Since I tend to study players that I add to my team fairly closely, I'm going to discuss three players that I've added to my dynasty team this offseason.

One of these players is Connor Bedard, who I was able to add because I won my league's draft lottery tournament. There are already a ton of projections and guesstimations about how many points Bedard will attain in his rookie season, so I don't think I need to bother including anything here.

Oh, you would like to know what mine would be?

Okay. Well, first off, my projection won't be as high as that of Dobber, who is forecasting 91 points. He explains why here. I've also seen some conservative estimations of 55-60 points, which upon further review seem kind of low given his talents. I'm not sure yet that Bedard will be McDavid's equal, but I could be proven wrong on that. Given that no else one on the Blackhawks will likely crack 60 points and the second-leading scorer on the team may barely crack 50, I think that 70 is a reasonable assumption for the Calder Trophy winner-to-be (yes, I put that out into the universe as well).

Coincidentally as I'm writing this, Bedard just scored a hat trick in his first-ever appearance in a Blackhawks uniform. It's the Tom Kurvers Prospect Showcase against other prospects, but he's making it look way too easy with that shot. Blues fans must already be having nightmares about their new division rival.

Connor Bedard is here 🤩pic.twitter.com/wJX0I62Kdx

— Hockey Daily 365 l NHL Highlights & News (@HockeyDaily365) September 17, 2023

Connor Bedard scored again 😅 pic.twitter.com/B44S0hA2sM

— Hockey Daily 365 l NHL Highlights & News (@HockeyDaily365) September 17, 2023

Connor Bedard's hat trick goal looks just so nonchalant: pic.twitter.com/J2pc8sUoC9

— Ben Pope (@BenPopeCST) September 17, 2023

Not to be outdone, Adam Fantilli recorded a hat trick of his own. Man, the Blue Jackets needed something positive after the week that they had with Babcock phone-gate.

Adam. Fantilli. 🔥 pic.twitter.com/49cgxidUpQ

— The CBJ Center (@CBJcenter) September 16, 2023

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Getting back to players I recently added to my team, I wasn't a huge William Nylander guy until I saw him step up in the playoffs a couple seasons ago. So when I received the opportunity to trade for him for a very reasonable price recently, I took it.

Although his nearly $7 million cap hit seemed like a lot at the time that he signed his contract in 2018, it seems like a very fair deal now. Nylander has only gotten better from there, reaching the 40-goal mark and over a point per game for the first time in his career in 2022-23.

The contract year theory might suggest that he will add to those numbers, which may be true. In order to do that, he will need to keep his shot rate at over 3.5 SOG/GP, which allowed him to nearly reach 300 SOG for the first time in his career. 

Nylander's PP IPP has been in the 60-70% range for most of his career, but it dropped to 52% last season. Toronto has a very strong power play, but that number is a slight concern. Same with his secondary assist percentage (42.6%), which is a bit high. Overall, his scoring should dip slightly, but he still seems like a good bet to score at a point-per-game pace again with a Leafs team that looks very robust offensively.

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After stints with the Canucks, Panthers, Penguins, and Leafs (sort of), Jared McCann has found a home in Seattle. Before being picked up by the expansion Kraken, McCann's career high was 35 points. In his two seasons in Seattle, he has established consecutive career highs in both goals (27, then 40) and points (50, then 70). There might be more 40-goal scorers now than there were in more dead-puck-type eras, but McCann was one of 20 players to reach the 40-goal mark in 2022-23.

We knew there would be players that would benefit from moving to Seattle during expansion, and McCann definitely qualifies as one of those players. His overall icetime has increased by two minutes per game from his pre-Seattle days, even though icetime is distributed relatively evenly among the four lines. He's also playing on the first-unit power play there, which he couldn't crack with his previous teams.

Another 40-goal season doesn't seem likely, but don't expect a major dropoff either. McCann's 19.0 SH% is higher than what it has been throughout his career, but he's maintained a shot rate of 2.7 SOG/GP over his two seasons in Seattle. In addition, he reached the 200-shot mark for the first time in his career in 2022-23. Expect him to be a main scoring threat for the Kraken, but a secondary scorer for fantasy teams.

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Did you know that if you go to Frozen Tools, go under the Research heading and select Schedule Planner, you can determine which teams have the most light days for any period? It can be for one week or the entire season – just select Custom Date Range if the date range you want doesn't appear on the drop-down list.

If you're not sure what the definition of "light day" is, it is any day with eight or fewer games. These are days where scheduling conflicts are unlikely so that you don't have to decide between starting two or more players.

From October 10 (first day of season) to April 18 (last day of season), Anaheim and Washington have the most light days (37), while Tampa Bay has the fewest (17). If you want to look up a particular team, just click the link here. You can always adjust the date range to the last day of your regular season.

What about busy days? A reader named Mario sent me a spreadsheet showing me the number of times that a team plays on days with X number of games. I could then calculate the number of times that a team plays on busy days. But first, I had to determine what exactly a "busy day" is. In other words, what is the minimum number of games that have to be on a certain day in order for it to be considered "busy"?

Obviously this number is variable by position, but as a rough estimate, let's say you have one bench slot for every three starting slots. That fits with the positions listed in a Yahoo mock draft (and I believe their public leagues as well), where 12 players start (2 C, 2 LW, 2 RW, 4 D, 2 G) and four more players sit on the bench. If there are 12 games on the schedule, then 24 of the league's 32 teams play. The odds are that you would have one player on the bench and three starting. If everything worked perfectly, you would have no roster conflicts. But… on this spreadsheet, there were a considerably higher number of nights with 12 games than there were 11, so I'll use a cutoff of 12 games.

Here are the number of busy nights per team during the 2023-24 season:

37 – Tampa Bay

35 – Boston, Nashville

34 – Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver

33 – Buffalo, Carolina, Dallas, Philadelphia

32 – Calgary, Ottawa

31 – Detroit, Florida, San Jose, St. Louis

30 – Colorado, NY Islanders, Pittsburgh

29 – Edmonton, Los Angeles, Vegas, Washington

28 – Arizona, Columbus, Minnesota, NY Rangers, Winnipeg

27 – New Jersey, Seattle

26 – Chicago

22 – Anaheim

So generally speaking, there seems to be an inverse correlation between the number of busy days and the number of light days by team. Anaheim is again ideal for lack of busy nights, while Tampa's schedule seems to be heavily concentrated around the busy nights. That doesn't mean you shouldn't draft top-level Tampa players, since you should be starting your best players regardless. But you'll get much more mileage out of an Anaheim bench-type player than you will from a similar one from Tampa.

As has been the case in previous seasons, Forum user rjfisher83 has provided a Same Night Tool, where you can determine which teams work best with the players you currently have as far as conflicts go. This could come in handy late in your draft, or you could use it throughout the season when choosing between two or more bench players. A great tool for maximum roster efficiency!

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