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, Brennan Des and Dobber

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The 2024-25 Dobber Hockey Fantasy Guide is available in the Dobber Shop! The nice thing is that because it is digital-only, updates can be made as news changes, and there’s certainly been a lot of that this week.

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1. Summer is usually a dead time in the hockey world after early July. However, we’ve had a mini-bump in player news over the past week or so. Included have been offer sheets for two players, teams granting multiple player trade requests, an injury affecting a Vezina Trophy finalist, and more. Perhaps more news will trickle in as teams start to get ready for training camp in September. Let’s discuss some of the main players that have been affected.

Yaroslav Askarov

Askarov requested a trade to a team where he has a long-term future as a potential starter, and he got it on Friday. He will be given every opportunity to be the starter for a Sharks team that is building for the future with top prospects such as Macklin Celebrini, Will Smith, and talent they will draft in the coming years.

In terms of the here and now, Askarov will need to battle both Vitek Vanecek and Mackenzie Blackwood for starts in the coming season. A three-headed monster in net is possible, and so is Askarov starting the season in the AHL again if he doesn’t stand out in training camp. Vanecek battled injuries in 2023-24, but he is reportedly healthy enough for camp.

The Sharks also committed to Askarov over the coming seasons, immediately signing him to a two-year extension with a cap hit of $2 million to start after the 2024-25 season. Both Vanecek and Blackwood are projected to become UFAs after the season, and it’s very possible that one (or even both) are traded at the deadline. As a result, Askarov should play NHL games this season. It’s just a question of how many.

As for how Askarov will perform, his fantasy owners will need to continue to play the long game. San Jose is in a long rebuild, so there are serious questions about how effective he will be. As I said in the Fantasy Guide, the Sharks are a goaltending situation to flat-out avoid. Yet as the likes of Celebrini, Smith, William Eklund, and others approach their breakouts, Askarov will be in a better position to live up to his upside as a blue-chip goaltending prospect. (aug24)

Fantasy Take: Sharks Acquire Yaroslav Askarov

2. Thatcher Demko

Reports out of Vancouver are that Demko won’t be ready for training camp and may have even undergone surgery during the summer. The hope is still that Demko will participate at some point in training camp and be ready to start the season, but this is a goalie that was out of the Canucks’ lineup for much of the fourth quarter and the playoffs. Demko could be drafted as a top-5 goalie if fully healthy, but he simply cannot be at the moment if this injury worry lingers.

The Canucks are also reportedly poking around in the goalie market, which might have been made easier cap-wise with Podkolzin being traded. Arturs Silovs is a solid late-round sleeper and appears to be a strong bet to start the season in Vancouver no matter what. Kevin Lankinen, Antti Raanta, and Martin Jones seem like the best bets for teams looking for goaltending insurance, so it’s possible that the Canucks could turn to one of those options. The Canucks also signed ex-Vegas goalie Jiri Patera this offseason. (aug24)

3. Rutger McGroarty and Brayden Yager

I won’t expand on this one too much beyond saying that the Jets did well to receive Yager for a prospect who clearly didn’t want to sign. Teams aren’t going to give away players requesting a trade, but other teams know that the player might be able to be acquired at a discount.  

McGroarty appears set to compete for an NHL roster spot, which could make him a darkhorse Calder candidate. Don’t expect anything like top power-play time, but the Penguins are getting stale and could benefit from an injection of talented youth. Yager is expected to play in the WHL for another season. (aug24)

Fantasy Take: Jets and Penguins Swap Rutger McGroarty and Brayden Yager

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4. In yesterday’s Ramblings, I went over some players whose ADPs I think are good value as we round into fantasy draft season. Today, it’s only right to go in the other direction and go through some players I think are overvalued. For this, I am going to use ADPs from Underdog Fantasy because it is a multi-cat points format and there have been nearly 200 drafts done for their big tournament. For now, it’ll give us a better measure of where the early-bird fantasy drafters are actually taking players rather than relying on Yahoo! where some people join a mock draft just to go on auto-draft.

The points format is goals (6), assists (4), shots and blocks (1), and hits and power play points (0.5). For goalies, it is weighted heavily for wins. Left and right wingers are combined into one ‘winger’ category, too. With the caveat that these are surely to blow up in my face in eight months, here are some players being overvalued right now.

Brayden Point (ADP: 42.8, C10)

I always have concern when a player the magnitude of Steven Stamkos is moved from a franchise. Outside of whatever off-ice/dressing room changes that may cause, the key to the Tampa Bay Lightning’s fantasy value has been their power play. Taking off a major producer like Stamkos and replacing him with Jake Guentzel just adds a lit bit of uncertainty to the mix.

The problem is that Point just doesn’t bring much for peripherals when considering he’s going as the 34^th skater off the board. He has been roughly a top-30 skater in the last two seasons, it’s not that the value is bad, but he’s being drafted basically at his upside and if he has a season where he shoots 15% instead of over 20%, he doesn’t shoot, block, or hit enough to make up the difference. When we add that to the uncertainty that comes with the changes to the power play, I think there is reason to either draft a top centre earlier, or keep filling out other categories and waiting to grab someone like Aleksander Barkov, Joel Eriksson Ek, or Sebastian Aho. There just is not a three- or four-round gap in fantasy value between Point and that next tier. (aug23)

5. Wyatt Johnston (ADP: 91.9, C19)

Let me preface this with saying: I am a Wyatt Johnston Guy. He caught my attention with his rookie 2022-23 season and just kept improving in 2023-24. The problem is this: he is likely to split top-6 centre duties with Roope Hintz, even if Johnston does get moved to the wing at times. Also, the way Dallas shares the ice time is something that might keep their group fresh and rested, which is good for them in real life, but it’s not great for us in fantasy. It is notable he led their forwards in ice time per game in the playoffs, but I read that as more ‘we rested these guys in the regular season so we could get the most out of them in the playoffs’ rather than ‘Johnston is now a 20-minute forward’.

The issue with him being an 18-minute player rather than a 20-plus-minute player is there are guys who will play more than him available later. Nazem Kadri is now the top centre in Calgary, brings way more peripherals, and is cheaper at the draft table. Does Johnston really have much more upside than Bo Horvat if Horvat skates 20 minutes a game and Johnston skates 18? Racking up shots, hits, and blocks is something Horvat can do with all that time. It is not something Johnston can do.

If we knew Johnston was going to skate 20 minutes a night, I would be taking him in the top-75. But we don’t, and I don’t think he will, either, so I’m not. (aug23)

6. Andrei Vasilevskiy (ADP: 35.8, G6)

It worries me to rely on Vasilevskiy in a league that weights wins so heavily. The upside is that if he’s healthy, he should get lots of starts because they don’t have anything close to resembling a reliable backup goalie in the franchise. The downside is this: how good is Tampa Bay, really?

Last season, there were 30 goalies to make at least 40 starts. Of those 30 goalies, Vasilevskiy finished 22^nd by fantasy points per game. A 20% improvement in his fantasy point total would still have him around the 5^th goalie on the board. There is a big jump that needs to happen and expecting him to do it feels like reaching for reputation rather than production. I don’t have a problem with taking Vasilevskiy as a top-12 goalie, but taking him ahead of Ilya Sorokin or Jacob Markstrom feels like losing value for no reason. (aug23)

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7. On Tuesday night, the Seattle Kraken extended forward Matty Beniers for seven years with a cap hit just over $7.1M per season. Beniers was the Rookie of the Year in 2023 thanks to posting 57 points in 80 games, but took a huge step back, production-wise, with 37 points in 77 games in 2023-24. He turns 22 years old in November.

This fits in with what we’ve seen other teams do with younger RFAs that weren’t necessarily proven commodities. They all had upward trajectories, but Cole Caufield, Juraj Slafkovsky, Matt Boldy, Josh Norris, Jake Sanderson, and Owen Power have all signed something similar in the last couple of years. If Seattle thinks Beniers is a top-line player moving forward, then this makes sense.

I don’t think Beniers is anywhere near as bad as his 2023-24 boxcar stats showed, and it’s worth noting that he skated 18:34 per game over his final 25 games of the season. The production didn’t really rebound, but that is nearly a full-minute improvement from his season to that point. With Alex Wennberg elsewhere, Beniers should be a 19-minute player now, though we’ll see what new coach Dan Bylsma wants to do. The freshly-extended centre also has just 234 combined hits and blocks in 167 career games so there isn’t much multi-cat value, so if he’s not a 70-point forward, there’s not much fantasy value here outside of deep formats.

There shouldn’t be much concern about Beniers in dynasty formats, but in one-year leagues, there is still a lot of uncertainty with him, his new coach, and the team around Beniers. (aug22)

8. In Tuesday’s Ramblings, I wrote about some stacks that are worth targeting in fantasy drafts. It got me thinking of some of my favourite draft values so far. Today will be about specific players, rather than teams, to see where some value can be had in early fantasy drafts. A lot is sure to change over the next seven-ish weeks, but for now, here are some players that I’m targeting in multi-cat formats. I will leave off players I’ve discussed a couple times already in recent weeks like Shea Theodore and Jacob Markstrom.

Tim Stützle

At the top has to be one of my favourite young players in the league. It was a down 2023-24 season for Stützle as he managed just 70 points in 75 games, but he’s still just 22 years old (he turns 23 in January). He also shot 9.4% against a career average, to that point, of 14.2%. Had he shot just 13%, he would have had 25 goals and been over a point per game. Assuming he’s fully healthy and ready to go, he is Ottawa’s top centre and should be used as such. There is concern about whether they split the PP units again, but I’m betting new coach Travis Green relies on his top guys to be top guys, and that means Stützle has 30 goals and 90 points back on the menu. Considering the good amount of hits and shots he can bring, he’s a top target for me outside of the first four rounds. (aug22)

9. Tomas Hertl

The concern of Hertl is how he’s used. If he’s given second-fiddle status behind Jack Eichel, he may be more of an 18-minute player than 19- or 20-minute player. That matters a bit, but what also matters is that he’s healthy and on a playoff team. It has been a while since that happened and we’ve seen him score 30 goals multiple times and we’ve seen him put up a 65-point/82-game pace a few times, including as recently as 2022-23. This Vegas roster will be the most talented roster around Hertl in a few years and though he’s on the wrong side of 30 years old, there are times where he’s falling well outside the top-100 picks (like on Underdog Fantasy). For a guy that can put up 2.5 shots and one hit per game, and will be used on the top power play unit, there is good value here. (aug22)

10. Andrei Svechnikov

We meet again, old friend.

Everyone has ‘their guys’ and Svechnikov is one of my guys; has been since he was drafted. Over the last five season, his points/60 minutes rate is the same as Kyle Connor and higher than Jesper Bratt, Jordan Kyrou, and Clayton Keller. In a format where shots and hits can really boost value, Svechnikov brings two multi-cat dimensions that none of those names can bring. The only problem – aside from that knee issue from 2023 – is ice time. He was a shade under 17 minutes a game in 2023-24, and that’s not good enough to be a top-25 fantasy skater. The emergence of Seth Jarvis gives them options, too, but Svechnikov is now in the meat of his prime and should be completely healthy. I suspect he’ll be over 18 minutes again and if he finally hits his potential, could even push towards 19 minutes. That is a risk worth taking after the first few rounds. (aug22)

11. Quinton Byfield

Concerns around Byfield’s fantasy value are valid but, to me, it’s more about the team around him than Byfield himself. If he were the top-line centre in Utah or Philadelphia, he’d have genuine high-end wingers to play with. If Los Angeles moves him to centre for this season, he may be on the second line with guys like Warren Foegele or Alex Laferriere. That is a problem.

With that out of the way, I do think there’s an outside chance he ends up Los Angeles’s top centre this season while Anze Kopitar and Phillip Danault are a 2A/2B for middle-6 centres. All Byfield needs is 18-19 minutes a night (he’s added roughly two minutes per game in TOI each of the last two seasons) and one of Kevin Fiala or Adrian Kempe as regular line mates. He will be on the top power play, and is starting to scratch his upside. I would rather be a year too early on him, when considering his very modest ADP, than a year too late. (aug22)

12. Adam Fantilli

Here are Fantilli’s 82-game paces from his injury-shortened rookie season:

• 20 goals
• 25 assists
• 193 shots
• 105 hits
• 42 blocks

Fantilli is now healthy after that leg laceration that limited his season and Columbus’s young forwards around him are now a year older. I think he’s still a couple years away from really taking flight, but a 30-goal, 60-point, 210-shot, 100-hit, 50-block season is not out of the question here. He is a guy that should be looked at outside the top-150 picks because there is multi-cat value here, not just production value. (aug22)

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13. The news came down Tuesday morning that the Edmonton Oilers would not be matching the offer sheets of defenceman Philip Broberg and winger Dylan Holloway. Both will now be members of the St. Louis Blues. As compensation, the Blues will send the Oilers a third-round pick for Holloway and a second-round pick for Broberg.

For the St. Louis side, it gives them a much-needed jolt to their youth. Dalibor Dvorsky and Jimmy Snuggerud look like good, young players, but the Blues need some help now. Broberg could immediately slide onto the second pair with Holloway immediately onto the second line. We’ll wait until training camp for that, but it’ll be interesting to see what this means for Jake Neighbours. Holloway is kind of a threat for his power play role, but Neighbours really helped elevate the team’s PP in 2023-24 so he should still have the inside track.

Holloway moving on should leave Edmonton with a top-6 forward mix looking something like this (assuming Evander Kane on LTIR):

Jeff Skinner – Connor McDavid – Zach Hyman

Ryan Nugent-Hopkins – Leon Drasisaitl – Viktor Arvidsson

That seems pretty set until Kane returns, and assuming everyone else stays healthy. It should also leave room for Ty Emberson to be a lineup regular on defence, even if he’s a right shot. They will probably be rotating him, Josh Brown, and Troy Stecher to some extent, but Edmonton’s newest defenceman has a chance to stay in the lineup if he can play as well as he showed in his limited time with San Jose. (aug21)

14. On Monday, the Montreal Canadiens made their first real move of the offseason by trading for Columbus Blue Jackets winger Patrik Laine. They also received a second-round pick for taking on the full contract and sent defenceman Jordan Harris back to the Jackets.

Brennan wrote about the deal at the time and his take can be read here.

I want to start with the real-life impact.

The issue with Laine’s on-ice play has been his defensive ability. HockeyViz shows that he has been a below-average defensive player his entire career until very recently. (aug21)

(Follow the link for Mike's deep analysis on Laine]

15. If there is a team in the West I think can surprise this season, it’s Utah. This was a team that had a higher goals-per-minute rate than teams like Calgary, Los Angeles, Ottawa, and Buffalo last season but who couldn’t keep the puck out of their net. To help remedy that, they completely overhauled their blue line by adding Mikhail Sergachev, John Marino, and Ian Cole. This team should be better defensively, perhaps by a lot, and if their young offensive stars keep improving, they can be a Wild Card playoff team. There isn’t much need to spend high levels of draft capital on players like Clayton Keller and Mikhail Sergachev, and then moving down to names like Dylan Guenther or Connor Ingram. It is a relatively cheap stack to make. (aug20)

16. We are waiting for the shoe to drop on when the age of the Golden Knights, and the lack of top prospects, catches up to them. It is not likely to be 2024-25, and there are not many Vegas players going anywhere near the top of the draft. Depending on the league, Jack Eichel is going somewhere between picks 20 and 50, and then everyone else much later. So, depending on the league, there may not be a need to use a first or second round pick on any Vegas skaters, Tomas Hertl is going anywhere between the 7^th and 12^th rounds, Shea Theodore even later, and there are good values on Mark Stone and William Karlsson. There is even decent value on Noah Hanifin, even if I’d rather risk drafting Theodore. 

There are some injury-plagued players in the mix, which is why it’s not one of my favourite stacks to put together. However, this team was 11^th by 5-on-5 goal scoring last season. They lost Jonathan Marchessault, but Pavel Dorofeyev is ready for full-time duties, and they’ll hopefully get a full-ish season out of Stone. That can make up for part of the Marchessault loss, and an improved power play would go a long way to boosting the fantasy values of the top players. Considering the light investments necessary at the draft table, the Golden Knights are a stack to consider. (aug20)

17. It isn’t that I’m particularly high on the St. Louis Blues, it’s that no one else is, either. On Underdog, the only member of their top power play unit from 2023-24 that is going inside the top-100 picks is Jordan Kyrou sometime in the 5^th-6^th round. Over on Yahoo!, the only member of their top power play unit from 2023-24 that is going inside the top-100 picks is Robert Thomas sometime in the 7^th round. If we assume that the first 6-8 players drafted on each roster of a 12-team league are that team’s core, none of the top five picks and only one of the picks from 6-8 will be necessary to start this stack. That is the kind of value we look for when trying to hit on a stack.

A down year from Kyrou still produced 31 goals, 67 points, and 251 shots. A down year from Buchnevich still saw him crest 60 points with over 200 shots. Thomas is just hitting his stride and he has 100-point upside. With Torey Krug injured, Faulk is the guy that will at least get top PP minutes to start the year, even if he doesn’t hold on the role all season. With the multi-cat value Jake Neighbours can bring, there are solid fantasy performers across the board. Like Columbus and Vegas, St. Louis isn’t a team I’m specifically looking to stack, but there is value here for fantasy owners wanting to avoid popular targets. (aug20)

18. I thought I’d share some thoughts about goalies in one-year leagues. As you’ve probably heard before, goaltending performances can vary greatly from one season to the next. As a result of this reality, I usually avoid using high-draft picks on big-game netminders because there’s so much room for disappointment – although there’s one name I might make an exception for this year. Without further ado, here are a few netminders I’ll be targeting, as well as a few I’ll be avoiding.  

Goalies to Target

Jake Oettinger – Dallas Stars

An elite goaltender in his prime playing behind a high-end team. Oettinger’s fantasy stock is likely lower than it should be right now as a result of last year’s underwhelming .905 SV% and 2.72 GAA. However, he was excellent in his most recent action, winning 10 of his final 11 regular season starts and posting a 1.54 GAA and .941 SV% in the process. He was also solid in the playoffs, posting a 2.24 GAA and .915 SV% through 19 games. I think he should be one of the first three goalies off the board in most formats, but expect he’ll fall outside just outside of that group due to last year’s lacklustre totals. (aug19)

19. Adin Hill – Vegas Golden Knights

I’ve mentioned previously how injuries and subsequent second half struggles marred what was an incredible first half from Hill last year. Although we haven’t seen him carry the high-volume workload associated with your typical starter, he’s posted solid numbers across a large sample now. Over the past five seasons, Hill boasts a .912 SV% and 2.65 GAA over 119 games. Among the 84 goalies who played at least 50 games during that span, only 18 had a better GAA and only 15 had a better SV%. That’s especially impressive when you consider about half of Hill’s appearances in that time were behind non-playoff teams in Arizona and San Jose.

Vegas has an excellent defensive core, highlighted by Shea Theodore, Noah Hanifin and Alex Pietrangelo, but also bolstered by numerous defensively reliable forwards. If he can stay healthy – and that’s a big if – Hill should provide massive, sneaky value in fantasy formats. It’s reassuring to hear that he’s been working with doctors this summer to figure out how he might be able to avoid injury in the upcoming campaign. (aug19)

20. Filip Gustavsson  – Minnesota Wild

Minnesota was one of the top defensive teams last year, sporting the league’s fourth-lowest expected goals against (via NaturalStatTrick). The roster didn’t change much this summer, so the Wild should be able to carry strong defensive play into the upcoming campaign. Although Gustavsson posted abysmal numbers last year, I’m willing to chalk that up to growing pains as the 26-year-old netminder entered last season with just 66 NHL games under his belt. He’s just one season removed from posting a brilliant 2.10 GAA and .931 SV% through 39 games in 2022-23. I think last year’s struggles lowered his fantasy stock massively, leaving plenty of room for him to outperform expectations at his current price. (aug19)

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21. Goalies to Avoid

Dustin Wolf – Calgary Flames

While Wolf is one of the league’s most promising young goalies, I think the upcoming campaign is going to be more of a developmental year as he continues to adjust to the NHL level. We have to remember that he’s just 23 years old with only 18 games of experience in the big league. He’s posted strong results in the AHL over the past three years, which increases confidence that his high-end ability will eventually translate to the NHL. However, looking at the quality of Calgary’s roster right now, I can’t help but feel like Wolf will have his work cut out for him in the short term. Labelling him as a goalie to avoid is more an indictment of the team he plays for than it is of his own ability. All that said, Wolf is clearly the most talented of Calgary’s goalies and should see a high volume of action this year. If GAA and SV% are important in your fantasy format, you should probably steer clear. However, if your league rewards starts and saves, Wolf might be worth considering. (aug19)

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