The Memorial Cup finished up on Sunday night, and with the incredibly long gap between round three and four of the NHL playoffs, that was the most entertaining hockey on this weekend (AHL playoffs are going on too, but I haven't found myself able to stay focused on them). Having gone to school in London Ontario, I was happy to see the Knights come away with the win after they were achingly close last year. The core group of Easton Cowan, Denver Barkey, Sam Dickinson, Oliver Bonk, and others were all there to make sure they didn't let the opportunity slip through their fingers again. 

Cowan tied Mitch Marner's Memorial Cup record for the most points scored by a London Knight, and that seems somehow fitting as he may be part of replacing Marner in the Leafs lineup next season too. It's tough to imagine him not making the team this fall, even if it is only a third-line role to start. Cowan has really grown his game over the last year, and is so much more than a one-dimensional scorer. He's owned in dynasty leagues already, and he likely won't add enough value as a rookie this year to be worth your last flier pick in redrafts, but he's worth having on the radar anyways. 

Perhaps the player who has impressed me the most though has been Sam Dickinson. At the end of last season, I wasn't 100% sold on him being worth a top-12 pick (I had him ranked later in the teens), and I thought that just as a bigger defenceman in a very visible market, he was getting pushed up draft boards higher than he should have. Well, fast-forward a year and he has certainly proved me wrong, continuing to push his equivalency numbers higher, while playing in all situations for a dominant London team, who was leaning on him for nearly every second shift by the end of the year. He's another one that I expect to be in the NHL when camp breaks in October. It might be tough to fit him for longer than the nine-game trial due to Mario Ferraro, Henry Thrun, Shakir Mukhamadullin, and Marc-Edouard Vlasic all also being left shots and having one-way contracts. 

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Two smaller signings yesterday, with Derrick Forbot re-upping in Vancouver for one year at $2 million, and Noah Cates signing a four-year deal at a $4 million cap hit. Forbot’s deal is a little steep for a third-pairing guy, but the risk (like the fantasy value) is low with him. 

Cates might have some value in deeper leagues, but even though this deal is fair value for what he brings an NHL team, it’s a pricier deal than his fantasy managers wanted to see in cap leagues. 

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Jackson Lacombe was one of the big breakout players for the Ducks this past year, and while my initial thoughts on him this offseason were as simple as "sell-high", taking a look under the hood shows that it's not so straightforward. 

His 47-point pace was a fantastic find for fantasy managers, and for those of you (us) that were expecting it to drop next year, allow me some time to change your mind. Lacombe started the year out playing bottom-four minutes in Q1, where he put up only four points in 15 games (one on the power play). The final three-quarters of the season then saw him record 39 points in his final 60 games (a 53-point pace), with nearly two shots a game and eight power play points. Interestingly, his final eight games he was also held pointless, meaning his pace during the middle of the season was 62 points. 

The consistency does need some work though, as he was a very feast or famine player. Part of that however does come from the Ducks themselves being a poor team, and the scoring not being consistent from the roster as a whole. The team will likely take another step forward this season (big or small remains to be seen), and with Lacombe likely coming in with the top power play gig his to lose as the incumbent, he's in a very good spot to keep the points coming. 

The underlying numbers are all very reasonable as well, with only his PPIPP coming in high, though that would account for an extra point or two, so it's not something to worry about. At 24 years old and coming up to his 200-game threshold this year, Lacombe is someone I would be leery of selling if I did own him anywhere. 

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Rick Roos is looking for a few more mailbag questions to be answered in next week’s article. To get your questions to him, private message "rizzeedizzee" via the DobberHockey Forums or email admin@dobbersports.com with "Roos Mailbag" as the subject line. No one does a deeper dive on your questions than Rick, and now is the time to get those keeper and draft questions in before it’s too late.

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My main cap dynasty league had three GMs that we had to replace this year (out of 24). We often have one or two depart as someone just has life get in the way, so we have a system for more fairly replacing managers. When you have someone join, especially when you're replacing two or more teams, you want to balance what they're entering the league with. Giving one GM a higher-quality roster while another gets a bottom of the barrel group of players is a recipe for at least one of them to not feel all that involved from the start, and that's how you end up with heavy league turnover. 

We implement a dispersal draft between the teams that are being re-assigned, where the entire pool of players is split between the new managers via a draft. It allows the managers to make their own team, shape a direction, and feel involved in a hands-on way right from the start. We also allow for the incumbent GMs to opt into the draft, which someone usually only does if there's a very high-quality team whose manager is departing, in which case it makes sense to distribute the wealth a little. Often though, incumbent GMs like their group of players, so rarely does one opt in, which is probably better in most cases anyways. 

While this year's dispersal draft went smoothly, there were a couple of times where I saw a player get selected, and I thought to myself that he should have gone at least 20 picks later. We run the league on Fantrax, and one of my favourite features there is being able to click on a player, flipping over to the "transaction history" tab, and seeing all the transactions a player has been part of since the league began.

Looking at those for players you could add to your team soon upon joining a league, may give you some better background on how that player is valued by your league members. It's saved me a couple of times, and you never want to unnecessarily put yourself behind the eight-ball – the more research you can do, the better. 

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In that same league, I just pulled off my first trade of the offseason, moving out Hampton Slukynsky for Justin Barron. Slukynsky is one of the top-10 goalie prospects based on the Dobber Prospects Guide (get yours here) but with my team competing now – having lost in the finals last season and with the core of my team in their late 20s – it made more sense to get a piece that can help me a little more in the next few years, even though Barron has a lower ceiling. 

I do like Barron to take a step forward this season, as one of the better RHD on the Predators, there are some heavy minutes there for the taking. The team should also be able to bounce back to a more reasonable level, somewhere around the playoff bubble, which would be a lift for everyone. Individually, Barron did much better after the trade to the Predators, scoring 12 of his 13 points with them in 45 games, compared to the one point in 17 games he put up with the Canadiens. A 30-point campaign might be the higher end of expectations for him this season, but it's certainly not unreasonable, and if he can come close to that then he would have some excellent value for my cap league team, while counting a cap hit of only $1.15 million against my payroll.  

It's a tough point in the summer to be buying guys like this, as there's lots of potential for free agency or trade adds to push them down the depth chart, but as long as you're aware of that and trying to build that uncertainty into the acquisition cost, then sometimes it's worth the risk. 

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I’m not sure how trustworthy this source is, and can’t find much else on it yet, but there could be a shortened timeline on a prospect with some very real boom/bust potential here:

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See you next Wednesday, and if you have any fantasy hockey questions or comments you can find me on BlueSky @alexdmaclean, as that's now my primary platform.