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I am going to piggyback off a couple of things here. One is my own article from the Fantasy Guide where I cover the dropping value of some players across the league. The other is a recent podcast I listened to from The Ringer where they did a buy-sell-hold stock watch segment for movies/TV shows/actors etc. Today's Ramblings will be a buy-sell-hold on the fantasy value of certain players across the league. Buy means that the players are going to be even better than they were last year, sell means things are going to get worse, and hold means they're going to come close to repeating last year. We will go with one centre, one winger, and one defenceman in each category. It is done in advance of me finishing my projections, which will be done before the end of the month, so some of this probably changes in a few weeks.

Player data from Evolving Hockey or Frozen Tools.

Buy

Logan Cooley (Utah Mammoth)

Through the first 41 games of last season, Logan Cooley had 35 points, which is a great 70-point pace, but he did it while skating just 17:04 per game. The rest of the way, Cooley had 30 points in 34 games (a 72-point pace) but did that skating 18:49 per game. He also did that while splitting top power-play time with Barrett Hayton.

At this point, Cooley has two full NHL seasons under his belt. Over his last 100 regular season games, he's posted 37 goals and 82 points. Utah added J.J. Peterka in the offseason, Dylan Guenther is a year older, and the blue line will hopefully be a lot healthier than they were last year. If he plays a full season, Cooley managing another 70-point pace is reasonable, but I think this is the year he takes off and pushes for point-per-game status.

Andrei Svechnikov (Carolina Hurricanes)

Svechnikov's 2024-25 season saw him with a four-year low in goals per game and a six-year low in points per game. He then had a much better postseason with eight goals and 12 points in 15 games. There were times he looked like the team's best winger and at least looked as good as we remember him playing a couple years ago. The hope is that the knee issues that affected his play over the last two years are gone, and at 25 years old, he's still in his prime.

The issue for Svechnikov is that with the newly-signed Nikolaj Ehlers, the acquisition of Logan Stankoven, the presence of Seth Jarvis, and the emergence of Jackson Blake, there is a lot of competition for overall winger minutes, and specifically top power-play minutes. That makes him more likely for 17 minutes a game than 18-plus. Even still, I think the 2024-25 season was his low point and while the lack of TOI caps his upside, he looks primed to pace for a 25-goal, 35-assist, 200-shot, 150-hit winger.

Jackson LaCombe (Anaheim Ducks)

LaCombe had a slow start to the 2024-25 season with just four points in 16 games to start the year, skating 18:21 per game on Anaheim's bottom pair. Then he absolutely soared after that, skating 23:22 per game and registering 39 points in 59 games, a 54-point pace. He is Anaheim's number-1 defenceman now, including top minutes in all three phases of the game. That level of ice time, even with modest per-minute shot, hit, and block rates, means he's a threat for 160 shots, 90 hits, and 140 blocks.

My belief is that Anaheim is a team truly on the ascent, as they were 14^th by goals per minute at 5-on-5 in calendar 2025, doing that with the 11^th-ranked shooting percentage. They were creating quality offence not riding a hot streak. If the power play can take off with LaCombe at the helm, he has true 60-point potential.

Sell

Jack Eichel (Vegas Golden Knights)

This isn't that I think Eichel will be bad, or a bust, or won't mesh with Mitch Marner, or anything like that. It's that 2024-25 was a year where everything went right for Eichel: he played 77 games, tying his most games played in a season since his rookie 2015-16 campaign; Vegas shot 11.5% with him on the ice at even strength after he averaged 9.9% across his first three years with the team; the Golden Knights shot a whopping 19.5% with him on the ice for the power play when his previous career-high for a season where he played at least 50 games was 15.5%, and he hadn't reached 14% in any of his first three years out West. When I see across-the-board career-best team shooting percentages for a player in his 10^th season, and those career-best marks are by a wide margin, it gives me pause.

As long as he plays at least 70 games, Eichel should pass 80 points. The question is if he can get past 75 games again, and whether the near-certain drop in team shooting percentages, even with Marner there, can be offset by some kind of increase in team shot volume. I do not want to take the bet that Eichel will miss five-or-fewer games while also maintaining across-the-board, far-and-away career-best percentages.

Brandon Hagel (Tampa Bay Lightning)

This is what I wrote about Hagel, word for word, in the 2025-26 Dobber Hockey Fantasy Guide:

In the five weeks following Tampa Bay's acquisition of Yanni Gourde and Oliver Bjorkstrand, Hagel lost 1:31 of ice time per game. He also posted a career-high in secondary assist rate—exceeding the average of his first two seasons in Tampa Bay by over 40%. He can still be a 30-goal, 80-point player, but his 2024–25 campaign has all the hallmarks of a career year.

The emergence of Gage Concalves, the progressions from Conor Geekie and Mitchell Chaffee, and the trade for Yanni Gourde and Oliver Bjorkstrand make Tampa Bay a relatively deep team up front. I don't think Hagel comes close to skating the 20:45 per game he did last season, and that means 80 points instead of 90. Hagel is a guy I've been waiting a few years for the breakout he had in 2024-25, and now that he's had it, I'll let someone else bet on him maintaining it.

MacKenzie Weegar (Calgary Flames)                             

Weegar has the type of fantasy profile that even if he does have a stock drop, he can still be a top-12 defenceman in fantasy. The issue is that he was a top-5 defenceman in a lot of multi-cat formats, and that was on the back of a career-best 24:10 per game in ice time and a career-best 21 power-play points (he had 25 career PP points in 469 games before that). He needs that power-play production to hold to repeat a top-5 fantasy performance.

Calgary has seven defencemen signed to an NHL contract, so Zayne Parekh may not start the season in the NHL. But he might, and the Fantasy Guide has Parekh with 78 games played. Either way, once Parekh is on the NHL roster, he's a genuine threat for taking top power-play time away from Weegar. I think Weegar is a much better bet for being closer to 40 points than to 50, and if that drop in point production comes from the power-play, it's a double-whammy for his fantasy value. I have no problem saying Weegar will be a top-12 multi-cat fantasy defenceman, but repeating a top-5 performance will be very hard, so I'm selling.

Hold

Robert Thomas (St. Louis Blues)

Here's a fun fact: there are 13 forwards who've managed at least 20 goals and 50 assists in three of the last four years, and Robert Thomas is one of them (per Hockey Reference). He is also 1 of 14 forwards with at least 80 goals and 200 assists over the last four years. We are all waiting for that season when he plays 80 games, the relevant percentages spike a bit, and he posts, like, 33 goals and 65 assists. Something like J.T. Miller in his middle Vancouver seasons but without the hits.

I just don't think that's this year. Cam Fowler had a huge rebound after getting to St. Louis but maintain that level will be difficult. Justin Faulk is years removed from being a top-pair guy, and the bottom pair has its own question marks. And though I am a big fan of both Jordan Kyrou and Dylan Holloway, neither are truly super-elite wingers in the Mitch Marner/Kirill Kaprizov/Sam Reinhart tier. The Blues have enough talent to ensure that Thomas has great production years, but there is still a piece or two missing to get him to elite production.  

Mikko Rantanen (Dallas Stars)

Over Rantanen's final 2.5 seasons with Colorado, he averaged 22:32 per game. Over his 20 regular season games with Dallas, that was 19:07. After winning in overtime of the second game in the playoffs, Rantanen skated 21:35 per contest. So, even in the postseason with Dallas as a Stanley Cup contender, Rantanen lost a minute per game in TOI compared to his regular season time in Colorado.

Between the regular and postseason, Rantanen had 40 points in 38 games with Dallas, which is 1.05 points per game. Across his final 2.5 seasons with the Avalanche, he averaged 1.29 points per game. In an 82-game season, that is a 20-point difference. I am holding Rantanen because I think he can be what he was last year, which is roughly a top-25 fantasy option, but I think the days of him being a threat to crack the top-5 skaters are over.  

Lane Hutson (Montreal Canadiens)

A full year from Ivan Demidov, a (hopefully healthy) Kirby Dach, and the trade for Noah Dobson should make Montreal a better team than in 2024-25. The problem for Hutson progressing much past the 66 points he earned last year is that the coaching staff loves Mike Matheson, Dobson adds another high-end puck-mover to the blue line, it is a full season from Alex Carrier, and Kaiden Guhle should be healthy. Where, exactly, Hutson slots beyond the top PP minutes is a bit uncertain. He seems a safe bet for top pair minutes, but I think Montreal now has a deep enough blue line to spread out the ice time, rather than relying heavily on their top two pairs and playing their third pair under 15 minutes.

I'm a Habs fan, and I was definitely wrong about Hutson's upside last year. Maybe I'm wrong about Hutson's fantasy value again this year, but I think a healthy Guhle, the addition of Dobson, and a full year from Carrier makes this team's defence group much deeper than it was last season. It is great for the team, but I'm not sure it really helps Hutson's fantasy value. Banking on 65-70 points again seems reasonable, but I think it's another year or two before he really ascends to a perennial point-per-game defenceman, so I'm holding his stock.