We are just a few days away from the release of Dobber's 2026-27 Fantasy Hockey Guide, which is available for pre-order now in the Dobber Shop! This includes player projections, team-by-team breakdowns, offseason changes, rookies and call-ups to monitor, and a whole lot more. It is also regularly updated right through to the start of the regular season to ensure managers have the current information needed to make informed decisions. Get ahead of your fantasy league mates and pre-order a copy of the Dobber Fantasy Guide!

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The Chicago Blackhawks brought Patrick Kane back into the fold thanks to a two-year contract carrying a cap hit of $8-million per season. I wrote about it yesterday.

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The Columbus Blue Jackets avoided arbitration with goaltender Jet Greaves by signing him to a three-year deal worth $5-million per season, as reported by Elliotte Friedman. Among goalies with at least 70 starts over the last three seasons, Greaves sits third by save percentage (.912) trailing only Anthony Stolarz and Connor Hellebuyck. Unless Columbus takes a big step as a team, Greaves' ceiling is probably 30 wins, but at 25 years old and with nothing but a sterling track record so far in his NHL career, he can be a top-10 goalie, and even top-5 if he gets a few bounces.

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Over my last couple of Ramblings, I have gone over early average draft position (ADP) data from Underdog Fantasy (they are not affiliated with me, Dobber, or Dobber Hockey in any way). They have a best ball tournament they run every year called the Best Puck Classic and are usually the website to have early and reliable ADP data each offseason. In Tuesday's Ramblings, I covered centres, and yesterday we went over wingers. Today, we will get to defencemen.

For anyone not familiar with best ball formats, it is a draft-and-hold league with no waivers, trades, or free agency. There are thousands of entries and fantasy managers are put into 12-team leagues. Each week, the highest scorers at each position (two centres, three wingers, one defenceman, one flex, and one goalie) are counted towards your final total. After 18 weeks, the top three rosters from each 12-team league advance to the fantasy playoffs, at which point they are re-assembled into new 10-team leagues. After two fantasy playoff weeks, the two highest-scoring rosters in each 10-team league advances to the next round, and so on until a winner is determined. At this point, there have been over 60 Best Puck Classic leagues drafted, a small percentage of the final total two months from now but a decent base to work from.

There are 18 total roster spots, and it is a points system:

• Goals – 6
• Assists – 4
• Power-Play Points – 0.5
• Shots – 1
• Hits – 0.5
• Blocks – 1
• Goalie Win – 6
• Goalie Save – 0.6
• Goalie Goal Against – (-3)

Again, each week counts two centres, three wingers, one defenceman, one flex (any of centre, winger, or defenceman), and one goalie. In that sense, a third or fourth defenceman on a roster will not have near as much value as a third or fourth winger, so positional value matters.

Here are some interesting ADPs among blue liners.

Zach Werenski (Columbus Blue Jackets)

As expected, Cale Makar is the first defenceman off the board at the end of the first round, then there are three defencemen going in the mid-to-late second round, Werenski among them:

Last year, Werenski led all defencemen by fantasy points (FPTS) per game in this format, finishing second by total FPTS behind Evan Bouchard. Over the last two seasons, Werenski leads all defencemen by both FPTS per game and overall FPTS. Despite that, he's going as the second defenceman off the board and can sometimes be had even later if someone in your league is particularly high on Bouchard or Quinn Hughes.

This is interesting. Not that I necessarily disagree with it because Makar should be first and Quinn Hughes can be a 15-goal, 90-point defenceman with the Minnesota Wild given his improved roster over the Vancouver Canucks combined with absurdly heavy usage. But given that Werenski has had back-to-back super-elite seasons and is still on the right side of 30 years old, it seems that potentially being able to get him as the third or fourth defenceman off the board is good value.

Matthew Schaefer (New York Islanders)

From rarely being drafted last season to being the sixth defenceman off the board this season, Schaefer finds himself in pretty good company:

The 2025-26 season saw Schaefer finish 8^th overall by total FPTS among defencemen, and tying Shayne Gostisbehere for 12^th by FPTS per game (Schaefer playing all 82 games obviously made him the much more valuable blue liner). Given these finishes as a rookie, that he's going as the sixth defenceman makes sense to me.

We don't really have a comparison for Schaefer. No rookie defenceman has had a 20-goal, 30-assist season since the 1980s. No defenceman has had a 50-point, 200-shot season since the 1980s, either. The closest is Cale Makar's 57 games back in 2019-20 and he was three years older at the time. Either Schaefer is a one-year anomaly that will regress or he's a generational player. It is reminiscent of Macklin Celebrini last year – you either believe or you don't. I am a believer, and if I miss on any of the top guys, I am perfectly fine grabbing him in the fourth round.

Darren Raddysh (Toronto Maple Leafs)

Raddysh finished fourth among blue liners by FPTS per game last season, but he was kind of in a tier of his own as there was a similar gap between him and third-place Makar (0.44) and fifth-place Moritz Seider (0.35). Now that he's in Toronto, there's an interesting ADP attached to his name:

To be a top-10 fantasy defenceman in this format, on an 82-game basis, Raddysh would need something like 15 goals, 50 assists, and 190 shots. In other words, to pay off this current ADP, Raddysh needs seven fewer goals and 20 fewer shots than last season. What this ADP tells me is that there is regression being built into his draft position. Considering he shot 10.4% after averaging 5.6% across the prior three seasons, that is reasonable.

Taking Raddysh at this spot requires a drafter to answer two questions:

1. Is he as skilled as he showed last year?
2. How far is the shooting percentage regression going to go?

As someone who is bullish on Raddysh in general, expecting 20+ goals again is expecting too much. Expecting 15 goals, 50 assists, and 200 shots? That seems doable and makes his late-sixth round ADP worth it.

Jackson LaCombe (Anaheim Ducks)

With just one defenceman counted each week in this format, and at most two if someone can sneak into the flex, then defencemen going outside the top-10 at the position don't have a ton of value. That is where LaCombe finds himself:

Olen Zellweger was traded, Jacob Trouba is now in San Jose, and John Carlson did not re-sign. There is still Pavel Mintyukov around, but let's be honest, this Ducks blue line now firmly belongs to LaCombe. In the playoffs, he skated 44.4% of Anaheim's ice time, which was fifth among all postseason defencemen (per Frozen Tools). He won't get that much in the regular season, but it certainly puts 25 minutes a game on the table with a tight grip on the top PP unit.

Anaheim's key forwards are returning and getting better. LaCombe seems primed to take yet another step after crossing the 200-game threshold last season, smack in the middle of his prime by turning 26 years old this coming January. Another leap in shot volume would take him around 2.0 shots per game and he has exceeded 1.5 blocks per game in each season of his career. To me, this is a guy with the tools and the role necessary to take one more step in fantasy value, and if I miss on top defencemen, LaCombe's name is underlined, circled, and has exclamation marks all around it. 

Brandt Clarke (Los Angeles Kings)

Anyone who reads my writing knows I'm a big fan of Clarke. With that said, he was 29^th by FPTS per game last season among defencemen and this is where his ADP sits at his position:

For Clarke to land as a top-20 defenceman, he needs to add a couple of goals and maybe 8-10 assists. It isn't impossible, especially with a healthy Kevin Fiala and full season from Artemi Panarin.

The question for me is the power play. It is safe to assume that each of Quinton Byfield (or Alex Laferriere), Adrian Kempe, Mats Zuccarello, and Panarin are top PP options. If Clarke slides in as the PP quarterback, then that's all we need. The problem is I don't think the Kings leave Fiala off the top PP unit, and to me it makes them a candidate to run a five-forward power play. In fact, per Frozen Tools, the Kings had over 70 minutes of power play time last season running some kind of five-forward PP unit. There is a new coach in town in Peter Laviolette, so maybe that changes, but with six capable PP forwards, and Clarke not in the elite PP QB tier, I am nervous about his man advantage position. A shaky top PP role on an average-at-best even strength team makes a top-25 finish difficult.

Charlie McAvoy (Boston Bruins)

Last year, McAvoy was one of my favourite targets for defencemen and it worked out extremely well as he finished as a top-12 defenceman in this format on a per-game basis. Fast forward 11 months and he's being drafted outside the top-20 rearguards once again:

He shot 9.9%, which is a career-high, but he had three seasons of at least 8.9% prior to last season. The real problem is the Bruins shot 12.5% with him on the ice, the highest rate of his career and against a three-year average of 9.7%. That, and an inflated participation rate in goals scored with him on the ice, probably inflated his production by roughly eight points.

The thing is that if you normalize the team's shooting percentage to 10%, and his goal participation rate to 40%, a drop of around eight points means he goes from a top-12 defenceman to top-20, and still exceeding his ADP. If any kind of multi-cat format, let alone this points format, if I can get McAvoy anywhere around or outside the top-20 defencemen, he'll be on a lot of my rosters.

Luke Hughes (New Jersey Devils)

In this format in 2025-26, the younger Hughes finished 53^rd among blue liners by FPTS per game. Here is where his ADP sits so far this season:

Simon Nemec was traded and Dougie Hamilton saw a sizeable drop in PP usage last season (50%) compared to the year before (67.4%). Hughes will turn 23 years old before the 2026-27 season starts and he surpassed the 200-game plateau back in January. To me, it seems they've cleared the decks for Hughes to not only be their top defenceman (which he was last season at 23:01 per game), but to be locked into their top PP role. With his shot volume and that kind of role, he is very capable of a 10-goal, 40-assist, 180-shot season, and be worth a lot more than a top-40 defenceman. This is an ADP I am buying on.