The nice thing about fantasy sports is the wide range of options for players. There are traditional one-year leagues, there are keeper and dynasty formats, there is daily fantasy like DraftKings and FanDuel, there are box pools and guillotine leagues, and others I'm overlooking.

One of the formats I like to play is best ball. For those unfamiliar with them, they are simply draft-only leagues. A roster is drafted like a typical one-year league, but there are no in-season moves. There is no waiver wire, trading, or free agency. The roster that is drafted is the roster for the entire year. Each week, only a portion of the team's roster is counted to the overall standings. It can either be head-to-head each week, or a running tally of each team's score added to an overall total. These types of leagues are great for people that don't have a lot of time during the NHL season to make waiver moves, or to set lineups, or whatever else.

A few days ago, I did my first best ball league over at Underdog Fantasy. I used projections from the 2024-25 Dobber Hockey Guide draft list and converted those numbers to relevant for this league. Here is how Underdog best ball works:

• The Best Puck Classic is a contest with 15 000 entries, but they are split into 12-team drafts. Points are counted for 18 weeks and after those 18 weeks, the top-3 in each 12-team sub-league advance to the playoffs.
• There are 16 rounds in the drafts and the positions are centre, winger, defence, and goalie.
• One centre, two wingers, one defenceman, one utility skater, and one goalie count each week for the overall points standings.
• It is a points format where goals are worth six, assists are worth four, each shot and blocked shot is worth one, and each power play point and hit is worth 0.5. Netminders get six points for a win, 0.6 points for each save, and lose three points for a goal against.

Alright, I wanted to break this down into two Ramblings with today's covering my personal approach to the draft. With the obvious caveat that this was the first week of August and a lot will change in the next two months, here is how my draft went picking from sixth overall.

Early Rounds

As expected, Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon, and Auston Matthews were the first three names off the board. I did not have one of those picks, so I wanted to get a top winger on my roster. The reason for this is that after those three (maybe four depending on how Leon Draisaitl is viewed), there are a handful of similar centres that can be drafted later. Since I was precluded from the top three, I started with Brady Tkachuk. In a multi-cat format like this, he's a top-10 pick all day long, and with David Pastrnak and Nikita Kucherov going ahead of him, he was 1 of 3 wingers I was comfortable taking here alongside Mikko Rantanen and Kirill Kaprizov. This was the first round:

With Cale Makar and Jack Hughes going off the board before my next pick, I had an easy decision: Rasmus Dahlin. I think Buffalo's offence is being underrated after a bad season last year and with Lindy Ruff behind the bench, the top half of the roster is going to play a very high-paced, transition-heavy offence that will see big seasons from their stars. In a format that rewards peripherals so highly, Dahlin was an easy choice here.

Coming into the third round, there were six centres off the board. After the Big Five – including Draisaitl and Hughes – my next tier has three centres and two of them are the guys from Vancouver in JT Miller and Elias Pettersson. Both are fine, but I wanted Miller because his contribution in hits makes him a bit more reliable as a week-to-week option. Pettersson may be the better option in this format because he's much more boom/bust, but I didn't want so much volatility in my top centre.

The next three rounds probably couldn't have gone better for me. I know, people say that about their own drafts all the time, but in a moment of serendipity, I got Jacob Markstrom in the fourth round (ninth goalie off the board). In my Ramblings on Tuesday, I wrote about how it didn't make a lot of sense for him to be closer to a top-12 goalie off the board given how bullish betting markets are on the Devils. Andrei Vasilevskiy went six picks earlier and Linus UIlmark went 10 picks later. If people are that high on the Devils, he should be going earlier, and in a format that heavily weights wins, I was happy to get him.

My next two picks were a pair of staples for me in Andrei Svechnikov and Alex Tuch. Because of the hits and shots that Svechnikov can produce, he usually goes much higher than the middle of the fifth round and a down year (almost certainly due to his return from injury) is a nice discount.

As for Tuch, I wanted another Sabre to pair with Dahlin. Tage Thompson was long gone, and it was too early for guys like Dylan Cozens or JJ Peterka.

All told, here is how the first six rounds went:

With the core set, it was time to dig for a bit of value.

Middle Rounds

Here are how the mid-rounds went:

Pivoting is necessary, and that happened to me here. In the eighth round, I wanted to grab Vincent Trocheck as my second centre, but he went two picks before me. The next round, I wanted to grab Mika Zibanejad, but he went three picks before me (and Peterka the pick right before me). The two centres I had in the tier got sniped from me, so rather than chasing a lower-rated centre, I just decided to fill out the other positions, and I did just that with Frank Vatrano, Filip Gustavsson, Mike Matheson, and John Carlson with picks 7-10. I didn't really want Carlson, but Mikhail Sergachev went the pick right before me, and there was no one else left on the board I was comfortable saying they'd be their team's top PP option all season outside of Brandon Montour, and I'm not sure I want to be targeting the Seattle Kraken power play.

At this point in round 11, I had three defencemen and two goalies, so I turned my focus back to the forwards. There were two young centres I had my eye on, but I was pretty sure I could get at least one of them much later, so I went a bit safer with Bo Horvat. It isn't someone I'm targeting, but he'll get ice time and hopefully a full offseason with coach Patrick Roy makes everyone a bit more comfortable.

In round 12, I took Patrik Laine. Here is my thought process on this: he absolutely has 30-goal, 3-shot, point-per-game potential. In fact, in the parts of the last three seasons he's played, he averaged 34 goals, 40 assists, and three shots per game. Staying on the ice is an issue, but this isn't a format where he needs to play every week. As my fifth winger – no more than three can count each week – I really just need him to be healthy in March and April. Whether he's traded or not, it's a lottery ticket, and I am fine with a lottery ticket as my 139^th pick in a format where I'm trying to at least beat out 14 900 other entries for a reasonable payday.

Alright, let's get to the end of this thing.

Final Rounds

Here is the end of the draft:

With my 150^th pick, I took Trevor Zegras. He was someone I wanted to pair with Vatrano, even if they don't play on the same line/PP unit. The idea in this type of format is to have some pairings or trios from the same team in hopes that they catch fire at the right time and can push rosters near the top of the heap each week. After missing out on Jack Hughes, there weren't any top offences to stack, so I had to look for undervalued options. One of them was Buffalo, and another is Anaheim.

The final pairing was Adam Fantilli. I really think he's being undervalued, so I took him in the 14^th round as my third centre. He goes with Laine in case Laine is not traded, and if he is, I still don't mind Fantilli here as a one-off value.

After Fantilli, I took Daniil Tarasov. Not going to lie, I was rattled about this one. Elvis Merzlikins went a few picks before Fantilli, and Merzlikins was my target. Now I'm just hoping Tarasov somehow can hold the net at any point this season. I kind of bungled my third goalie in this draft.

My last pick of the draft was Valeri Nichushkin. Even excluding the lottery ticket of Laine, I had five wingers and, again, no more than three can count each week. Nichushkin is back in the Players Assistance Program but if all goes well, he's eligible to return in the middle of November. If all doesn't go well, there are bigger issues than my fantasy team. He's another lottery ticket very much worth taking in the 16^th round.

Overall, I don't think this team is going to the top, but I'm not displeased with it. I wish I had focused more on the Devils and Sabres skaters, but I'm also bullish on Anaheim and Columbus (relative to expectations) so this is about par for the course. It's also my first draft of the season with two months until puck drop, so my strategy will evolve as I get more of these under my belt. Let me know how much this roster sucks in the comments.

In tomorrow's Ramblings, I'm going to give my thoughts on where certain players went and ADPs in general.