It is Bubble Keeper Week here at Dobber Hockey! For anyone new to the site, every offseason we dedicate an entire week to those end-of-the-roster decisions that managers in keeper leagues have to make. They can be agonizing decisions because we know that one wrong choice can mean the difference between being a perennial contender or having to rebuild in a few years. That is why we do this Bubble Keeper Week, and hopefully we can get on the right side of things.

For today's Ramblings, I perused the Dobber Forums to find those keeper decisions that managers are evaluating. If any reader has questions they wish to ask, post over in the Forums, leave a comment below, or reach out to me on Twitter or BlueSky.

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Keep Six

Our first question comes from Forum user 'Grapes' and it's a 10-team head-to-head league with six keepers:

There are four automatic keepers for me in Leon Draisaitl, Cale Makar, Quinn Hughes, and Andrei Vasilevskiy. Draisaitl is a top 10 pick and the other three are at the top of their positions. That leaves us with two more choices.

I would be inclined to include Tim Stutzle. The main reason is that his across-the-board appeal is something not many others here can bring. After Draisaitl, none of the forwards on this list really take any face-offs, so even if Stützle only takes half the face-offs when he's on the ice, his 300 FOWs is multitudes more than every other non-Draisaitl forward combined. Besides the FOWs, Stützle's volume of hits is only matched by Andrei Svechnikov, so that's another deciding factor. The Ottawa Senators forward doesn't have the same point production upside of Kirill Kaprizov or Jason Robertson, but they don't have his multi-cat upside, either. Add that to the fact that Stützle has missed just 16 games over the last five years and he has durability that some others do not. The fact that he's dual-eligible works in his favour, too, because being able to get his multi-cat production with 300 FOWs from the left wing is a big checkmark in his favour.

The last spot comes down to Jason Robertson and Rasmus Dahlin.

In his post, Grapes brought up an important point and it's Dahlin's dropping peripherals. If Dahlin were to post last year's goal, assist, and shot production with the hits and blocks he totaled 3-4 seasons ago, he would be a slam-dunk keeper. Back in May, I wrote about league-wide drops in hits and blocks among defencemen: over the last two seasons, hits per minute have dropped by about 25% and blocks per minute have declined by about 8%. Over the 2024-2026 seasons compared to 2022-2024, Dahlin's hit rate has declined about 38% and his block rate has declined a whopping 30%. Even in an environment where peripherals from defencemen are falling, Dahlin's decline stands out. He doesn't produce points that compare to the Cale Makar/Quinn Hughes tier, and he doesn't produce peripherals to compare to Moritz Seider. Dahlin is still a top-10 defenceman, I'm just not sure he's a keeper here. 

That brings us to Robertson. Last week, I wrote about his playmaking issues at 5-on-5, and how an elite power play and huge TOI increase papered over that problem. If he skates 18 minutes a game rather than 20+, he becomes an 80- to 90-point winger rather than one who can push past 100.

We have to remember a big part of Robertson's TOI increase came from injuries elsewhere on the team: Mikko Rantanen missed 18 games; Jamie Benn missed 22 games and saw his role diminish to 13:17 per outing; Matt Duchene missed 25 games and wasn't very effective otherwise until after the Olympic break; Roope Hintz missed 29 games and appeared just once after the Olympic break; Tyler Seguin missed 55 games. Five of Dallas' top nine forwards combined to miss 149 games, averaging nearly 30 missed games apiece. That left a lot of minutes for Robertson to soak up, which he did. Each of those players is expected to be healthy and ready for training camp.

My instinct is to make Robertson the sixth keeper. The reality is that with Makar and Hughes already kept, Grapes has two of the three top keeper-league blue liners wrapped up for the foreseeable future. Makar and Hughes give Grapes the edge on the blue line over every other manager, and keeping Dahlin doesn't offer much more of a competitive advantage. Robertson's dual eligibility gives him flexibility to work well with the C/LW duo of Draisaitl and Stützle, and his shot volume is something the group desperately needs. I have my concerns about Robertson this season, but the Dobber Fantasy Guide has him as 1 of 6 forwards projected for 35+ goals, 60+ assists, and 250+ shots.

There is also the possibility of not keeping Vasilevskiy, holding onto both Robertson and Dahlin, and then hunting for goalies early and often in the draft. I would still keep Vasy, but the option is there.

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Jordan Kyrou or Logan Stankoven

Our next question comes from bbfl1987, and regards a pair of forwards with intriguing trajectories:

This league doesn't differentiate between forward positions and doesn't include face-off wins. It does have heavier scoring for defencemen and each of bbfl's keepers are forwards. He has Cole Hutson and Kashawn Aitcheson as prospect depth, so that's something, but I might look to package a couple forwards for a top-end defenceman.

The Dobber Fantasy Guide has Kyrou projected for 32 goals, 30 assists, and 210 shots while Stankoven is projected for 24 goals, 30 assists, and 180 shots. Kyrou just turned 28 years old in May, so while he's starting to get towards the downside of his career, he should still have a few good seasons left. Assuming bbfl isn't looking more than three years down the road, Kyrou seems like the answer.

My personal projections gave pretty similar results. I haven't finished my short-handed projections, but neither Stankoven nor Kyrou kills penalties, so that's irrelevant here. This is where my outlooks land for them, and they also give the edge to Kyrou:

What I will say is that bbfl's team is not one that's built to win right now. There are no defencemen or goalies and the only top 25 forward being kept out of nine players is Nick Suzuki. In a few years, the group of Suzuki, Ivan Demidov, Matvei Michkov, Dylan Holloway, Beckett Sennecke, Ryan Leonard, and Jimmy Snuggerud could push for a title, but it almost certainly won't be in 2026-27. In that sense, I don't care if Kyrou has six more points and 20 more shots than Stankoven this coming campaign. I care about the long-term outlook, probably in 2028-29 and beyond. If this were a roster with immediate contention potential, I would keep Kyrou, but it doesn't, so my answer is Stankoven; I would much rather have him three years from now than I would Kyrou.

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Our final query today comes from Dobber Forum user Cataphard, and is a very interesting choice not only because of the players involved, but the context of the league:

This is another format where scoring from defencemen, specifically goals, are weighted more than forwards. In this league, 15 goals from a defenceman are equivalent to 30 goals from a forward. Last year in this format, John Carlson had 74 points while Lucas Raymond had 76 because of this unique scoring.

The Dobber Fantasy Guide gives a big edge to Carlson as it has him and Byram projected for the same goal total but Carlson with 16 more assists in four fewer games played. My personal projections are a bit closer, but still give the edge to Carlson:

That is with age-related decline factored in, too, which is key here because Carlson turns 37 years old in January. If Carlson had signed with any of 26 or 27 other teams, it's probably Byram, but Carlson signed with one of the top 5-on-5 scoring teams in the league who also have a spot for a top PP defenceman.

Beyond all that is the fact that Cataphard has Artyom Levshunov as a rookie keeper. It is at least possible that Levshunov overtakes Byram on the power play. Maybe not this year, but sometime in the next 2-3 years. The same could be said for Carlson with Victor Hedman, but Hedman turns 36 years old in December. Even if he overtakes Carlson, it won't last for more than a couple of seasons. If Levshunov overtakes Byram, he could have that PP role for the next 5+ years.  

One last note, and it's that I think there's an argument for keeping Lucas Raymond. Cataphard already has Zach Werenski and Lane Hutson as keepers, and both are top-5 defencemen in this format. Either Carlson or Byram would be nice to have, but it's not as if we're talking about keeping Makar, Hughes, or Evan Bouchard. The gap between the elite defencemen like those guys, and someone like Carlson who is a fringe top-10 blue liner, is about the same size as the gap between a fringe top 10 defenceman and a fringe top 30 defenceman. The relative differential just isn't a big deal here, especially for a guy his age.

There isn't a huge competitive advantage over a top 60 forward for Raymond as a fifth forward, either, but he's also 12 years younger than Carlson. Because of that, my decision tree would be like this:

• If I only care about the 2026-27 season and pushing for a fantasy title immediately, it's Carlson.
• If I want to keep a defenceman but look further down the road, it's Byram.
• If I want to take a more proven producer while keeping a long-term outlook, it's Raymond.

My final answer is keeping Raymond and then looking to grab one of Carlson or Byram (probably Byram) in the first couple rounds of the draft.