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It's the dead time of the NHL offseason but the Dobber Hockey Forum never sleeps, and they just completed their annual fantasy hockey mock draft. I don't participate in it partially because of vacations I sometimes have around this time of the summer, but also because I like to see where players I might have picked actually end up getting selected. For example, if I want to see where someone like Cutter Gauthier is going this year, and I might have picked him in round three (unlikely, but bear with me), but I want to know if he will possibly slip to round four or five, then this is a great way to check in with where people will actually end up taking him around you. 

Today I wanted to review that mock draft, and see what info we can pull out of it for the upcoming season. You can find the thread with the full set of details and picks here.

The setup is that there are 13 teams, 28 rounds, and all players' stats count for the full season in a ROTO scoring setup. Here are the additional roster and scoring details: 

Scoring:

G, A, Pts, PPP, +/-, PIM, Hits, Blocked Shots, SOG, and W, Sv, Sv%, GAA, SHO

Positions:

14 F, 6 D, 2 G, 6 UTIL – Any position (including goalies)

The first round is always the biggest thing to look at, and determining how all the top players should be sorted. Those are the players that you can usually find some consensus on an order, and the gaps between one pick to the next have a bit more of a drop off. 

Unsurprisingly, the top two picks were Connor McDavid and Nathan MacKinnon, in that order, as they should be in every league. It's an advantage to pick early – don't overthink it. 

With the third piece we got the first bit of a surprise with Macklin Celebrini going off the board. If he keeps his trajectory, then it's a great pick, but if he stagnates a little bit then his offensive numbers won't likely be able to keep up with a couple of the other top-five selections. Celebrini is a top-10 pick this year in redraft leagues, but I'm not sure he's quite #3 yet, with more sure things in Nikita Kucherov, Leon Draisaitl, David Pastrnak, and Cale Makar on the board. 

Brady Tkachuk went fifth, which has some merit as he's unmatched in the peripheral categories, while maybe able to find another gear of offence in Florida among a better supporting cast. It really depends on the league setup with him. He's a top-10 pick in leagues with more peripheral categories, but he drops a few rounds in points-only leagues. 

Rounding out the top-10 we had Kirill Kaprizov and Auston Matthews. I think Matthews has to be picked in this range because of the upside, though at 29 for the start of the season and multiple years removed from his two 100-point seasons (which were also his only two years above 85 points – partially due to health) he may not necessarily be a top-15 or -20 pick for much longer. However, if he can come back fully healthy this year, and clicks with Gavin McKenna as well as being more supported by a revamped cast, it would be tough to watch a leaguemate walk away from the draft with a top-five talent that they managed to select around pick 20. 

Those 10 above though are likely the same 10 I will have at the top of my board for my one-year roto league draft this year, though ideally I would like to be inside the top seven, and avoid the question marks around the band-aid-boy status from Matthews and Makar.

After that stage, we get into that next tier of players who could provide top-10 value, but are maybe 50/50 at best to provide that kind of value. The next few picks included Zach Werenski, Jason Robertson, Quinn Hughes, Evan Bouchard, Nick Szuki, and a couple of others that make up that next tier down to around pick 20. Personal preference generally with that group, but ideally I do like to try and get one defenceman in round two or three here. 

A couple of players who could be considered in this tier as well (and I definitely would consider them around pick 15 or so) but fell outside of it into rounds 2-4 include Jack Hughes, Rasmus Dahlin, Matthew Tkachuk, Mitch Marner, Tage Thompson. Around this same area you have the safe picks who you know are going to be top-40 players, but don't necessarily have the upside to have a chance to jump into the top 15, including players like Jake Guentzel, Kyle Connor, Filip Forsberg, William Nylander, and others. Usually I end up picking more players from the former list rather than the latter, though it's a very fine line between the two groups sometimes. 

Other players in the next few rounds who I think are worth making some notes about: 

Matthew Schaefer – Selected 29th, ahead of Jakob Chychrun, Jake Sanderson, Miro Heiskanen, Adam Fox, and others, this feels a little early for Schaefer who may be a fantastic player, but his underlying numbers speak to the fact that he might have some difficulty passing the 65-point mark this coming season. A mark that most of those other names will approach or pass as well, despite some of them going 40 points later. 

Sidney Crosby – Crosby has been as consistent as they come, and we will see a drop off at some point, but the superstars are usually able to produce at a high level until around the age of 40, and players with a high IQ game as well keeping up for a couple of extra years, so for this season I'm not concerned about Crosby's production, and pick 35 seems very reasonable, perhaps even a little late for him. 

Cutter Gauthier – After a hot start that fueled a fantastic season, Gauthier does look like someone who could grow into being worth a third-round pick, but if you take out his Q1 production, the remaining 45 points in 55 games isn't something that is worth a pick above #50 or so, which is probably as early as I would consider him here. The high shot rate does provide a high floor though, and even after the hot start there was four shots per game in his slower period. 

Tom Wilson – Wilson has been getting better and better the last few years, and has a lot of value with these categories, however with the depth added to the Caps' forward core, Wilson may end up losing some ice time which cause a hit to his peripherals. Wilson saw a career high 19:28 per game last season, and if that drops down (likely) into the 17 minute per game range, then an equivalent drop in peripherals might mean Wilson loses his elite shine. A risky pick at this stage, but lots of cross-coverage upside too. 

Leo Carlsson – Like Gauthier, Carlsson's hot first quarter boosted his overall numbers, and now he is the highest paid player in the NHL. He has better hope he can live up to that contract with numbers that more closely resemble the Q1 numbers of 28 points in 21 games, instead of the 39 points in 49 games which followed. I like this bet at pick 45 more than the Gauthier pick, and it seems about the right range, though I might end up selecting someone like Aleksander Barkov or Mark Scheifele in this range instead.

Mark Scheifele – As we just noted, Scheifele was selected in that same range, who was one of only eight players last year to hit the 100-point milestone. Getting him around pick 50 seems like a coup, and I wonder if there was a bit of managers thinking "I don't want to pick him and have him regress too much for me". Except the regression maybe gets him back to the 90-point range, which is a great safe bet in this range while there were other similar "safe" players picked in rounds two and three. Don't sleep this much on Scheifele in your own drafts. 

J.T. Miller – In my roto league we count a lot of categories, including Hits, PIMs, FOWs, and all the typical scoring stats. Miller has been a top-20 selection the last few years, and with a bit more support to go with some bounce back after last year's unlucky season. He's someone that may slip in drafts this year before he ends up putting up 75 points, 200 SOG, 200 Hits, and some additional value across the rest of the board. Excellent value for being picked nearly 30 spots after Tom Wilson. 

The goalie run started with Andrei Vasilevskiy after pick 40, which seems late for the first goalies to come off the board, and if the top two or three options are there after my top-25 or so skaters are gone then I'm jumping in. Typically in my league drafts though they don't last that long, so I think the actual slip of goalies this far in this draft is more a result of the league format itself as opposed to anything else.

Vasilevskiy should be the first goalie off the board, but after the run of seven goalies leading up to pick 50, there wasn't any more goalie value on the board until Linus Ullmark was left around pick 100. After that, I liked the Spencer Knight, John Gibson, Joey Daccord, Dan Vladar, and a couple other later goalie picks. If you have read my writing at all then you know that I like to fade goalies, and there is always more relative value to be found with goalies after at least pick #80, and definitely after pick #125.

Roman Josi, Dougie Hamilton, and Seth Jones may all be on the wrong side of 30, but all three were solid value picks after the 100 mark for Dmen in this draft. Jones especially I am going to end up with a lot of shares of this year if he keeps falling that far. He's the only real option as a PPQB in Florida with their stacked top of the lineup, and he's only really being overlooked because of his injury last year. Him missing games is an issue if you can't backfill easily, but he paced for 50 points in his first full season in Florida, which is not easy to find in the later defencemen.

Gavin McKenna went around pick 150, which seems like the right range for someone who could finish anywhere from 30 points to 75, assuming he plays the full year in the NHL. Anton Frondell went shortly after, and would be the safer bet with similar upside this year, while Porter Martone was selected before pick #90. Martone fills a lot of categories, but Frondell and McKenna are no slackers there either, and all three are likely Calder finalists when all is said and done. No need to reach for the first one when you can probably get the next one a little while later.

My favourite late fliers (pick #275 and later) were Dmitry Voronkov, Jiri Kulich, Gage Goncalves, and Gabe Landeskog. All with some questions, but all with much higher upside and a decent floor compared to some of the other picks in this range.

Off the top of my head, the player I would have picked in the last round who didn't get drafted would have been Konsta Helenius, who looks NHL ready, and could force his way into the top-six in Buffalo very quickly. They have a lot of C depth, but no one very firmly entrenched.

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Rick Roos is looking for a few more mailbag questions to be answered in next week’s article. To get your questions to him, private message "rizzeedizzee" via the DobberHockey Forums or email [email protected] with "Roos Mailbag" as the subject line. No one does a deeper dive on your questions than Rick, and now is the time to get those keeper and draft questions in before it’s too late.

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See you next Wednesday, and if you have any fantasy hockey questions or comments you can find me on BlueSky @alexdmaclean.