After not playing in either of the Montreal Canadiens' first two preseason games, Kirby Dach lined up for Game 3 on Thursday night. Coming off another knee surgery, there was a bit of concern when he wasn't quite game-ready a few days ago but it seems as if all is good now, and it's great to see him get back into action.

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A bit of a scary situation for Jamie Benn even if it looks like it's all going to be fine:

pic.twitter.com/cVOv5jzlIU

— Dallas Stars (@DallasStars) September 25, 2025

Being shutdown for four weeks for an evaluation puts his timeline sometime into November, but regardless, it's just good to see this is taken care of.

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A sort-of update on Aleksander Barkov after needing help off the ice due to a lower-body injury:

No update on Barkov, will be looked at this week, per Maurice

— Rob Darragh (@darraghfla) September 25, 2025

We will provide an update when we know more, but for now, fingers crossed it's nothing serious.

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Anthony Duclair has been deemed day-to-day with an upper-body injury:

Duclair is day-to-day, upper body.

Kuefler is upper body, waiting for swelling to go down. #Isles

— Stefen Rosner (@stefen_rosner) September 25, 2025

I suppose it's good news that it's not related to the groin injury that caused Duclair to miss nearly half the season last year and be largely ineffective even when he played, but it's always something to monitor for a player returning from injury.

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In yesterday's Ramblings, I spent a bit of time talking about players I have drafted the most often so far this draft season. I am now up to 13 drafts, so I think it gives me a good idea of the players I'm targeting as well as the players I'm not. Today, we are going to dig into the players that I have yet to draft through 13 drafts.

I am using my personal projections which are for goals, assists, power-play points, shots, hits, and blocks. Each skater is projected for 82 games played unless we know they are missing time (Matthew Tkachuk, Zach Hyman). The data for the projections come from Frozen Tools, Evolving Hockey, and All Three Zones.

As always, where a player is being drafted will vary significantly by league settings. MacKenzie Weegar is absolutely going to be a top-10 defenceman off the board in multi-cat formats but may not be a top-20 defenceman in points-only formats. We are focusing on multi-cat formats, so keep that in mind.

Ivan Demidov (Montreal Canadiens)

I do a Daily Fantasy (DFS) show anywhere from 3-6 times a week during the regular season, and my co-host sent along this screenshot from a Best Ball draft he did on Wednesday night:

That is Demidov going as the 75^th pick overall. Things will vary from league to league, but for Demidov to be a top-75 player in fantasy, he needs at least a 30-goal, 30-assist season with over 200 shots on goal. The last rookie age-20 or younger to score at least 30 goals in a season (or a similar pace for the Bubble season) was when Patrik Laine and Auston Matthews both did it in 2016-17. They also did that by both skating over 17:30 per game in TOI, a level only Nick Suzuki and Cole Caufield reached for Montreal last season. Either Demidov's rookie season sees him overtake Caufield as the team's top winger or he's not going to get a lot of ice time.

The real problem is the peripherals. If we get to the end of the season and Demidov has something like 28 goals and 34 assists, I wouldn't be surprised. If he did that while also putting up over 200 shots, 40 blocks, and 80 hits, I would be very surprised. There is just no way I can draft Demidov as a top 75, top 100, or even top 125 pick. There is just no value at that price in multi-cat formats.

Sebastian Aho (Carolina Hurricanes)

It's kind of funny that in yesterday's Ramblings, I talked about how the top Carolina wingers (Seth Jarvis, Nikolaj Ehlers, Andrei Svechnikov) were among my most-drafted players. I do not have Aho on any teams yet, though, and it's a function of two things.

First, he is going consistently as a top-20 centre and my projections have him as the 23^rd centre. The value isn't that bad, but it isn't in line with how I generally approach drafts, so he's not finding his way to my rosters.

The second part is that even if the value for Aho is somewhat fine, there are other centres being taken in his range I would much rather target. In multi-cat formats, I would rather have guys like John Tavares, Dylan Larkin, Nico Hischier, or Joel Eriksson Ek than Aho. All those guys are going later than Aho by ADP on both Fantrax and Yahoo, and I have each of those centres as better per-game values than Aho.

Tomas Hertl (Vegas Golden Knights)

On Fantrax, Hertl is being drafted as the 27^th centre off the board, and he's going as the 30^th centre on Yahoo. My projections have him as the 39^th centre in fantasy drafts, so right off the hop, there is bad value here.

His problem is ice time. The Jack Eichel–Mitch Marner duo is going to be the team's top line, regardless of the third wheel. The team's 'shutdown' line looks to be Reilly Smith, William Karlsson, and Mark Stone. At best, that line and Hertl's line will be a 2A/2B situation, and there's a world where the Hertl line is just straight up the third line. He is also turning 32 years old in November and has failed to play 80 games in three straight seasons.

There is also some incoming regression. While the league shooting percentage did increase last year, Hertl shot a career-best 18.1%. He didn't crack the 15% plateau in any of the prior three seasons and averaged 13.5% in that span.

Timo Meier (New Jersey Devils)

Last year, it took six regular season games for Meier to get taken off the team's top PP unit. This year, he didn't even make it to the regular season as he was moved off PP1 in favour of Dawson Mercer. How long that lasts is uncertain but what is certain is that he's nowhere near assured top PP minutes and is likely to have more games on PP2 than on PP1. Last year, that role led to 0.66 points per game, a four-year low.

I got burned on Meier last year, thinking he'd hold to a top PP role for most of the season. It was a big reason he was projected for about 10 more goals and 10 more assists than he ended up with. The reality of him not being a factor for the team's power play is a big reason for a modest projection.

The big reason why I don't have any teams with Meier on them is the players being taken around or after his various ADPs. Position designations will vary from site to site, but on a per-game basis, I have Svechnikov as a similar right winger and he's going anywhere from 2-4 rounds later, Mathew Barzal as a better right winger (even in multi-cat formats) going 3-4 rounds later, and Dylan Holloway as a better left winger going 1-2 rounds later. Even if Meier's value was fine (I think he's overvalued anyway), my projections have similar/better options both on left and right wing going later.

Kevin Fiala (Los Angeles Kings)

First and foremost, the reason I don't have Fiala on any teams is similar to what was outlined above for Meier – there right wingers being drafted in a similar range (or later) that I have as better per-game values (Svechnikov, Barzal, Bryan Rust) and there are left wingers who also fit that bill (Holloway, Ehlers, Rickard Rakell). It isn't as if I'm low on Fiala, necessarily, but there are other players I'm higher on that constitute much better draft values than he does.

The other reason is I have concerns about Los Angeles' offseason moves, namely bringing in Cody Ceci and Brian Dumoulin while losing Vladislav Gavrikov in free agency and trading Jordan Spence. Whatever else they brought to the team, Gavrikov and Spence were good at getting the puck moving up the ice, and Ceci and Dumoulin are, at best, much more risky in this area. I think they'll make the Kings a bit worse offensively, and it's enough to drag down Fiala's projection lower than it would be with Gavrikov/Spence.

Generally speaking, I don't have a big problem with Fiala's ADPs. I just think that the likelihood of the Kings being a bit worse offensively combined with better values around/later than Fiala's ADPs make him someone I'm just not drafting.

Erik Karlsson (Pittsburgh Penguins)

Karlsson is my 30^th defenceman in these multi-cat formats. On Fantrax, he's being drafted as the 27^th defenceman, and on Yahoo he is the 31^st defenceman off the board. That means his value is roughly where I have him priced, so he's just fine as a draft pick. If someone wants to take him any time after the 25^th defenceman, then it seems like the value works out okay.

But when I'm drafting, I don't want 'okay' value. The only time I would really target a player with 'okay' value is if I'm working on a stack. If I had Sidney Crosby and Bryan Rust, then yeah, I would be fine taking Karlsson as the 28^th defenceman or whatever. But I have only drafted Crosby once, so there haven't been a lot of opportunities to do that.

This is also where other values come into play. If we're talking multi-cat leagues and looking around the 30^th defenceman off the board, I've been drafting guys like Rasmus Andersson, Vince Dunn, Darnell Nurse, and Sam Rinzel. Each come with their own risks (trade, injury, smaller role, rookie), but I have each with a similar value to Karlsson at lower ADPs.

Zeev Buium (Minnesota Wild)

There are three rookie defencemen often going inside the top-40 blue liners drafted: Buium, Rinzel, and Zayne Parekh. I have Rinzel as a better multi-cat defenceman than Buium this season and Parekh is really close (about 3% worse). So, of those three, I have been drafting Rinzel the most. I have Parekh on one team, and Buium on none.

This isn't an indictment of Buium, but more a fact of where he stands on the roster. At even strength, and assuming they're all healthy, he is going to be behind Brock Faber, Jonas Brodin, and Jared Spurgeon at minimum. He may even be behind Jacob Middleton, too. At best, he'll get 20 minutes a night, which is fine, but the Wild are probably going to be a below-average offensive team at even strength anyway. In that sense getting 19-20 minutes a game playing for Minnesota is not the same as a team like Dallas or Carolina. If he's genuinely behind all four, even with top PP time, he'll be around the 18-minute mark.

Buium is a tremendous talent, I just think it'll take at least a year for him to cement himself as a top-four guy, let alone top pair, and I don't think Minnesota is a great scoring environment, especially if he's not on the ice with Kirill Kaprizov. For now, there are others I'd rather draft, but to be fair, I was also wrong about Lane Hutson last year. So it goes.