Welcome everyone to Bubble Keeper Week here at Dobber Hockey! Every offseason, we like to take a week to focus solely on the keepers at the end of the roster. They are the decisions that can drive any fantasy hockey owner up the wall because we know there's a chance that we are letting go of a player who could have a huge year for a guy that lays an egg. It is the game we've chosen to play, but there's no reason to fly blind in this matter.

Ian kicked things off yesterday by talking about Carter Verhaeghe, Cole Caufield, and a handful of other players. Today, I'm going to get to a couple questions that were sent to me via Twitter.

Here we have one that is the very essence of what we're trying to do this week:

The first guy to be left off the roster is Sean Monahan. All credit to him and turning his career from an injury-plagued bubble player in the league itself to earning a five-year contract with the Columbus Blue Jackets, but even a 60-point season doesn't mean much with his peripherals. He has never reached 30 PIMs, he was just a shade over two shots per game last season (needing to skate over 18 minutes a night to do so), he has cracked 60 hits once and never surpassed 70, and his career-high in blocks was last season with 44. It is just a lot of middling peripheral production for a guy that won't be a point-per-game player, which is what's needed to offset that middling peripheral production.

Pavel Zacha is an interesting name this season. He skated a career-high 18:06 per game last season and had he managed 82 games, he probably would have reached 60 points. He doesn't shoot much, doesn't bring many PIMs, and won't block a lot of shots, so he's like Monahan in a lot of ways. What differentiates him is that he can bring a good number of hits – he set a career-high with 106 last season. Over the last three seasons, he's averaged about 90 every 82 games. Monahan might exceed him in shots, but Zacha will exceed him in hits, so that balances out.

Overall, I feel about the same regarding role security for both Monahan and Zacha. Monahan goes to a team that has been reliant on Boone Jenner, played Cole Sillinger heavily down the stretch, and has Adam Fantilli returning from injury. Whether they use Fantilli at centre or on the wing remains to be seen, but I see Monahan losing some ice time relative to last season.

I can also see Zacha losing some ice time when compared to last season. Boston signed Elias Lindholm to a long-term free agent deal, so it seems a good bet he's the team's top centre. The question is whether the team leaves Zacha at centre or moves him to the left wing. They have Charlie Coyle and Matthew Poitras, so they don't necessarily need Zacha at centre. They don't have much depth on the left wing, especially if Brad Marchand sees any kind of age-related decline. It would make sense to have a top-9 forward mix look something like this:

Marchand – Lindholm – Geekie

Zacha – Coyle/Poitras – Pastrnňák

Frederic – Coyle/Poitras – Lysell

Maybe it ends up being Poitras that moves to the wing instead, but it's just to say I think the team has options this year, and options for a coach isn't necessarily a good thing for non-elite players in fantasy.

Eeli Tolvanen is the interesting name here. He is likely going to be out-produced by both Monahan and Zacha, but it's not a certainty. In fact, the 2024-25 Dobber Hockey Fantasy Guide (available for purchase here) has Tolvanen reaching 56 points in 80 games this season, just two behind Monahan and six behind Zacha. The difference between Tolvanen and those centres is his peripheral production as he's averaged 180 hits and 65 blocks every 82 games over the last three seasons. He also did that skating 14:34 per night, or about three minutes less per game than those centres. If he can get to 16:30 per game, give or take a few seconds, he can soar past 200 hits while offering nearly a block per game. With a rebound in the team's scoring, he can push for 50 points as well.

I think the answer to this is Tolvanen. Monahan and Zacha are fine, but they feel replaceable. Centre is a very deep position, and even with 192 players kept in this league, there are similar players that should be available like Phillip Danault, Chandler Stephenson, and J.T. Compher. There probably won't be a player with similar multi-cat upside to Tolvanen, so he's the choice here.

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Alright, let's get to the next question:

In a keep-10, 14-team league, I am very much inclined to keep two goalies. It is a safe bet most of the league will be as well, and not keeping two goalies in this instance would likely mean grabbing a second goalie from the Cam Talbot/Samuel Ersson/Lukas Dostal tier and while that can work, I think it would necessarily mean grabbing two goalies with the first two picks from the draft for a bit of insurance. A goalie trio of Juuse Saros, Ersson, and Talbot can work, but I would rather keep Joseph Woll here. Woll is a goalie I am personally targeting once the top dozen-ish netminders are off the board and feel he can be a league-winning fantasy goalie this year. I know, right? What could possibly go wrong relying on a Toronto goalie to be a league-winning goalie.

Keeping Woll means dropping Jordan Binnington. That feels fine to me. I don't think much of the St. Louis roster and Binnington has been inconsistent for his entire NHL career.

The real question is what to do with Moritz Seider. Shayne Gostisbehere is gone, but they brought in Erik Gusfafsson, presumably to take some power play time. The Red Wings also think highly of Simon Edvinsson, so it wouldn't be a surprise seeing him run the second PP unit. Seider, meanwhile, has earned nearly 46% of his career production with the man advantage. If he drops down to 10 power play points, give or take a couple, he's probably a sub-40-point defenceman. If he can keep earning the share of power play time he has – anywhere between 40-60% – then he'll be fine. I just have my doubts he will.

All that said, even a 35-point defenceman is valuable as a ninth or tenth keeper. There may only be 40 defencemen, give or take a couple, to reach that mark this season, and in a league with 140 players kept, that feels fine. Seider still has growth coming, too, so I think there is 50-point upside if all goes well. I am not bullish on him in points-only formats, but he seems fine as a bubble keeper.

I am a believe in the rebound for Jeff Skinner, but here's the problem: what is his power play role? Edmonton has been the best power play in the league by a wide, wide margin over the last three years, so there's no real hurry to change something. It isn't as if this is Tampa Bay and losing Steven Stamkos. This is a team that rolls with the man advantage, so I'm not sure that Skinner replaces Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (he certainly won't replace any of the other three). Maybe there are times where he and RNH spell off on the top PP unit if they're in a minor skid, but I suspect RNH will be the go-to guy for most of the year.

The issue with Nikolaj Ehlers is his role on the team. He has surpassed 17 minutes per game once over the last five seasons and is still an infrequent participant on the top PP unit. If we knew he was getting 18 minutes a game with top PP time, I would say he's a point-per-game player and the guy to keep. But we don't know that, and we don't have good reason to believe that. He is in the same spot as Skinner, really.

Then we have Anze Kopitar. He put up another 70-point season last year but has now seen his ice time decline for three straight seasons. He still managed 19:39 per game, but with the team trading Pierre-Luc Dubois and extending Quinton Byfield for five years, my guess is that now is the time that Byfield gets moved back to centre. There is a reasonable chance Kopitar is on that Jordan Staal trajectory and finds himself in the 17-minute range this season. He is a player on a team that needs volume to produce, and it concerns me this is the season that Kopitar falls off to a 55- or 60-point player. The Dobber Guide has him for 67 points and that seems fine, but a 60-something-point centre isn't that uncommon.

The Dobber Guide has all three players in the 60-point range. However, the Guide also has Skinner largely playing the second PP unit. If he can get to the top unit for even half the season, he can get back to being a point-per-game winger. As the 10^th keeper in a 14-team league, I think this is the risk worth taking. My choice is Skinner.

I will say, there is an argument for keeping Ehlers over Seider. I think there's a better chance of finding a couple defencemen with Seider's upside in the 150-200 pick range than there is of finding players with Ehlers's upside.

My choices are Woll, Seider, and Skinner, but I have no problem replacing Seider with Ehlers and then drafting heavy on defencemen when the draft rolls around. If you get everyone's keepers before the draft, it makes that decision easier to make.