Time for Bubble Keeper Week, also known as the week where I get to shamelessly walk through all of my keeper options and ramble about my thought process on all of it. If you have any questions about the players, the process, or the particulars, you know where to find me.

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First up, my favourite partial keeper league I'm in, where we keep six forwards, four defencemen, one goalie, and an optional prospect. It's a 12-team, H2H league with the following categories: G, A, PPP, SOG, Hits, Blks, FOWs, W, GAA, Svs, Sv%.  

I eeked out a championship win last year while sending away the majority of my draft picks, so I really need to have a stable foundation that covers every possible category going into the draft, because I can't be chasing both quality and quantity at the draft table with all my late picks. 

Luckily, with a league-winning team the keeper options are usually solid. I have made a couple of minor deals so far, and have a few choices to make at each position (barring any future deals). 

At forward, my locks are Jack Eichel, Aleksander Barkov, and J.T. Miller (due to his peripherals and triple position eligibility). Then I have to cut one of Adam Fantilli, Sidney Crosby, Filip Forsberg, or Mika Zibanejad. Forsberg is just inching past his prime, but is very consistent, and is a star producer across the board. Fantilli isn't quite there yet, but he could be as good as Forsberg as soon as this season. Dobber actually has Fantilli projected to outscore Forsberg in the guide, to go with nearly identical Hit and Blk numbers – though Forsberg is still the bigger volume shooter. The other two options are Crosby and Zibanejad, who are also projected to score roughly the same amount as Forsberg and Fantilli, but they have the benefit of being elite in FOWs as well, which cancels out the lower SOG and Hits numbers. This might be my last season keeping Crosby, but it's easy enough to find a filler keeper next summer, so I really am focusing more on which one helps me contend more this season. Ultimately, I think it comes down to Crosby or Forsberg as the cut, because Zibanejad also has the dual position advantage, and the benefit of the Rangers having a solid schedule. At this point my last cut will be Forsberg, but I'm working on trade options and may change my mind before the keeper deadline. 

On defence, I had my four set in stone with Roman Josi, Dougie Hamilton, Mackenzie Weegar, and Darnell Nurse. They cover the peripherals very well, though I realize they all peaked a few years ago. That's where my dilemma comes in, as I recently acquired Artyom Levshunov as part of a summer trade, and I'm debating the benefits of him versus Nurse. Both are projected around 30 points, though if Bowen Byram doesn't stick on PP1, then Levshunov could jump up as soon as this season. However, Nurse's peripherals have always been elite, and the Hit/Blk numbers could jump even higher as he gets fed defensive zone shifts for the Sharks – a big difference from playing behind the elite forwards in Edmonton who can be a one-man breakout. Levshunov isn't a slouch in the peripheral categories, but he's not elite with the Hits and Blks like Nurse is. Tough call if I can't trade one, and I seem to flip flop each day on it. In the end, I think I'll end up keeping Levshunov because defencemen are hard to find in this league, and with the age of the rest of my options I should probably have an eye on how I'll manage in the coming years. 

Speaking of, for my prospect options I have either Carter Yakemchuk or Bradley Nadeau, whom I could keep in place of my last round pick (round 24 of our draft). Yakemchuk is where I'm leaning, because it's nice to have an extra Dman on board, and because I think he ultimately has the higher upside relative to his position. Nadeau may make the more immediate impact though, as there's the possibility that he slides right into Seth Jarvis' lineup spot (while Jarvis recovers from surgery), supported in a very cushy landing spot beside Andrei Svechnikov and Sebastian Aho. The other piece to consider, is whether either would be drafted by round 24, and I could decide whether to pick one of them in the moment during the draft, or if there is a better option on the board – my thinking here is that while Nadeau may be available, I don't think Yakemchuk would make it past round 21 or so, which tells me he's the keep here. 

In net, I just acquired Lukas Dostal in a deal on Monday, which probably tells you he's the one I'm going to keep as my goaltender. I paid a very small draft pick price to keep Dostal over Spencer Knight or Jacob Markstrom because of how our league is set up. You need your goalies to win you at least two categories every week, and it's often fairly easy to split the W/Svs from the GAA/Sv%. With Dostal and the inexperienced Anaheim defence, I expect him to have a higher win number and a higher number of saves per game compared to Knight. I like either one over Markstrom who won't get the saves, and because of his age I'm not convinced the game volume is there, let alone the talent anymore after how he fell apart last year. 

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My other keeper league is a smaller setup, with only eight teams, and six keepers (any skater or goalie) per team (to do the math for you, 48 players are kept, meaning a player should be a top-50 fantasy option if you want to keep them). It's also a H2H league, and the categories here are G, A, +/-, PPP, SOG, Hits, Blks, W, GAA, Sv%, SHO. 

I kept Igor Shesterkin a few years ago, but other than owning the top goalie on the board, I try not to keep goalies here. Not too much of an issue for me with only owning Yaroslav Askarov and Joel Hofer this year. 

At forward, I have Macklin Celebrini, Tage Thompson, Jack Hughes, Martin Necas, Cutter Gauthier, Leo Carlsson, and that would be six if it wasn't for Alex Debrincat and Tim Stutzle making me have to think about it as well. Fairly easy to cut DeBrincat on the sinking Detroit ship, and then flip flop on Stutzle vs Gauthier depending on if the contract and slower second half for Gauthier bring him down lower than Stutzle sans his long-time running mate Brady Tkachuk. If it came down to it, I would probably take Stutzle, as I like him as a better floor/ceiling combo compared to Gauthier. 

However, the debate is a moot one, because I also roster a few defencemen who are worthy of being kept. Zach Werenski and Evan Bouchard are pretty impossible to cut, as they should both be top-25 players. As my favourite player, I wish I could keep Roman Josi too, but at this point it would be negligent to do so. That being said, I probably will draft him a round early here just to get him on my team again. Fantasy is all about the balance of competition and fun. 

As tough as it is to let go of Carlsson, Gauthier, Stutzle, DeBrincat, and Josi, none of them are surefire top-25 players like my other six options are. Maybe I could listen to an argument for Carlsson over Thompson, but this year I expect Buffalo to be better than Anaheim, and that certainty with Thompson has value. Stutzle is someone I will be looking to redraft, as I do like his outlook, his cross category coverage, and I don’t think the loss of Brady is much of a negative to his overall scoring profile. However, DeBrincat I will likely be avoiding this year as I think he topped out last year, and Detroit on the whole is going to take a step backwards.

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For those of you in much deeper leagues, my 24-team "dynasty" league requires us to cut down from 40 players to 30 each spring, which trims the fat and adds a little bit of intrigue to the draft each year in the form of secondary older prospects being weighed against the new wave. 

This year my notable final cuts were Herman Traff, Nikita Grebenkin, Vincent Iorio, Lukas Beckman, and Lassi Thomson. Thomson signed overseas and appears to be off of the NHL path. Grebenkin I left off because of the depth the Flyer have at wing in combo with his injury making it so that a slide down the depth chart felt inevitable – it does sound like he could be ready close to camp, which would be big for him to be able to re-slot himself at the beginning instead of starting a lap behind. Iorio showed a flash with seven points in six games at the AHL level for San Jose, but otherwise the offensive ability hasn't shone through, so he's not a tough one to cut. Beckman I like as a longer-wait goalie prospect, but I prefer a 1-3yr timeline rather than his likely 5+ years before reaching the NHL. I might be able to re-acquire him in a year or two anyways. That takes us to Traff, who is someone I may still re-draft with a later pick, as I do like his upside, but it's the wait time that made him my last cut. Traff is a big bodied player who also bumped up his skill game this past year with 41 points in 51 games playing in the Swedish version of the AHL. He's joining the Ducks' AHL affiliate this fall, and could be a year or two away from an NHL debut if he keeps on his current trajectory. 

Circling back on the goalies, I ended up leaving the rookie draft with a pair of goalie prospects who have similar upside to Beckman, but are both 24-year-olds, and are much closer to the NHL. Both Michael Postava and Joel Blomqvist are worth taking a look at in any format with a farm system this year, as they're number three on the depth chart on teams with very little stability ahead of them. 

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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.