The Pittsburgh Penguins announced that winger Bryan Rust will miss a couple of weeks with a lower-body injury. Considering the season is still four days away, Rust missing a couple of weeks from right now is not a big deal, but it does give a bit more fuel to my 'Ville Koivunen is being severely undervalued' argument. In fact, according to Wes Crosby, Koivnen was lined up with Sidney Crosby and Rickard Rakell in practice yesterday with Rust missing.

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In my Ramblings yesterday, I wrote about several players with an ADP outside the top-250 that are standing out to me, including Filip Chytil, Jani Nyman, Zachary Bolduc, Frank Nazar, Philip Broberg, and more. Inside that piece are a bunch of links to other Ramblings covering a lot of my preseason coverage on ADP movement, player values, arbitrage drafting, finding this year's Darcy Kuemper, Zach Werenski, and Dylan Holloway, and a bunch more. For most of my pre-draft analysis, go check that out.

For even more fantasy draft thoughts, including team-by-team analysis, a schedule breakdown, breakouts and downturns, and a whole lot more, go pick up a copy of the 2025-26 Dobber Hockey Fantasy Guide! It also includes a draft list with full projections for over 800 skaters and 80 goalies. It has been updated all through the preseason to reflect things like Aleksander Barkov's injury or Luke Evangelista's continuing lack of a contract. The Guide is available now in the Dobber Shop.

Today is my last Ramblings before the first day of the NHL regular season, so I want to gather a lot of my big draft thoughts in one place. I understand people don't want to go back and read 25 000 draft words (though I hope you do!), so this will assemble a lot of my big points here.

In general, I am going to assume multi-category formats including hits and blocks. I am also going to give a general idea of where players are being drafted because that can vary wildly between formats and between websites.

Overvalued Montreal Canadiens

Almost no matter the site, Nick Suzuki is going somewhere around the 50^th pick even though he has never had 190 shots in a season and has had three straight years of under 70 hits. Cole Caufield is going around the same spot, if not earlier, despite losing 1:20 per game of ice time and having yet to reach 100 total hits+blocks in a season. Lane Hutson is being drafted as roughly a top-12 defenceman (give or take a couple spots) and though he's already a high-end offensive defenceman, he had 91 shots and 40 hits last season. Those are heavy draft prices for players that are just not very good peripheral producers.

On top of that, this Montreal team is deeper than it was at this point a year ago. Patrik Laine is healthy, Ivan Demidov is in the lineup for his first full season, and they traded for Zachary Bolduc. It is reasonable to think that Caufield's TOI stays stagnant or even declines further while Suzuki (who lost 1:12 per game in TOI himself) sees a small drop. It won't be a cataclysmic fall, but if you're asking me to invest a third-, fourth-, for fifth-round pick in a player, and they lack in some peripheral categories as it is, if they're staring down further ice-time declines, I have concerns.

There is a difference between points-only values and multi-cat values for these three players, so that will change the equation, but I have very few Montreal Canadiens skaters rostered on my fantasy teams (Sam Montembeault is the exception).

Undervalued Carolina Hurricanes

Nikolaj Ehlers is now in Carolina, and despite tremendous per-minute production rates, he's played under 70 games in three of the last four years. Andrei Svechnikov is coming off a down season, even if he was very good in the playoffs. Add in Seth Jarvis, who is established as the team's top winger, and an emerging Jackson Blake, and I get that some people are scared off by both the depth and the uncertainty that could mess with roles.

I am not one of those people. The Carolina Hurricanes are one of my most-stacked teams with Svechnikov, Ehlers, and Jarivs all among my top-10 most-drafted players across my 20 teams. A big part of that is the ADPs, particularly on Svechnikov (consistently outside the top-100 players) and Ehlers (often going in the 7^th or 8^th round). Looking at both left and right wingers, I have Jarvis inside the top-20, Ehlers inside the top-30, and Svechnikov inside the top-40. They are all going later, and sometimes much later, than those rankings, so it's why I have been drafting them so much.

In Tulsky We Trust.

Overvalued Dallas Stars

I have said it a couple times, but it bears repeating: Mikko Rantanen lost over three minutes per game in ice timein Dallas compared to his time in Colorado. The Stars have a new coach, but even if he's at 20 minutes a game, that is a drop of 2:30 per game compared to his role with the Avs. In a best-case scenario, over an 82-game season, Rantanen is going to lose about 200 minutes that he would have played in Colorado. Based off what he did with the Avs on a per-minute basis, we are looking at a drop of 5 goals, 7 assists, and around 28 shots. Now, that is the best-case scenario if he was still skating next to Nathan MacKinnon. But he's not skating next to Nathan MacKinnon, so things will get even worse. Drafting him around picks 10-14 in a 12-team league feels like punching a one-way ticket to seventh place.

Jason Robertson has one season with 109 points, and three seasons with 80 points or fewer; doing some quick math in my head, three is larger than one, so that's part of why I'm not high on drafting him. If I had to bet on whether Robertson is a 100-point player, which would take remarkable efficiency for someone playing around 18 minutes a night, or an 80-point player, which is about on par for a high-end offensive player skating around 18 minutes a night, my bet is on the latter, so I have no interest in taking Robertson in the second or third round.

Thomas Harley and Jake Oettinger seem fine for where they're being drafted, but as for the top forwards being taken in the first, second, or third rounds, that's going to be a 'no' from me, dawg.

Undervalued New York Islanders

Please do not take this as an endorsement of the New York Islanders – I would never do such a thing. But it is an endorsement of Mathew Barzal going somewhere between round 9 and round 12, Bo Horvat a round or two later, and Anders Lee even later than that. We are in on all three. We are SO in. Allow me to explain.

Even in a 2024-25 season where Barzal missed 52 games and the Islanders scored just 25 power-play goals (14 teams had more than twice as many), Horvat finished as a top-125 player in standard Yahoo formats. Barzal is healthy, the power play shouldn't be as bad (even if they're still below-average), and in response, Horvat's Yahoo ranking is one round later than where he finished in 2024-25 with his ADP being three rounds later. Here's my reaction to the logic behind that:

As for Barzal, well, it's about health. Even in multi-cat formats where he's a drag on hits, his combination of production, shot volume, and shot blocking means if he plays 75 games, he can be a top-75 player. Heck, if he re-produces his 2023-24 season, he can push to be top-50 player. If the only thing keeping a skater being drafted in rounds 9-12 from performing as a player drafted in rounds 5-8 is whether he'll play 75 games, that's a guy I'll usually buy on.

And then there's Anders Lee. Like Horvat, he had a very good year (29 goals, 25 assists, 233 shots, 121 hits) despite single-digit power-play points. He has scored at least 28 goals in three of the last four years, averaged 212 shots every 82 games over the last three seasons, and managed at least 120 hits in three straight years. For a guy going anywhere from picks 150-250, that is pretty good multi-cat coverage.

I am not high on the Islanders, but their top players have more fantasy value than they're being drafted for, and that's what I'm buying.

Anaheim Is This Year's Columbus

At 5-on-5 last year, the Anaheim Ducks were one of the top teams by scoring chance contributions per 60 minutes in the league (per tracking data from All Three Zones):

It can be tough to make out with all 32 teams listed, but the Ducks were in line with teams like Vegas, Edmonton, and Tampa Bay. Of course, their scoring didn't always reflect that, but after a slow start, they were 14^th in the league by 5-on-5 goals per 60 minutes from January 1^st onward. We saw Mason McTavish, Leo Carlsson, and Cutter Gauthier all have sustained hot streaks at some point in the second half, and they are all a year older. With some veteran reinforcements brought in, the emergence of Jackson LaCombe, and a new coach, things are all trending up for the Ducks.

I don't mean 'Anaheim is the next Columbus' in that the Ducks should be right on the fringes of a playoff spot. What I mean is that their top forwards have all shown flashes of high offensive upside, there are a number of young skaters that are a year older, and they are all very cheap in fantasy drafts (the Ducks don't have a single skater in the top-100 picks). If I am betting on a team to have anywhere from 4-6 skaters being drafted inside the top-200 all outperform their ADPs, and a couple of them by a lot, I am betting on the Anaheim Ducks.

Mid-Tier Goaltending Reigns

I am not out on the top goaltenders; I have a fair share of Igor Shesterkin on my teams. But once we get past the top few goalies and get to that next tier with names like Sergei Bobrovsky, Ilya Sorokin, and Dustin Wolf, I just don't have a lot of interest. At that point, I am waiting on the next wave of goalie tiers and going after names like Linus Ullmark, Sam Montembeault, Karel Vejmelka, and Joey Daccord.

For an example here, I just cannot justify taking Sorokin as a top-10 or top-12 goalie when Daccord or Vejmelka can be drafted 5-7 rounds later. To me, there is not much difference between Daccord and Sorokin in terms of talent, and not much difference between the Kraken and the Islanders in terms of team quality. And even if I think Vejmelka is a tier below Sorokin in ability (which I do), the Mammoth are a tier above the Islanders in terms of team quality, so it's a wash.

While mid-tier goaltending reigns, I should clarify a bit: I have interest in any of the tippy-top names like Connor Hellebuyck, Andrei Vasilevskiy, and Igor Shesterkin. I just have no interest in the tier under them, and would rather load up on skaters at that point and wait to draft goalies I think are similar values much later.  

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Those are my major draft thoughts. Again, for a lot more detail on specific players, teams, stacks, or ADPs, check out this Ramblings post because a lot of my pre-draft write-ups are all linked in there in one spot. Good luck with your drafts this weekend!