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. A stat you didn’t expect: The Oilers have scored just 17 goals in seven games. Maybe they wouldn’t have been shut out by an aging Jonathan Quick on Thursday if Connor McDavid were in the lineup. As I mentioned last week, Edmonton’s lack of depth beyond their top five scorers is a serious concern.

One of those top five scorers is of course Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. After a fast start of six points in three games, Nugent-Hopkins has no points and is a minus-8 in his last four games. I’m not sure whether I should recommend him as a buy-low, since I already thought he would regress from his 104-point season.

Connor Brown has yet to record a point in seven games as an Oiler. His most frequent linemates have been Dylan Holloway and Ryan McLeod, not McDavid as hoped. Of course, line deployments can and will change, but you shouldn’t be clinging onto Brown the same way you would with an underproducing superstar. (oct28)

2. The Oilers and their Alberta rivals are on a collision course of struggling teams for Sunday’s (today) outdoor game (today). So far, Jonathan Huberdeau‘s struggles from last season have carried over to this season. He generated zero shots on goal on Thursday with just 14 minutes of icetime. In fact, the top line of Huberdeau, Elias Lindholm and Nazem Kadri did not generate a single shot attempt together at even strength on Thursday.

I still think Huberdeau can be a lot better, but it’s hard to cite bad luck with specific samples like this one. Plain and simple, Huberdeau seemed better suited for his situation in Florida, whether that be the team’s system or the external setting such as the weather or playing in a Canadian market.

Points-wise, Kadri has been even worse that Huberdeau (just a single assist in eight games). Kadri has at least taken 23 shots in eight games, so the goals should start to come. Interestingly enough, there are a few players (former Flames Matthew Tkachuk and Johnny Gaudreau, Scott Laughton, Roman Josi) who have taken more shots than Kadri, but have yet to score a goal. (oct28)

3. The big news from Thursday was that Ottawa forward Shane Pinto will be suspended for half the regular season – 41 games – for a violation related to gambling but unrelated to gambling on the NHL. Fantasy-wise, it may mean a regular role with good offensive wingers for Ridly Greig. He went into last night’s game averaging over 15 minutes a night with five points and 13 shots in six games. He is a guy that lays the body – 42 hits in 26 career games – so there may be some medium-term fantasy value in banger leagues here. (oct27)

4. The Sharks announced winger Alexander Barabanov (broken finger) will be out for a while. Not that Barabanov, or Sharks skaters in general, are targets for fantasy but it may give opportunities to other players to skate top minutes with Tomas Hertl. It was Kevin Labanc getting the first crack in Thursday’s game against Tampa Bay, though that’s likely a situation that often changes over the next several weeks.

The team also said that Mikael Granlund is week-to-week again due to injury. He has appeared in just one game in his first year with the Sharks. It certainly gives the younger players more of an opportunity but, again, there’s really not a lot to play alongside of here. (oct27)

5. Jack Roslovic has new linemates (Johnny Gaudreau, Boone Jenner)  these days. It makes sense the Jackets are trying new things with Patrik Laine out and the team still not playing up to their expectations. Praise has been effusive for Roslovic so far this season so maybe he can make something out of this opportunity. (oct26)

6. What constitutes a surprise in fantasy will vary from person to person. I am surprised that Brandon Hagel has lost his 5-on-5 and power play role, but others may not be. This is strictly from my perspective, which will be different from what others have. Please keep that in mind.

Alright, let’s get to some shocking starts. We will exclude the very obvious guys, namely the ones in Detroit.

Travis Sanheim: That Philadelphia would probably be better if Sean Couturier and Cam Atkinson were healthy, along with younger guys like Bobby Brink and Tyson Foerster making an impact, was believable. What was hard to envision was Sanheim looking like the defenceman he was 4-5 years ago, and not the guy he’d been for a few years now, while skating heavy minutes.

Entering Thursday, the team was controlling nearly 57% of the shot attempts and 65% of the expected goals with him on the ice at 5-on-5 as he and Cam York have formed a great top pair for the team. That the Flyers were shooting ~3% with them on the ice is why their actual results aren’t much better. Once that regresses positively, the points (and goal differential) will follow. (oct26)

7. Joseph Woll: This isn’t a huge surprise, necessarily, as Woll is one of the late-round goalies I was targeting in drafts. There is a difference, however, between “I think he could steal starts from Ilya Samsonov” to “he has one of the top save percentages in the NHL through two weeks”.

Of course, four games mean nothing for any player’s future, and that goes double for goalies. Woll is now up to a 0,934 save percentage in 15 regular season games, a 0,915 in four playoff games, and improved save percentages in four straight AHL seasons, finishing with a 0,927 last year.

Samsonov has had immense struggles to start his season, allowing 17 goals on just 107 shots. Toronto does not have a back-to-back situation for a couple more weeks and it’ll be interesting to see how the Leafs handle their goalies in the meantime. They won’t give any netminder Juuse Saros-like workloads, but it can’t be long until Woll is the 1A in their 1A/1B situation if things keep going as they are. (oct26)

8. Joel Eriksson Ek: There are reasons for concern in Minnesota, but fantasy owners have to be enamoured with Eriksson Ek’s start. He is a forward I thought was being undervalued in drafts but envisioning this type of early production, particularly with Matt Boldy missing so much time already, was impossible: five goals, four assists, 18 penalty minutes, 19 shots, three blocks, and 14 hits in eight games. He had 10 points in the team’s first 16 games last season so he’s off to a scorching start here.

The shot volume is a big point here. Even without Boldy, Eriksson Ek has managed at least three shots on goal in five of his last six games. Being over three shots per game helps create a goal-scoring floor and he’s more involved in the power play than ever. (oct26)

9. Quinn Hughes: The Discourse is extremely tiresome, but here we are. It’s not that he’s off to an incredible production start, though eight points in eight games is obviously excellent. No, what is more interesting is his shot total: 28 pucks on target through the early portion of the season. Last season, he had a six-game stretch in March with 17 shots, and one with 20 shots in February/March of the year prior, but never 21 shots. It literally is a career-best run for him, shots-wise, and it’s not just being fortunate with how much he’s hitting the net: This past week, at 5-on-5, Hughes The Elder was in the 94^th percentile for shot attempts per minute, trailing only Dougie Hamilton in attempts per minute at all strengths. He is legitimately shooting the puck as if he’s Brent Burns or Evan Bouchard, and that is quite surprising.

This is the next gear fantasy owners needed to see for Hughes’s fantasy value. Putting up 70-point seasons is phenomenal but doing it with fewer than two shots per game and single-digit goal totals does not give a very broad fantasy profile; he was the Joe Thornton of defencemen. The multi-cat value is still precarious because he doesn’t block or hit very much, but just adding shots and goals is a huge boost to his fantasy game. Let’s see if he can keep it up for the next five months. (oct26)

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10. Anthony Duclair was traded in the summer, before the Panthers signed Evan Rodrigues to the exact same cap hit, and taking over his top-six spot as well. Rodrigues has filled in marvelously with eight points in seven games overall on the year. Duclair meanwhile hasn’t had the same success with lesser linemates in San Jose, though eight games he only has one goal, 11 shots, and is a minus-6. It’s tough to say anyone on that team will turn things around much either. (oct25)

11. Don’t look now, but Timo Meier has six points in his last four games. If he can keep scoring even at a 65-point-pace, then he saves some of his value. The real issue though is that his ice time hasn’t been high enough for him to keep up the peripheral-stuffing that has made him so valuable the last few years. It just seems like the Devils have the puck too often, and too much skill to manage it effectively, so Meier just isn’t as effective with the hit or shot volume. Tough to get too excited about a big rebound unless something changes. (oct25)

12. Alex Barre-Boulet has two goals in his last three games, but more importantly, he’s playing on the top line with Brayden Point and Nikita Kcuherov. There aren’t many better landing spots in the league, and for a player whose offensive skill was never in question, that he finally seems to be sticking now on an offensive line, he could coast at a 50+ point pace the rest of the year and no one should really be too surprised. (oct25)

13. Ryan Hartman (5-3-8 in 8 GP) may be due for some regression, but a 65- to 70-point campaign is certainly not out of the question if he keeps this deployment. With all four lines looking decent to start, it's looking rosy for now. (oct25)

14. Pavel Buchnevich made his return to the Blues this week, and it was an especially welcome sight for his fantasy owners, as Buch aims to increase his scoring rate for the seventh consecutive year. The smart money on this point is on the under for that, though he should still pace for 70+ points by the end of the year. (oct25)

15. Bryan Rust is already a quarter of the way to last-season’s goal total, having scored his fifth of the season this week. Playing with Sidney Crosby and Jake Guentzel, while the rest of the lineup looks deeper than ever, Rust is looking like he’s back to the player he was from 2020-22. He may be shooting about double his career-norm, but he also has but one an assist thus far, and at the rate Crosby and Guentzel can put pucks in the net, there will be some balancing across his stat columns as the season wears on. His near-three shots per game are also very promising, too. (oct25)

16. Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen threw his name into the Sabres' ring this week to run with a few more starts. The Sabres may not need perfect goaltending to make the playoffs, so whoever of the goaltending trio gets hot at the right time, could easily get a longer leash and cash it in for at least 25 wins on the year. (oct25)

17. Joe Veleno is up to five goals through nine games (with an assist on the books for good measure). He’s having the offensive breakout that I was expecting from Jonatan Berggren this year. As a cente behind Dylan Larkin, J.T. Compher, and Andrew Copp, Veleno is seeing 14 minutes per game. Luckily for him, it’s mostly offensive-zone time, and he has recently been set up with two very efficient offensive producers in Daniel Sprong and David Perron. Sprong himself was an excellent producer in limited minutes last year, so we already know he can put up those kind of numbers as well, and now Veleno appears to be tagging on. (oct25)

18. We are through two weeks of the NHL season and that gives us time to take stock. Each offseason, there are hundreds of players written about in these Ramblings. There are a handful, though, that get more digital ink than others. Every fantasy analyst has their favourite players, for one reason or another, that are always top-of-mind. Follow the link for more, as we update 10 players I was targeting in the offseason and their starts to the 2023-24 campaign, both good and bad.

19. Thomas Chabot is expected to miss the next 4-6 weeks with a fractured hand. Chabot had recently lost the top power-play role on the Senators, so his fantasy value was already taking a hit anyway. Store him on IR, but it may be possible to drop him outright in shallower leagues with roster spots for fewer than four defensemen. Erik Brannstrom and Artem Zub are also injured, which could mean continued struggles for Joonas Korpisalo and Anton Forsberg (both with sub-.900 SV%). Jakob Chychrun logged 28 minutes on Thursday (with 9 SOG as well), so he might see some heavy usage over the next month. Same with Jake Sanderson. (oct28)

20. Jason Robertson was drafted in the top 10 of many fantasy drafts, but he hasn’t played that way so far, as he's 1-3-4 in six games. Moreover, Robertson’s shot per game average is down from nearly four shots per game last season to under tthree shots per game this season. There’s still lots of time to turn this around, but Robertson will need to find a way to shoot the puck more before he can take another run at 50 goals. He’s still on one of the league’s top scoring lines with Roope Hintz and Joe Pavelski, who have themselves combined for five goals.

21. And finally, it was a successful first effort for the NHL with its Frozen Frenzy on Tuesday night. Despite some hiccups in Columbus, or with a couple production issues, it seemed to have gone off without a hitch. It would have been nice if they hadn’t scheduled it for the first day of the NBA season but as with all things in the NHL, baby steps. Hopefully they do it again next year on a Saturday, even if it’s after the NFL/college football seasons end. (oct26)

We had hockey straight from 6pm EST with the beginning of the Leafs and Capitals game, all the way to the end of the late game between the Golden Knights and the Flyers.

Generally, I like the idea of staggered start times, but for fantasy purposes, having every play on the same night is not ideal for team management. It does give an advantage to those top-heavy teams, and those GMs that are a little more on top of the schedule than your average Joe. If it becomes a more regular thing, then a slight adjustment in fantasy strategy may be needed for you to load up on the teams with heavy off-night schedules, and to focus on the top-tier talent rather than the depth players who will be benched in nights like this anyways. (oct25)

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Have a good week, folks!

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