votes – Final results
10:27 AM – Aug 31, 2022

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True, Draisaitl has one clear advantage with LW eligibility in Yahoo, while others such as Connor McDavid, Auston Matthews, and Nathan MacKinnon can only be played at center. As well, only McDavid has more points and points-per-game over the past three seasons than Draisaitl (1.47 PTS/GP), which probably makes him the best choice on the surface.

However, not everyone is sold on Draisaitl. He fell to #6 in one mock draft I recently completed, getting drafted behind all of McDavid, Matthews, MacKinnon, Igor Shesterkin, and Nikita Kucherov. That’s just one draft and perhaps Draisaitl isn’t getting the respect he deserves. Yet there’s a strong argument to take Matthews over Draisaitl because the Leaf will score more goals and take more shots. The table below is from the 2021-22 season.

Matthews (per game):
– Goals: 0.8
– Assists: 0.7
– Points: 1.45
– Shots: 4.8

Draisaitl (per game):
– Goals: 0.7
– Assists: 0.7
– Points: 1.38
– Shots: 3.5

Although Draisaitl finished with more points, Matthews actually finished with a higher point-per-game average based on playing fewer games (73 GP for Matthews). If you decide to draft Matthews in the first round, you can always grab a winger in the second round. Wingers with an end-of-second-round ADP on Yahoo include Steven Stamkos, J.T. Miller, Artemi Panarin, an d David Pastrnak.

I’ll caveat what I just said by saying that categories do matter here. If goals are worth more than points, Matthews should easily be the better pick. But in straight points leagues, I would still lean toward Draisaitl given his longer track record as a 100-point scorer. Draisaitl has four consecutive seasons of a 100+ point pace, while Matthews has only two.  

– Draisaitl: Yahoo ADP 2.3 / Fantrax ADP 3.5
– Matthews: Yahoo ADP 3.1 / Fantrax ADP 2.0 (sep2)

8. Drafting a defenseman either at the end of Round 1 or early in Round 2?

I won’t post the exact question that was sent to me last weekend because I’ll try to answer from more of a general standpoint. But I’m okay with picking a defenseman at the start of Round 2 in Yahoo, particularly one of the second tier of Victor Hedman, Adam Fox, or Roman Josi. In Fantrax, you may want to wait until closer to the end of Round 2 given the lower ADPs. I’d have to assume that Cale Makar is taken in the first round. Hedman, Fox, and Josi are all ranked as late Round 1/early Round 2 options in the Top 100 Roto Rankings.

– Hedman: Yahoo ADP 14 / Fantrax ADP 22
– Fox: Yahoo ADP 17 / Fantrax ADP 25
– Josi: Yahoo ADP 20 / Fantrax ADP 19

As much as it’s beneficial for you to have a plan, drafts have a tendency to take an unexpected turn. So even though I might make suggestions here, don’t get locked into a particular player or position. I would be more tempted to draft the best player available, whether that be at forward or on defense. Drafting a team is a value-building exercise, so the objective is to maximize the value of each pick while filling each roster spot and accounting for all necessary scoring categories.

If you decided to go with non-defensemen with your first two picks, then you should probably target a defenseman with at least one of your Round 3-5 picks. In Yahoo, that third tier of defensemen consists of Aaron Ekblad, John Carlson, Moritz Seider, Quinn Hughes, Morgan Rielly, and Kris Letang. In Fantrax, you’ll have more to choose from, as that group includes all of the above plus Brent Burns, Dougie Hamilton, and Zach Werenski, although I would not personally place those three in the same tier as the other six. (sep2)

9. Big news from the last couple of days was surely the huge extension from Sabres center Tage Thompson. He signed a seven-year, $7-million AAV contract with Buffalo, a deal that will take him through to his early 30s ($7.14M per year, to be exact). Alex wrote about this in his Ramblings yesterday, covering the leaps in things like shooting percentage and on-ice shooting percentage that Thompson had in his career-best 2021-22 season.

I wanted to dig deeper on this because at his price, cap league owners will have a decision to make. Paying $7M a season for a 35-goal, 70-point center with huge shot rates is doable in these formats; a 25-goal, 50-point center, not so much. Figuring out which he’s likely to be is very important. [Follow the link for a deep dive on Thompson and his new contract] (sep1)

10. In a completely unsurprising move, Adin Hill was traded to Vegas two days ago in exchange for a fourth-round pick. I have a feeling they would have been willing to give up more than that, but they also knew that San Jose didn’t want to carry three goalies into the season, and weren’t getting offers elsewhere for him – thus the cheap price tag.

Hill has had an unremarkable career the last few years, but when you’re playing 74 career games for Arizona and San Jose, and you’re not labelled as a bad goalie, that can quietly be very heavy praise. It reminds me a little of how Darcy Kuemper fared in Los Angeles and Arizona before ultimately ending up in Colorado and suddenly becoming a top-tier goalie. I’m not saying Hill is going to cruise to 40 wins, but the upside is there, the team in front of him should be strong, and goalies are prone to huge fluctuations in value, so you might as well roll the dice somewhere like this.

Fellow Vegas goalies include: Logan Thompson who is waiver exempt, Laurent Brossoit who is not going to be ready for the start of the season due to rehab from offseason surgery, and Robin Lehner who will return for the 2023-24 season at the earliest. If there is a team that (when healthy) can contend with Colorado in the West, it is this Vegas team. Owning a volume goalie on a top-team is gold, and it feels even better when that asset is very cheap to acquire or can be had later in drafts. (aug31)

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11. Sam Steel finally signed a contract. There’s some ultimate upside for him, but even just in the short term he could be useful for fantasy leagues. He is not far removed from being looked at as a future first-liner, and he’s just games away from his breakout threshold at the age of 24. Minnesota does not have their top-nine, or even their top-line set in stone, and Steel plays center which is where Minnesota has the most uncertainty. More likely though is that Steel ends up in the bottom-six and sees a small bump to a 35-point pace or so. (aug31)

12. On a related note from the Steel news above, there should be even more room in the lineup to start as Jordan Greenway is expected to miss the beginning of the season after he had a second procedure on his AC joint. All that seems to be available at this point is that he will be back “early in the season”. (aug31)

13. The Penguins extended coach Mike Sullivan’s contract for three years. Sullivan has been the coach of the team since December 2015, winning the cup in his first season with the team. As usual in Pittsburgh, the goaltending should be good, Kris Letang is elite, and the top-six is as good as any other in the league. However, the depth leaves a lot to be desired, making them a risky bet to make the playoffs this year. That being said, Sullivan has produced very positive results, and should be able to keep the bottom from falling out with the aging core. The consistency is good news for the Penguins, and the fantasy managers that own their players. Projectability is something that can be hard to come by, so knowing exactly what we’re getting with deployment and style of play can make drafting a player like Jake Guentzel, Bryan Rust, or Kris Letang a lot easier. (aug31)

14. Underdog Fantasy is a website I’ve mentioned before in these Ramblings. They have Best Ball formats for NHL, which is a variation of a season-long league. There are no trades, waivers, or free agency – the team you draft is the team you’re stuck with. Only a certain percentage of the roster counts toward final standings and that gives some flexibility to the lineup. What they do have is ADP data for over 1000 entries, which can give us a guide as to where fantasy players stand on certain players at this point in time in a multi-cat format. Let’s go through some of these ADPs, what the reasoning would be, and where we might find some value. (aug30)

15. The Big Four, Plus Two? It probably doesn’t need to be said but the top four players by ADP are Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon, Auston Matthews, and Leon Draisaitl. If they all play 80 games, it’s easy to see these four as the four most productive skaters and regardless of format, you may see all four go at the top of every draft this fall.

The ‘Plus Two’ here are Kirill Kaprizov and Cale Makar. They are usually going after those four centers and they are at the top of the winger and defensemen ADPs. Kaprizov had a monster season in 2021-22 and it’s a question if he can repeat his near-50-goal performance with triple-digit points. There isn’t much concern about Cale Makar being the top defenseman, provided he can stay healthy. Those top-6 players are guys we’ll often see be the first six off the board unless the league in question favors goaltenders heavily. Alex Ovechkin and Nikita Kucherov also have high ADPs and will likely be inside the top-10 off the board. (aug30)

16. David Pastrnak and Mikko Rantanen? This is where things get interesting as these wingers round out the top-10 by ADP. David Krejci is back for Boston and could be Pastrnak’s center to start the year. They will also be without Brad Marchand and Charlie McAvoy for a good chunk to start the season. Can Pastrnak out-perform guys like Matthew Tkachuk and Jonathan Huberdeau with a power play that has McAvoy and Marchand missing for at least a month? It’s a gamble.

As for Rantanen, I’m on the record multiple times saying I think he ends up the 2C behind Nathan MacKinnon at some point. This team still has Cup aspirations, Alex Newhook hasn’t shown he’s ready to handle that role (yet), and J.T. Compher just doesn’t provide a lot of hope as the 2C on the reigning Cup champions. If Rantanen slides down to the 2C role, he’ll naturally be playing away from MacKinnon for most of the game. Per Natural Stat Trick, the team scores about a half-goal less per 60 minutes when he’s not with MacKinnon or Nazem Kadri, which is something I do believe happens this year. Just something to think about if you’re picking at the end of the first round and you have the Tkachuk brothers, Roman Josi, Aleksander Barkov, and the elite goalies left on the board. (aug30)

17. Jack Eichel? The Vegas forward (perhaps winger?) is going just inside the top-12 centers in this format. To be a top-12 center in this scoring, it’s likely to need roughly point-per-game status – or better – in a full season with three shots per game. That is certainly in Eichel’s range, but it also seems like he’s being drafted at his upside rather than his expectation. To really bring draft value here, he’d likely need a 100-point season. I do think Eichel is going to rebound from his less-than-stellar performance in his abbreviated 2021-22 season but it seems like the value is being sucked out of his ADP, at least on Underdog. At that point, I’d probably just look at other positions and wait for guys like Roope Hintz or Elias Pettersson a few rounds later. (aug30)

18. Mason Marchment? It seems there isn’t a lot of belief in Marchment’s breakout as he’s sometimes going undrafted on Underdog. There could be good reason, as he’s likely to be skating on the second line with aging veterans like Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin and may not earn a top PP role. With that said, he did not need a top PP role for success last year and was good at creating chances for both himself and his teammates. His 82-game pace in this scoring system had him as, roughly, a top-25 winger; hits and shots help here. With more ice time, those peripherals should only grow. If he can somehow earn a top PP role as the season wears on, he could be big in the second half. This is a winger to target late in drafts. (aug30)

19. Aaron Ekblad? The top of the defenseman board often sees the same four blue liners get drafted in this order: Cale Makar, Roman Josi, Victor Hedman, and Adam Fox. (The order may vary among drafts or between sites, but these are usually the first four off the board.) At the top of the next group is Ekblad. Had it not been for his broken leg that caused him to miss the final quarter of the season, he may have been a Norris Trophy contender. There are issues here, of course. First is that Jonathan Huberdeau – possibly the top playmaking winger in the league – is in Calgary. Matthew Tkachuk is his replacement but it remains to be seen if the power play can be as effective without Huberdeau. Second is that Ekblad doesn’t bring much for peripherals, averaging fewer than two hits-plus-blocks per game over the last three years. If he can’t replicate his point production, can he really be a top-5 defenseman? This seems like a gamble not worth taking with a fourth- or fifth-round pick. (aug30)

20. Ilya Sorokin? Here is where there is divergence from some other sites. Depending on where you play – Yahoo, ESPN, Fantrax – Sorokin could easily be one of the top-5 goalies off the board. Over here on Underdog, he’s the 10^th goalie off the board by ADP, behind goalies like Marc-Andre Fleury and Thatcher Demko. In a sense, it’s understandable: the Islanders did not greatly improve the roster in the offseason and were a non-playoff team last year. With that said, the team was 17^th in the league by points percentage once their extended road trip and COVID postponements finished in the middle of January. With a healthy roster, a normal schedule, and adding Alexander Romanov to the blue line, it’s not hard to envision them being a playoff team in 2022-23. As long as they don’t split starts with Semyon Varlamov, Sorokin absolutely has top-5 goaltender upside. If you’re in a league where he slides outside the top-5 goalies, I would have no problem rostering him as my first goalie. For posterity: Evolving Hockey has him second among all regular goalies over the last two years in goals saved above expected per game. With a (hopefully) better defensive squad in front of him this season, Sorokin could soar. (aug30)

21. I last did the Ramblings in July of 2021 and talked about my website www.playergameratings.com and my wish to provide game ratings for players and teams. I made the decision at the start of the 2021-22 season to not incorporate an eye-test component so that I could include all 32 teams and the 1,000 players that played last season. I believe at the end of the day, the comparative nature outweighs the increased accuracy of an eye test, which was subjective, to begin with.

My newest pet project within the site is that I’ve created a google sheet of each team with the player game rating of each player to give an idea of how each team measures up using a projected lineup. I’m hoping to integrate the sheet in the future outside of google sheets or Excel and hyperlink players to the Dobber Frozen Tools. Baby steps. Team PGR Linked 3 Year.xlsx

Important context for the ratings is that 6.41 is the average skater rating and 6.51 for goalies whereas 6.2 to 6.3 is the replacement level. I’ve also taken game ratings over the past three seasons rather than just last year as I think this gives a more level representation. Please follow the link for the bigger picture… (aug28)

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Big announcement!

It’s finally launched – the all-new Goalie Post! Be sure to take a look, as you’ll have to sign up once again for email notifications of any goalie/team you’re following for starting goaltending changes. You’ll also find the latest Top 100 rankings there.

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Have a good week, folks – stay safe!!

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