Big news on Sunday dropped with the Washington Capitals in the process of buying the CapFriendly website and all of its background functions. What that means, is that the Capitals will have sole access to any of the data and tools, with the website going dark to the public (and other teams) in early July. At least we will still have it for this year's draft and the early parts of free agency.

CapFriendly had a ridiculous number of useful tools that will be missed, from the team salary layouts, the depth charts, the buyout calculators, the rule FAQs, the draft boards with trades and conditions, and the automatic twitter updates for transactions that were very useful for keeping on top of fringe players for deeper leagues.

PuckPedia seems to be the leading replacement at the moment, and with that kind of a void to fill, either they will step up to fill it completely, or someone else will very quickly.

In the meantime, check out the Frozentools website for all of the fun tools and content over there, and Eric Daoust is always open to suggestions on what could be added to the site as well. Give him a shout if you want to see whether he can replace/replicate something.

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The NHL also confirmed the cap at $88M for next year, with a floor of $65M as well. There are 11 teams currently below the cap floor, and overall a mean of almost $20 million available for NHL teams to spend. With this being the first big rise in many years, and the expectation that the cap will continue to rise (potentially close to $100M by the summer of 2026), there will be a lot of free agents looking to cash in.

The players have been waiting years now for the cap increases to pick back up again, and while the salaries of the star players have continued to rise, a lot of the depth players have been squeezed out. On top of that, with any longer-term contracts being signed now knowing the cap is going up soon, their numbers might be a little higher than expected off the bat knowing that by the end they will be below market value again.

For example, Jake Guentzel might make sense at $8.5 or $9 million now, but it wouldn't surprise me to see something closer to $10 million for him, because by the time the Cap goes up over $10 million in the next three seasons, then that deal looks a lot more palatable, and Guentzel wants a fair share of that pie too.

All that to say, in cap leagues, locking up the guys that have signed long-term deals in the last couple years like Jack Hughes, Jesper Bratt, and Roope Hintz, may be the key to success a few years from now.

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I acquired Vince Dunn in one of my fantasy leagues recently, in a deal with Filip Gustavsson as the main piece going the other way. I like Gus, I think he will do well, I just don't like goalies and would prefer to spend on players and mine the waiver wire for goalies.

Back to Dunn though, one thing that I noticed is that he was extremely consistent for points scoring the last two years, with a 65-point pace each year. That is especially noteworthy considering a point that Brennan brought up in Monday's Ramblings, where Seattle saw one of the largest drop offs in scoring across the league year over year. That suggests first, that there is room for the team to rebound, and two, that Dunn's floor is exceptionally high. If you need some more assurances on Dunn's floor and upside, then we have Rick Roos who already went through this back in January (before Dunn was unfortunately injured for large chunks of the rest of the campaign.

In addition to the points for Dunn, there was one really interesting change from 2022-23 to 2023-24, at that was his hits numbers. We'll go with the per/game rate on account of him missing 23 games, and that difference is staggering. After six straight seasons of rising hit/game rates, culminating at 1.42 hits per game in 2022-23, Dunn suddenly dropped to 0.64 per game. The quick math is that the rate is worse than half, despite similar deployment, and Dunn's average ice time on the season is still above 23 minutes.

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Injury update on Aleksander Barkov, sounds like he is tracking to be an option for game #3:

"If (he) continues to progress, we think he'll be a player for us."

Paul Maurice was in a much better mood today, and it likely had to do with some positive news on Sasha Barkov. Here's everything he had to say about his captain.

Story @TheHockeyNews ⬇️ https://t.co/XlcBlgnw9W

— David Dwork (@DavidDwork) June 11, 2024

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The AHL finals are still not yet set, with the Cleveland Monsters (CLB) having come back from down 3-0 in their best-of-seven conference final. Game seven goes tonight in Hershey against the Bears (WSH).

Coachella Valley (SEA) won the other conference and is awaiting their opponent in the finals. They lost in seven games to Hershey last year and would probably like a chance to avenge that loss.

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At the risk of outlining most of my plans for my leaguemates who may draft around me, I'll share my top-15 list for the NHL draft. That's about as far as I feel partially confident that I'm getting the player I want, and there's some reasoning to back it up from what I can tell through the many scouting resources I digest throughout the season.

To note, I favour forwards over defencemen due to the trajectories and timelines. This is a fantasy hockey league ranking, so players like Anton Silayev and Stian Stolberg just don't have enough to entice me over other options available.

1) Macklin Celebrini – The sure thing, and the undisputed number one, at worst he's Nico Hischier, with a chance at Jack Hughes upside.

2) Ivan Demidov – Perhaps the best offensive ceiling in the draft, though some are concerned with the Russian factor and others are concerned with the skating. Played in a much easier league this year, but did as much as you can ask of him there.

3) Cayden Lindstrom – The size and skill combo is tantalizing, and it sounds like the injury concerns have been mostly quashed. He'll be an impact NHLer sooner rather than later.

4) Berkly Catton – High end skill, and the concerns about size seem to be overblown. Some aren't as high on him, but the scouts I like/trust, are the ones pumping his tires.

5) Tij Iginla – Doesn't have quite the same "skills" as Catton, but the potential appears to be just about as high, and in a sturdier body.

6) Zayne Parekh – Historic offensive season, and both an NHL level shot and ability to get it off in creative ways. The highest upside defenceman.

7) Zeev Buium – Like Parekh, Buium uses skating, skills and smarts rather than size, and both do it effectively. The modern defencemen are trending more and more towards this style.

8) Cole Eiserman – He scores goals, and all we hope as fantasy managers is that he lands somewhere where he can do that and be taught the rest. Could shift up or down the rankings depending on where he goes.

9) Beckett Sennecke – The second-half production coupled with the size and his handle on the puck show that Sennecke is just getting started with what he can become.

10) Artyom Levshunov – Levshunov has a ton of tools and has a very good shot at being the top Dman in the class. It does feel like his offensive upside isn't quite as high as Buium or Parekh though, at least to this non-scout.

11) Konsta Helenius – While some are scared of the Russians, I am currently shying away from the top-end Finns, after we have seen many of them disappoint in the last few years. Still, Helenius does have a lot of pro-ready traits and deserves to be in the conversation around pick 10.

12) Trevor Connelly – There are off-ice issues and character concerns, and those should be taken into account. Every scout seems to agree though that his scoring upside and vision with the puck is excellent.

13) Liam Greentree – He isn't praised as much as those above him for standout skills, but he has a whole package that helped him finish near the top of the OHL scoring leaderboard despite not having a teammate anywhere close to him.

14) Sam Dickinson – Dickinson seems more like he may end up being a top-pairing defenceman who runs your second power play unit rather than the top guy that also runs the first unit, but the floor is so high with him that he's worth selecting here before you start to descend into the players with very real question marks.

15) Carter Yakemchuk – The opposite of Dickinson at this point, being a high-upside play with a lot of questions behind him that belie a lower floor. As a six-foot-three, right-handed defenceman, he has tools that NHL teams will like which don't impact fantasy leagues at all either.

HMs: Nikita Artamonov, Michael Brandsegg-Nygard, Michael Hage, Andre Basha, Igor Chernyshov.