With a few exceptions, zero is not a number you want to see in fantasy hockey. Aside from a shutout from your starting netminder, seeing a zero pretty much means that your players are not performing. 

Maybe you’re accepting of a few zeros if it’s just one game. Maybe you’re tolerant if it’s a week or two. But to see zeros in stats for the season so far is a whole level of frustration that belongs to one of the seven circles of fantasy hell. 

It’s unacceptable that, as teams are now reaching the 15-game mark of the season, that we see players unable to contribute in any considerable way in those peripheral categories.

For those curious, there is one player who has a perfect zero across all categories, but he’s only played in two games: Akito Hirose.

Below are the top 10 players who are posting zero stats in fantasy-relevant categories. For each category, there are several other nominees, plus the overall winner. To keep the list smaller, a player can only be nominated for one category in total (you can call this the Jeff Carter rule). 

10. Hits

The nominees: Matt Coronato, Kevin Korchinksi, David Gustafsson

The winner is: Johnny Gaudreau. This was never in doubt. Gaudreau never likes to throw a check, not even accidentally. His career high was 26 back in 2015-16, but he’s only hit double digits once in the last five years. Back in 2019-20, he somehow managed to get one hit in 70 games, which makes me believe the statistician somehow confused him with another player in that game. Knowing his lack of production in this category, you never take Gaudreau hoping he’s going to turn into Matt Martin, but you hope his point total can help make up for the lack of hits. Unfortunately, he has six points in 15 games this year and is pretty much droppable in most leagues. 

9. Wins

The nominee: Dustin Wolf

The winner is: Kaapo Kahkonen. There’s not much of a list of candidates for this one, as these are the only two netminders to start a game and not pick up a win. The difference is Wolf has played just one game, while Kahkonen has started five games and played six total. San Jose is awful, but it was Mackenzie Blackwood who picked up the wins against Philadelphia and Edmonton last week. Making it tougher on Kahkonen is the lack of playing time, as he has one start in San Jose’s last five games, and that was against the Vegas Golden Knights on Friday night. 

8. PIM 

The nominees: Shea Theodore, Brock Boeser, Alex Pietrangelo, Shayne Gostisbehere

The winner is: Morgan Rielly. There are a lot of fantasy leagues that don’t count PIM as a stat, but the only one I am in that fails to do so is a points-only league. None of the nominees are players you would have drafted hoping for PIM, but anything would have been a nice bonus. They don’t need to goon it up, but maybe a few hooking or tripping penalties to help us win a head-to-head matchup would be nice. Rielly had 61 PIM combined between 2021-22 and 2022-23, led by his 40 PIM two seasons ago. This year, even though he’s averaging 23:50 per game (the second highest of his career), he’s been looking more like a Lady Byng nominee.

7. Losses

The nominees: Casey DeSmith, Pheonix Copley

The winner is: Jonathan Quick. The Rangers improved their backup netminder this season. No offense to Jaroslav Halak, but he struggled early with the Rangers last year and finished with a 10-9-5 record. Quick has been excellent so far this season, going 4-0-1 with a shutout, a 1.98 GAA and a .929 SV%. He’s playing well enough that it wouldn’t be a surprise if the Rangers want to rest Igor Shesterkin more this season so he’s fresh for the playoffs, which will mean more starts for Quick. 

6. Goals

The nominees: Filip Hronek, Mikhail Sergachev, Jean-Gabriel Pageau, Josh Anderson, T.J. Oshie, Jordan Martinook

The winner is: Rickard Rakell. Arguments could easily be made for Anderson, who is on the top unit (and the top power-play unit) and still hasn’t bulged the twine. However, Rakell is coming off a 28-goal campaign and is mostly playing with Evgeni Malkin (about 87.8 percent of Rakell’s five-on-five minutes this year have been with Malkin, according to numbers from Natural Stat Trick). He’s also taken 37 shots, which leads the league among all goal-less players.

5. Points

The nominees: Yakov Trenin, Jeff Carter, Ryan Reaves, Adam Boqvist

The winner is: Connor Brown. Ninety-two players have seen action in at least one game and have not picked up a point. Most are names you would expect, or maybe they’ve only played one or two contests. Brown started the season on the top line with Connor McDavid, but it didn’t take long for him to drop down to a bottom-six role, and is pointless in nine games. He’s been injured recently, which has been a good thing for the Oilers as he’s set to be paid a performance bonus of $3.25 million if he plays one more game. New Oilers’ head coach Kris Knoblauch coached Brown in junior, so maybe he can get any type of production from Brown once he is back from injury. 

4. Power-Play Points

The nominees: Bryan Rust, Zach Werenski, Thomas Chabot, Devon Toews, Owen Tippett, Kris Letang

The winner: Torey Krug. Some of the players on the list just aren’t getting the power-play time they have in the past, and Chabot is getting a bit of a pass because of his injury. Krug, though, is still getting plenty of opportunities. We’re a long way away from when he could hit 25 power-play points with ease, and injuries have lowered his numbers, but he still had 14 man-advantage markers in 63 games a year ago. This year, he’s on the ice for 57.9 percent of the Blues’ power-play minutes. Even with Sunday’s two power-play tallies, St. Louis has only scored three power-play goals this year, tying them with Philadelphia for the worst power play in the league.

3. Assists

The nominees: Dawson Mercer, Nico Hischier, Erik Johnson, Pius Suter, Filip Zadina

The winner is: Dylan Strome. A year ago, Strome played mainly with Alex Ovechkin, which probably went a long way to Strome notching a career-high 42 assists. This year, Ovechkin is still his top linemate, but Ovi’s slow start of four goals is not helping anyone. Strome is also on the top power-play unit, which makes it a little more frustrating. He does have six goals, which is a nice bonus, but if you have Strome (or Ovi, for that matter), you’re hoping Strome can start picking up some assists. 

2. Power-play goals

The nominees: Tim Stutzle, Adrian Kempe, Jake Guentzel, Nathan MacKinnon

The winner is: Matthew Tkachuk. Tkachuk has averaged 13 power-play goals in each of the past two seasons, and his two power-play points on Sunday put his power-play total to three. It’s a little obscene that he hasn’t been more productive, considering he is averaging almost four minutes per night with the man advantage, which is about 78.2 percent of Florida’s power-play minutes. His 18 power-play shots are eighth highest in the league, and the most among any player without a power-play goal. Most interesting about this stat is that he also started slowly last year, not potting his first man-advantage goal until November 24, and then scored a total of 14 on the season. 

1. Games

The nominees: Max Pacioretty, Aaron Ekblad, Logan Couture, Brandon Montour

The winner is: Andrei Vasilevskiy. The latest report is that the Lightning netminder could make his debut right around the American Thanksgiving, which takes place in about 10 days. This is great news for whoever has him stashed in an IR spot as Vasilevskiy has six straight seasons with a minimum of 30 wins. Jonas Johansson has been better than many expected, but he still has a 5-3-4 record with a 3.42 and a 0.899 SV%. Matt Tomkins wasn’t any better, so don’t expect either to usurp starts once Vas is back. Vasilevskiy may take a few contests to get back into game shape, but he will get plenty of action the rest of the season once he returns.