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, Puneet Sharma, and Dobber

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1. The Quinn Hughes trade rumors had ramped up over the past week to the point where a deal this season seemed inevitable. I just didn’t think it would be this week. But in case you missed it, Hughes is now a member of the Wild, with a trio of young players (Marco Rossi, Zeev Buium, Liam Ohgren) and a 2026 first-round pick headed to Vancouver.

I wrote quite a few words about the trade in the Fantasy Take, so I’ll just add that this is a rough day to be a Canucks fan. By trading arguably the most talented player in team history and unquestionably the best defenseman in team history, Canucks management dropped the ball on surrounding Hughes with the right mix of players and selling him on remaining a Canuck through his prime years. The return should give Canucks fans a glimmer of hope for the future, especially if it means they’ll shift toward a proper rebuild instead of win-now moves to simply make the playoffs. However, this trade means they’ll have to be patient for a while longer. (dec13)

2. Any half-serious Quinn Hughes trade proposal involving the Devils had to include Simon Nemec. There’s no need to expand on that any further now that Hughes is traded, but I will say that perhaps Nemec has been paying attention to the scuttlebutt this week to prove he should be an indispensable member of the Devils. Nemec followed up a goal against Ottawa on Tuesday with two assists against Tampa Bay on Thursday, totaling eight shots over the two games. Those who pay close attention to the power-play formations will have also noticed that Nemec has been moved onto the top power play over Dougie Hamilton and Luke Hughes this week, with Nemec also recording his first power-play point of the year this week. Nemec is still rostered in fewer than a third of Yahoo leagues, so add him where available. (dec13)

Ed. note: The morning after I listed Simon Nemec as a potential weekend add, he was declared out for both of the Devils’ weekend games. Sorry about that. The Devils are dealing with a rash of injuries and absences at the moment. (dec14)

3. Earlier on Friday, the Penguins and Oilers swapped goalies, with the Oilers acquiring Tristan Jarry and Sam Poulin from the Penguins for Stuart Skinner, Brett Kulak, and a 2029 second-round pick. Mike Clifford wrote the official Fantasy Take for this deal.

In the end, Skinner wasn’t the modern-day Grant Fuhr or Bill Ranford – a goalie that could backstop a high-octane Oilers squad to a Stanley Cup. Now that responsibility turns to Jarry. The question is whether Jarry is truly an upgrade over Skinner, or whether the Oilers are simply rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. If looking at this season’s stats, then this seems like an upgrade, albeit not a major one. If the comparison extends into last season and even before that, I’m not so sure.

My personal opinions aside, these two goalies are very similar stats-wise according to the Frozen Tools Goalie Compare. In other words, one low-end starting goalie is being traded for another. It may then come down to the Oilers simply needing to make a change for the sake of making a change. What’s interesting is that Jarry could have been claimed for free off waivers last season, so an argument could be made that the Penguins are selling high.

Coincidentally, Jarry and Skinner are similarly rostered in Yahoo leagues (just above 60%). Of the two, I’d pick Jarry simply because I think he’ll win more games over the rest of the season. But if his stats resemble Skinner’s within a defensive system that needs improvement, we’re talking empty-calorie wins (ie. mid to poor ratios) with about a 50/50 chance of a quality start. Do with that what you will. (dec13)

4. Lost in the Friday trade for the Penguins was the fact that Rickard Rakell has been activated from IR. Rakell has produced at a 70-point pace dating back to last season, and he should rejoin Sidney Crosby‘s line as well as the top power play. Rakell is rostered in just over half of Yahoo leagues already, but he is worth looking up if he happens to be available. (dec13)

5. There was actual hockey played on Friday. Connor Bedard injured his right shoulder at the very end of the Chicago/St. Louis game. Bedard was in the faceoff circle with Brayden Schenn and got pushed back. Following the game, coach Jeff Blashill said that Bedard would not play on Saturday with the next update coming on Monday. It might be best to look for Bedard replacements for next week. Blashill described it as a “freak accident”, which makes sense. Bedard missing extended time would be a tough break, as he has taken a big step forward toward superstardom this season. (dec13)

6. The Top 100 Roto Rankings will soon be updated for December. In the meantime, leave me your feedback on who you think should go up or down the rankings, as well as who is missing and who shouldn’t be there. (dec13)

7. I feel compelled to discuss the Carolina goaltending situation. There are clear benefits to rostering goalies on stronger teams such as the Hurricanes. However, timeshare situations can reduce the value of each goalie due to the limited number of starts. The Canes have taken this one step further to confuse you with a three-headed monster of Frederik Andersen, Pyotr Kochetkov, and Brandon Bussi. The multiple injuries of Kochetkov combined with the general injury proneness of Andersen has led to the necessity for Bussi to remain on the roster all season. With a 10-1-0 record and solid ratios (2.07 GAA, .909 SV%) entering Saturday action, Bussi might be here to stay – even if it means the Canes carry three goalies the rest of the way. Rostered in about a third of Yahoo leagues and less than half of Fantrax leagues, Bussi is worth adding where available. (dec13)

8. Cam Fowler‘s value increased in a major way after he was traded to the Blues last season (36 PTS in 51 GP). Yet, entering Saturday, Fowler had 12 points in 33 games. He might still be the Blues’ best power-play option on defense, as seven of those 12 points have been with the man advantage. Still, if you need to make room on your roster for a streamer or a player you can’t live without (or need to downsize with a player coming off IR), Fowler might be the odd man out. It’s clear that he has been impacted by the Blues’ struggles this season, while his production last season may have been more of a product of their second-half run toward a playoff spot. (dec13)

9. Utah announced that centre Logan Cooley is going to miss eight weeks with the leg injury he suffered after crashing into the post against Vancouver last week. That kind of timeframe will keep him out until the Olympic break, and he can use that break to get up to speed the best he can. Things could certainly be worse, but that’s a tough blow for both him and the team. (dec12)

10. An update on Ryan Leonard as he will miss 3-4 weeks. Also like Cooley, this could have been a lot worse than it ended up being, but Leonard looked like he was finally starting to find his next gear in the NHL. Let’s hope he can get back there again when he returns in January. (dec12)

11. New Jersey said that forward Timo Meier will be taking a leave of absence from the team due to a personal matter. Hopefully it is nothing overly serious. (dec12)

12. Victor Hedman has been fighting injury all year and that is the case again as he was sent to the IR on Thursday. That will keep him out of action for at least a week, though we didn’t have a firm timeline on his return at time of writing. (dec12)

13. Rookie goaltender Jacob Fowler made his NHL debut for Montreal on Thursday night and gave up a couple of third-period goals, but the Canadiens had built up a 4-0 lead to that point so the team held on for the 4-2 win. Fowler made some key saves along the way, including on the penalty kill in the second period, to help Montreal snap their two-game losing funk. Fowler stopped 33 shots in total for his first NHL victory. (dec12)

14. Steven Stamkos managed his second four-goal game of his career, and second in the last two years, in Nashville’s 7-2 beatdown of St. Louis on Thursday. Stamkos finished with nine shots on target while increasing his season’s goal total by 50%. All of a sudden, he was on pace for 33 goals. (dec12)

15. The St. Louis Blues announced the signing of winger Robby Fabbri to a one-year, two-way contract. This is on the heels of them also announcing that winger Jordan Kyrou is week-to-week with a lower-body injury with Alexey Toropchenko still on the shelf and Nick Bjugstad also ailing. Fabbri was with the Blues for their Stanley Cup run, so there’s some familiarity with the organization, so let’s see how they decide to use him and go from there. (dec11)

16. One other thing that has come with the sudden cap jump, is that teams are more able to lock in their players on contracts that appeal to the players, while also being manageable on the books for the GM. We’re seeing more watered-down free agent crops because players don’t have to hit the open market to get their ask, and because it’s easier not to have to move your family across the country (or countries). Another ripple effect is that RFAs are getting long-term deals earlier, as their existing teams have to lock them up before A) the price inflates, and B) another team gets a chance to bid on them with an offer-sheet (as more teams now have the cap room to use that weapon). (dec10)

17. One team to watch over the next couple of months is the Anaheim Ducks, who have both Cutter Gauthier and Leo Carlsson coming up for new contracts. Up front, the Ducks have three different forwards making exactly $7 million a year for the next few seasons, while Jackson Lacombe‘s new $9 million cap hit will kick in next year. The top-tier forwards often make more than the top-end D-men (except in Nashville, New Jersey, and Buffalo), which indicates that the next contracts for Gauthier and Carlsson will likely have eight-digit cap hits.

Carlsson as the centre would have a case to make more than Gauthier, but negotiating with both can be tricky, and ideally the Ducks would probably like to find an identical number to fit for both. Logan Cooley and Martin Necas probably provide the bookends for the two players, meaning some $11 million cap hits would possibly work. It’s not something the Ducks are going to want to drag into the summer though, and the term could be a sticking point with the players perhaps preferring to re-up to a higher number in five or six years rather than eight. (dec10)

18. Annual reminder that with the World Junior roster being released, there are lots of projected rosters out there at the moment, and now is the time to take a look at which top players are still available in your leagues, so you can buy-in now, have some added excitement while you watch, and then try to sell high in the weeks after the tournament. (dec10)

19. I was looking at the % Owned marker on Fantrax for my Cap League Dynasty, which can help provide a bit of an outside perspective on which of your players and prospects are held in higher regard. It helps sometimes to take the feeling out of it and see that someone you may have a soft spot for is the lowest owned player you have, and maybe it’s actually worth looking at cutting bait.

One other thing I noticed with it, is that Aleksander Barkov is currently 60% owned in Fantrax, and as he should be held in just about every keeper and dynasty league right now, but wouldn’t be rostered in single-season leagues, we can guess that about 60% of Fantrax leagues have some degree of keeper setup. Just in case that’s a relevant conclusion for anyone else when evaluating players based on the ownership percentage of the masses. (dec10)

20. When judging fantasy performance, figuring out what is ‘for real’ and what is more of a mirage is crucial to avoiding roster missteps. To do that, we are going to dig into market share of shot attempts and expected goals (xG). Data is from Evolving Hockey and is current as of the morning of Wednesday, December 10^th.

Market share of shot attempts (or xG) is simply the percentage of a team’s shot attempts (or xG) a player takes when he’s on the ice. For example, so far this season, Alex DeBrincat has been on the ice for 661 of Detroit’s shot attempts, and he’s taken 198 of them. That is a market share of 30%. The same is repeated for expected goals, though obviously with different numbers. Clear? Great.  

Today, we are only going to investigate forwards. We are only including those with at least 1250 minutes played at all strengths from 2023-25 and at least 250 minutes played thus far in 2025-26. It gives us a sample of 280 forwards to comb through.

Shane Pinto (Ottawa Senators)

There are four forwards in our 280-player sample who’ve increased both their share of shot attempts and expected goals by at least 5%. One of them is Nick Bjugstad which… ok? Two of the others are Jason Robertson and Brandon Hagel, which isn’t a surprise. The fourth is Ottawa’s $28-million-dollar man:

(Note: Just to ensure clarity, the red dotted line on this chart, and all subsequent charts, is the average change in shot attempt market share and the blue dotted line is the average change in expected goal market share).

This is an important development because there may be reticence in believing Pinto’s fantasy profile has taken a step forward due to that incredible hot streak to open the season with eight goals in nine games. However, there is a genuine under-the-hood improvement to back up his 36-goal/82-game pace.

What is key here is this is not just a function of some extra power-play time or something. Pinto has a 28% market share of shot attempts at even strength against a 20.4% rate across the prior two seasons. It is a gigantic improvement and once (if?) he can ever start earning regular top power-play time, his fantasy profile will round into a forward capable of 30-goal, 30-assist, 200-shot seasons. (dec11)

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21. Here at Dobber Hockey, players we like to keep an eye on are those approaching-or-exceeding the 200-game breakout threshold. They are younger players that have had (parts of) 2-3 seasons in the league and are hopefully starting to find their game. They get close to that 200-games played mark, have a big second half, and then they are full-fledged fantasy stars the next year. It is worth checking on which players will meet that requirement in the second half of the 2025-26 season and are showing signs of life. These are players fantasy managers will want to keep an eye on over the next month or so and either acquire in a trade or grab off the waiver wire.

We are going to focus on two forwards today with data from Evolving Hockey and tracking data from All Three Zones: William Eklund and Jack Quinn. Data current as of the afternoon of Monday, December 8^th.

William Eklund (San Jose Sharks)
Yahoo – 35%; Fantrax – 83%; ESPN – 61%

Eklund reached the 200-game threshold on Sunday night in San Jose’s 4-1 win in Carolina. There is one big problem with his current fantasy profile and it’s that he’s not skating with Macklin Celebrini at 5-on-5. They are using Eklund and Alex Wennberg on the second line in a checking role and over the last two seasons, the Sharks score 3.1 goals per 60 minutes at 5-on-5 when Eklund is on the ice with Celebrini but just 2.2 goals/60 without him. That is a drastic drop from a very good first-line rate to a below-average rate.

That time away from Celebrini is crushing Eklund’s assist production as his rate of assists per 60 minutes at 5-on-5 (0.64) is less than half what it was last year (1.30). In fact, after averaging 26 even-strength assists per 82 games across 2023-2025, he is on pace for 16 this year.

All that shouldn’t overshadow the fact that he’s shooting the puck this year more than he ever has, both on a per-game and a 60-minute basis, and both at 5-on-5 and overall. On top of that, when looking at the 5-on-5 tracking data since the start of last season, three wingers pop up as comparable names by Scoring Chance Assists/60 minutes (SCA/60, or helpers on teammate chances), zone entries per 60 minutes, and percentage of zone entries carried in:

With those three stats, columns have been added for the average among each team’s forward group in that span, and the percentage above that average by each of those four players. Notice that Eklund has the 2^nd highest percentage of SCA/60 relative to his team, the 2^nd highest zone entry rate, and the highest carry percentage. He is the only player on this list to finish 1^st or 2^nd in each category relative to their team. In other words, not only is Eklund excelling when compared to a top winger like Clayton Keller, but he’s doing it in a much worse environment.

Therein lies the issue with Eklund. Until he gets Celebrini as a centre, there just isn’t another centre on the San Jose roster that can help boost Eklund’s assists. He can continue to improve on what has already been an upward trajectory to stardom, but if he’s skating with a centre that can’t score, and half a defence group that can’t move the puck, then acquiring him would be looking to the 2026-27 season and beyond, not the second half of the 2025-26 season. (dec9)

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Have a good week, folks!

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