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 Dobber

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1. I took a look at stats before Saturday's Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final, so here's a quick peek at the then-playoff leaders over at Frozen Tools:

Goals – Leon Draisaitl (13) – He still leads in spite of being eliminated after the second round! Among players remaining, William Karlsson leads with 10 goals.

Assists – Roope Hintz (14)

Points – Hintz (24) – Matthew Tkachuk leads players remaining with 21 points

Points per game (min 5 GP) – Connor McDavid (12 GP, 20 PTS, 1.67 PTS/GP) – He was always going to be a great pick for your playoff pool, regardless of how far you had the Oilers going

Power-play points – Evan Bouchard (15) – This might be even more impressive than the Draisaitl goal total. As a huge beneficiary of the Tyson Barrie to Nashville trade, Bouchard is definitely a top 100 player in redraft roto leagues next season. Yes, his value increases based on his playoff performance.

Ice time (min 5 GP) – Drew Doughty (28:14)

Shots on goal – Jonathan Marchessault (62)

Plus/minus – Best: Marchessault (+13), Worst: Dougie Hamilton (-11)

Penalty minutes – Max Domi (52) – Teammate Jamie Benn is second with 51 PIM. The two of them racked up 29 PIM combined in that infamous Game 3 against Vegas, which resulted in Benn being suspended for two games.

Goals-against average (min 5 GP) – Frederik Andersen (1.83)

Save percentage (min 5 GP) – Adin Hill (.937) – If Vegas wins the Stanley Cup, does he receive serious Conn Smythe consideration? The argument against it is that he made his playoff debut in Game 2 of the second round (vs. Edmonton).

Quality start percentage (min 5 GP) – Igor Shesterkin (85.7%)

Among all goalies with at least 5 GP, Vitek Vanecek had the worst GAA (4.64), SV% (.825), and QS% (0). (jun3)

2. Our writers have made their picks for the Stanley Cup and Conn Smythe winners! You can find them here.

3. A bright spot in another disappointing season for the Canucks, Andrei Kuzmenko led all first-year players with 38 goals and 73 points. Note I didn’t say rookie, as Kuzmenko doesn’t count as one at age 27. As well, only Elias Pettersson scored more goals (40) among Canucks.

Kuzmenko also led all players (minimum 10 GP) with a 26.8 SH%. This was only his first NHL season, so it’s hard to compare it to anything. Yet this is quite a lofty shooting percentage, as the next-highest shooter with at least 40 games played shot 21.7%. That in and of itself seems like cause for concern. To put it another way, he nearly reached 40 goals in spite of taking fewer than 150 shots (1.8 SOG/GP).

As much as it has been a pleasure to watch Kuzmenko in his first NHL season, I’d have to bet on his goal total dropping from 38 in 2023-24. He will clearly need to shoot the puck more, and it will be critical for him to stay on the first-unit power play. Rick Tocchet isn’t afraid of shaking things up if something isn’t working, so Kuzmenko will need to prove his worth by continued goal scoring as well as better defensive awareness. (jun3)

4. Even though they missed the playoffs, the Penguins will be locked in to compete next season. In other words, a rebuild is off the table while Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Kris Letang are all under contract. It will be up to the new Penguins management team to surround these three veterans with the right mix of support players to return to the playoffs… and hope for a run similar to this season’s Florida Panthers once there.

One key decision that Dubas will have that will affect fantasy leagues centers around the goaltending, as Tristan Jarry is set to become a UFA. The Pens have just over $20 million in cap space, so it will be interesting to see what kind of offer will the Penguins make to Jarry, if they decide to make one at all. Jarry projects at just over $5 million according to our Salary Projections, so it seems as though the Penguins can fit him in. They also need upgrades on both their defense and their depth forwards, so it may not be as simple as re-signing the starting goalie. (jun2)

5. Dubas’s announcement couldn’t have been timelier, as the Penguins tweeted it half an hour before the Leafs’ press conference to announce Brad Treliving as their new general manager. More in that further below. 

6. Patrick Kane has undergone a hip resurfacing operation where he is expected to need 4-6 months of recovery time. The best-case scenario is that he is ready for the season, but the worst-case scenario means he will be sidelined until December.

Kane struggled for most of the 2022-23 season by his standards, although part of that might be attributed to the fact that he was surrounded by little to no top-level scoring talent on the rebuilding Blackhawks. Yet even after being acquired by the Rangers, Kane was well below a point per game with 12 points in 19 regular-season games. His production improved somewhat during the playoffs (6 points in 7 games), but he was held without a point in his final three games. Kane has stated that he was affected by the injury during the playoffs, so it’s possible that the hip also bothered him during the regular season. (jun2)

7. Kane is also a UFA, so teams will also have to factor in that he may have little to no training camp to get up to speed, even if he doesn’t miss any regular-season games. He has significant risk from a fantasy perspective entering next season, although he could easily return to the point-per-game club once he returns with his newly repaired hip. Don't forget to move him down your pre-draft rankings in single-season leagues. I moved him out of the Top 100 Roto Rankings in April, and with this latest news it seems unlikely he'll be back there before the season starts. (jun2)

8. Throughout the summer, I’ll be touring through the various Frozen Tools stat categories, looking for players that stood out in some unusual way in the hopes of finding some hidden fantasy value. Today I’ll look for players with unusually high or low power-play goal totals relative to their overall goal total.

Leon Draisaitl: He led all players with 32 power-play goals, which is noteworthy because no one else had more than 21 power-play goals. On the flipside, Draisaitl had only 19 even-strength goals, a number that was surpassed by 75 other players, such as Frederick Gaudreau and Tomas Tatar. This is significant because Draisaitl was the fourth-leading goal scorer with 52 goals overall. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how they were scored, just that they were scored. If your league has a separate power-play category, then you’re filling multiple boxes.

In case you’re wondering, several other players had more power-play goals than even-strength goals, but the next-highest difference after Draisaitl (13) was 4 (shared by Nicklas Backstrom, Drake Batherson, and power-play specialist Alex Chiasson). If the Oilers’ power-play conversion rate sharply declines next season (which I’m not betting on happening), Draisaitl’s goal total would take a major hit.

Overall, there shouldn’t be much worry about Draisaitl maintaining his elite status. He’s now posted three 50-goal seasons in his career, and no player has scored as many goals as he has over the last five seasons (231). During that time, he’s managed to maintain a shooting percentage between 18-22% in a season, which is incredibly high. (jun2)

9. Today was the release day for the 2023 Dobber Hockey Prospects Report! Not only does it give a thorough review, update, and projection for teams and a dozen (or more) of their current prospects, but digs into the 2023 draft class as well. Help support the site by getting all you need to know about hockey prospects all in one place! (jun1)

10. There was much speculation since Kyle Dubas's firing as GM of the Toronto Maple Leafs, and the team finally announced who his replacement would last Wednesday: Brad Treliving.

Treliving was most recently the GM for Calgary, and his handling of the Tkachuk/Florida deal is something a lot of people talk about. I would like to point out his draft history in his first few seasons as he took over as GM in 2014. I will cut it off at 2017; he had a bad draft year in 2018 and many guys drafted in 2019 or later are current AHL mainstays that should be with the club eventually (Dustin Wolf, Jakob Pelletier, Matthew Coronato etc.).  

• Sam Bennett (2014, 4^th overall, maybe not great, but Michael Dal Colle, Jake Virtanen, and Haydn Fleury were the next three off the board that year, so, maybe not so bad)
• Rasmus Andersson (2015, 53^rd)
• Oliver Kylington (2015, 60^th)
• Andrew Mangiapane (2015, 166^th)
• Matthew Tkachuk (2016, 6^th)
• Dillon Dube (2016, 56^th)
• Adam Fox (2016, 66^th)
• Matthew Phillips (2016, 166^th)
• Juuso Valimaki (2017, 16^th)
• Adam Ruzicka (2017, 109^th)

Those are 10 picks over three seasons where eight of them are now NHL regulars, six of them are top-half-of-the-roster players, and two of them are superstars. Oh, and only two picks inside the top-50 in that span. One thing I did notice about Toronto’s playoff run is that outside the Big Four, the only playoff forward they had that they drafted was Matthew Knies, and he came straight from college. If Treliving’s first few years of drafting in Toronto can mirror what he did in Calgary, it would be a monumental win for the Leafs. (jun1)

11. The immediate concern is what to do about that Big Four with Auston Matthews and William Nylander both unrestricted free agents a year from now, and both will command monster salaries. He’s walking into a very difficult job that won’t relent, but good drafting over the next few years will go a long way to rebuilding a sustained contender. (jun1)

12. In my Ramblings on Tuesday, I finished my series of reviewing the fantasy seasons of each non-playoff team. That Ramblings covered just the Anaheim Ducks but also contains all the links for each team at the bottom of the article. Thanks to everyone that read along through that series and sent along nice notes (and not-as-nice notes, as even those are helpful at times). (jun1)

13. It is nearly time to turn the page. We have both the Entry Draft and Free Agent Frenzy in the next month, and that is a huge time of year for the hockey world at large. Before we do that, I want to aim my gaze towards the playoff teams that have been eliminated thus far. More specifically, just some thoughts on some playoff (under)performers and what it could mean for the next fantasy season, and beyond. No conclusions will be drawn here because of the sample, but we are looking for certain signs of life (or not).

Wyatt Johnston: Things didn’t go the way the Stars or Johnston had hoped for in the Western Conference Final. A suspension to Jamie Benn and injury to Evgenii Dadonov led to inconsistent line mates for Johnston, and the Stars were outscored 5-0 when he was on the ice at 5-on-5 in the series as a result. The rookie ended the series without registering a point, too, though he did manage 21 shots in 98:25 of TOI.

The poor finish shouldn’t overshadow what was a good playoffs for Johnston. Until the Vegas series, his line outscored the opposition 6-4 at 5-on-5, out-chanced them 74-58, and Johnston had four goals in 13 games. Not only that, but in those first two rounds, no Dallas forward played more at 5-on-5 than Johnston. Perhaps the Vegas series was a letdown, but he’s still a rookie who started the postseason as a teenager and Corey Sznajder’s tracking data has Johnston leading the team in scoring chances (other sites will have Hintz in first). I stand pretty firm in my position that there’s a reasonable chance Johnston ends up the best rookie from this year’s class, and he’s very likely among the top-end guys like Owen Power and Matty Beniers. (jun1)

14. It seems as though the Flames will be adding more youth to the lineup and are looking for some better asset management. That begins with the GM, and in fantasy terms it means the top producers at the AHL level are more likely to get an NHL shot, and not losing players like Juuso Valimaki on waivers.

That bodes well for Matthew Coronato, Jakob Pelletier, and Walker Duehr, who would be the odds-on favourites for the 10-12 spots on forward this coming year. It sounds as though Calgary won’t be filling those holes via the FA market just for the sake of it. If anything, there could be a few “core” pieces moving out, providing even more room for the saplings to grow.

Last week, new GM Craig Conroy also talked about the options for Dustin Wolf. It sounds like the top priority is getting him starts, with the hope being that they can find a trade and make the majority of them games at the NHL level. All three of Jakob Markstrom, Dan Vladar, and Wolf may have single-season value this year, though for the former two it may depend on what team one of them gets traded to. The landing in Pittsburgh for example would not be soft. (may31)

15. The latest cap league rankings are out for skaters and goalies, as well as the projections for the top-100 free agents. They’re all linked there, and let me know what comments you have, because I know there will be some. (may31)

16. This is just me talking out loud, but it sure feels as if Buffalo is going to make a big trade this summer, doesn’t it? They find themselves in the unique situation of having several solid contributors being on entry-level contracts like Jack Quinn, JJ Peterka (whom Dobber wrote about in his Ramblings yesterday), Peyton Krebs, and Owen Power. They do have to consider extensions for Krebs, Power, and Casey Mittelstadt, as well as Rasmus Dahlin, in the very near-term, but those extensions also give them cost certainty.

I bring this up because as it is, Buffalo has 11 forwards signed for 2023-24, not including Zemgus Girgensons (UFA) and Tyson Jost (RFA). If they’re brought back, their forward group is completely full. The team also has Matt Savoie, Jiri Kulich, and Noah Ostlund on the way very soon. (Even Isak Rosen is drawing pretty good reviews.) They can send guys down or stuff someone in the AHL, but clearing room for an impact player (maybe on defense) is something they have the cap space and assets to do. It would not shock me to see them be a big player for high-end RFAs like Alex DeBrincat, Jesper Bratt, or Evan Bouchard. Whether they offer what is expected, or the teams have a desire to move those players, is another question, but it’s all lining up for the Sabres to make a huge splash. (may30)

17. For your consideration: Matthew Tkachuk was available last summer. He is a unicorn (well, his brother Brady, too). There is nobody like him, as we now see, with that combination of skill and power. Toronto would not have even considered giving up Auston Matthews and Rasmus Sandin for him (but that would have landed him I have no doubt). Had they done it, would that have been the missing piece? (may29)

18. The World Hockey Championships concluded on the weekend with Team Canada taking gold. Team USA dominated the prelims and then the first playoff game against Czechia. But things fell off the rails for them as they lost in OT to Germany…and then lost the bronze medal game to Latvia in OT. The two worst times to suffer your only two losses.

Rocco Grimaldi led the tournament in production with 14 points in 10 games. But the next two top scorers are of fantasy interest.

Dominik Kubalik led the tourney in points-per-game average (12 points in eight games) and he’s a curious case. If you recall, he started the season with 22 points in 21 games before hitting a wall and managing just 23 in 60. He fell off a cliff! There’s a market correction and then there’s…whatever that was. Write him off as a 45-50 point player? Or is he a big star finally coming into his own? I tend to lean towards the former. His ice time was down by two minutes after that first quarter of the season. His PPPts was 10 in that first quarter, but just seven the other three quarters combined. His PP TOI went down by nearly two minutes. He’s a shot-volume producer, and his SOG went from 61 in the first quarter to an average of just under 40 per quarter after that. He’s very reliant on PP time and linemates.

In third spot, also with 12 points, was Buffalo rookie JJ Peterka. He and Moritz Seider were the top players on the silver medal winners. When we talk about the young Sabres stars in the lineup or on their way to the lineup, not enough is said about Peterka. Like he’s the forgotten one. But he was a very high draft pick (34^th overall) and in his North American debut season he had 68 points in 70 games in the AHL. And then he made the Sabres when there really wasn’t room – he just made it clear that he was an NHLer, and he stole a roster spot. There’s only so much ice time and PP time to go around. By my count – Jeff Skinner, Dylan Cozens, Tage Thompson, Alex Tuch, Casey Mittelstadt, Jack Quinn and Peyton Krebs are also in the mix, and that’s assuming Jiri Kulich stays in the AHL for another year. (may29)

19. Other notes: Mikko Rantanen…didn’t score. At all. Nine assists in eight games for Team Finland to lead the team in points, but zero goals.

Vancouver prospect goalie Arturs Silovs stood on his head. Safe to say he was key in his country take bronze. He’s only 22, so he needs a couple more years, but the 6-4 netminder is swiftly gaining notice.

New Jersey prospect Simon Nemec was pointless in five games for Slovakia.

Impressing for Team Sweden in what was a disappointing tournament for them, was Detroit teammates Jonatan Berggren (seven points in eight games) and Lucas Raymond (eight in eight). Longer term, Raymond is the better goal scorer, and ‘should’ have higher upside. But Berggren’s upside is very close – close enough where I wouldn’t be paying too much more for Raymond than I would for Berggren. If you’re trying to get Raymond from his keeper owner, and the price is just too high – Berggren makes for a great Plan B at a much better price. And it may end up working even better for you.

Also impressing for Sweden was Timothy Liljegren, who managed four points in five games. (may29)

20. Denis Malgin, who really needs an NHL team to let him settle down and get comfortable (Colorado seems to be doing that), led Team Switzerland in scoring with six in six, tied with other players including Kevin Fiala. Malgin had 11 goals in his last 37 games with the Avs. Although he was pointless in the playoffs, he did only average 7:39 TOI per game. Not draftable…but I would be super-quick on the waiver wire when the season begins and he’s on a good line or does well early. (may29)

21. Team USA was made up of Alex Tuch, Conor Garland, Nick Bonino and a bunch of prospects and a few journeymen.

Cutter Gauthier (Flyers) scored seven goals in 10 games. For my money, he’s been one of the three or four most improved prospects of the past year. His fantasy value has really spiked.

Lane Hutson and Scott Perunovich led the USA defense corps with six points and eight points respectively. Hutson had tied Luke Hughes for the NCAA lead in scoring among defensemen. He is Montreal’s prospect, and will remain with Boston University for another season. He desperately needs to add bulk and get stronger, but nobody is denying his talent. (may29)

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