For the last 23 years (13 with The Hockey News) Dobber and his team have reviewed each team from a fantasy-hockey standpoint and graded them.

The 24th annual review will appear here on DobberHockey throughout the summer. This is not a review of the likely performance on the ice or in the standings, but in the realm of fantasy hockey both for the season ahead as well as the foreseeable future. Offensively, will the team perform? Are there plenty of depth options worthy of owning in keeper leagues? What about over the next two or three years? These questions are what I take into consideration when looking at the depth chart and the player potential on that depth chart.

Enjoy!

Pick up the DobberHockey Fantasy Guide here – always updated

Gone: William Eklund, John Klingberg, Mario Ferraro, Philipp Kurashev, Shakir Mukhamadullin, Pavol Regenda, Vincent Desharnais, Nick Leddy, Ryan Reaves

Incoming: Darnell Nurse, Jacob Trouba, Mason Marchment, Michael Kesselring, Eric Comrie

Impact of Changes

Macklin Celebrini scored 115 points, a franchise record, with 45 goals in 82 games, and signed a five-year, $94M extension whose $18.8M AAV in July, the highest in league history. It starts in 2027-28, so he plays 2026-27 on the final year of his entry-level deal, and Mike Grier told reporters Celebrini could have asked for $20.8M. The other headline move ran in the opposite direction: Eklund, fourth on the team with 53 points, was traded to the Ottawa Senators, along with two prospects, for ninth overall in the 2026 Draft. That pick, a swap-down with Buffalo that also brought back Kesselring, and a subsequent June 26 trade-up with Philadelphia let San Jose draft twice in the top 10: Ivar Stenberg at second overall and defenseman Keaton Verhoeff at ninth. The Fantasy Guide projects Stenberg straight onto the roster at 79 games and 65 points, and slots Marchment, who scored 32 points in his final 39 games after arriving in Columbus, onto Celebrini’s wing to help cover the Eklund production.

The blue line was gutted and rebuilt in one summer. Klingberg, Leddy, Ferraro, Mukhamadullin and Desharnais are all gone; Nurse ($9.25M, four years left), Trouba (4 yr, $8.25M AAV) and Kesselring (3 yr, $4.5M AAV) are the replacements, brought in to fix the goals-against and penalty-kill numbers above. None of the three projects as a power-play asset, and the Guide expects San Jose to keep running its five-forward top unit, which matters for Dmitry Orlov owners: his career-high 37 points leaned on 18 power-play points and first-unit time the Guide expects to vanish.

Ready for Full Time: Igor Chernyshov, Michael Misa, Ivar Stenberg

Sam Dickinson already played 72 games, so the wave arriving this fall comes from three forwards. Dickinson is still worth a note in passing: the Guide cannot explain why he received just 6.0 percent of the power-play time and expects that usage to arrive if he makes the team.

Chernyshov is the headliner and the Fantasy Prospects Report‘s number two prospect overall, up from 40th a year ago. He put up 9 goals and 19 points in 28 NHL games, most of them on Celebrini’s wing, plus 33 points in 41 AHL games. The Prospect Report gives him an Andrei Svechnikov comparable with 60 percent upside, 99 percent certainty, and the instruction “draft ASAP.” The Guide doubles down, making him its top breakout candidate with a 65-point sleeper call at 20 percent likelihood.

Michael Misa played 45 games as a teenager and scored 21 points, enough of a cameo to sharpen the projection without costing him this label. He is the Guide’s Future Fantasy Stud for San Jose, with the note that he has arguably higher upside than Stenberg and carries a 70-point sleeper tag at 15 percent. The draft list has him at 128^th with second-unit power-play time.

Stenberg technically belongs here too, but the Guide treats him as a made roster player: 65 projected points, first-unit power play, and an 82^nd overall draft list rank that sits ahead of Misa and Chernyshov. Among 2026 draftees the Guide ranks him second behind only Gavin McKenna.

The cups-of-coffee tier is deep. Quentin Musty scored 45 points in his first AHL season and projects as a 2027-28 regular; Eric Pohlkamp led all NCAA defensemen in scoring as a Hobey Baker finalist and signed his entry-level deal; Luca Cagnoni draws a Torey Krug comparable and put up 43 points in 67 AHL games from a top-pairing role; Filip Bystedt rounds out the group.

Fantasy Outlook

The draft list captures the roster’s shape: Celebrini fourth overall with a 111.8-point projection, then nobody until Will Smith at 73^rd and Stenberg at 82^nd. Three of the team’s top five fantasy assets have 45 or fewer NHL games apiece. The veterans cluster far later, and for points leagues that is the warning label: Trouba sits 419^th, Nurse 344^th and Kesselring 392^nd because their value lay in multi-cat formats. The Guide projects Trouba at 132 blocks, 130 hits and 140 shots with Nurse at 163 blocks, 147 hits and 188 shots, lines that carry banger formats and do nothing in points-only leagues. Kiefer Sherwood, a January arrival extended in March at $5.75-Million, is the same profile at forward: 339 hits with 23 goals, and the Guide notes his shooting percentages ran cold, so the goal total has room.

The percentage ledger cuts both ways. Celebrini shot 15.7 percent after 10.6 as a rookie and led the team with a 103.5 PDO, where 100 is neutral and anything above it means the bounces mostly went his way. The Guide’s own read is that there is no reason to expect a major drop-off, and its 112-point projection follows. Alexander Wennberg‘s 55 points at age 32 came after four straight seasons in the mid-30s; the Guide calls it a one-off, and he is first in line to surrender power-play time to the kids. Orlov, covered above, is the other veteran whose 2025-26 line overstates his 2026-27 role, and Tyler Toffoli enters his age-34 season on the Guide’s hot seat after 19 goals.

The crease is the least settled part of the roster. Yaroslav Askarov made 47 starts and finished with an .884 SV% and a 3.6 goals-against average. Among goalies with that many starts only Kevin Lankinen had a worse goals-against average. Alex Nedeljkovic (2 yr, $3.0M) posted and .896 SV% and 2.87 GAA in 34 starts; the Guide still puts Askarov’s starter confidence at 80 percent. Comrie arrives as the third option. Askarov at 30^thand Nedeljkovic at 41^st on the goalie list price in the timeshare risk; an .884 incumbent with 80 percent starter confidence is a volatile combination, and Nedeljkovic’s 2.87 is the number that keeps the leash short.

The two-year view is the richest part of the profile. Chernyshov, Misa, Stenberg, Musty, Pohlkamp, Cagnoni, Verhoeff, Leo Sahlin Wallenius, and Josh Ravensbergen may be the deepest pipeline in the league, and it is attached to a roster on the way up rather than a rebuild treading water. The squeeze arrives in 2027: Celebrini’s $18.8M kicks in, Smith and Askarov both hit restricted free agency, and Orlov and Logan Couture come off the books, so the supporting cast will keep skewing young and cheap. For keeper owners that is the pitch. San Jose offers one top 5 anchor, a fantasy rookie class ranked 82^nd, 128^th, and 141^st on the draft list, and a second wave behind them, while single-season owners are mostly choosing between Celebrini’s floor and the volatility of everything after him.

Fantasy Grade: B- (last year was C)

Check out the rest of the Dobber team previews here.