The 15^th annual Fantasy Hockey Guide is out and ready for download! Draft List too! Updated up to the Johnny Boychuk news. To my knowledge, this is the only fantasy hockey guide available right now. So if you're hankerin' for a fantasy guide and haven't tried mine yet, I guess now is as good a time as any.

The NHL and NHLPA are now targeting a mid-January start and a 56-game season. I will begin work today on revising my projections in the Guide, including the recent Mats Zuccarello news. I will project for 56 games and hopefully have this done by Wednesday or Thursday. Follow me on Twitter for when that is ready. I can always re-revise for 52 or 48 later. This will be the first major update of the Fantasy Guide. We have been stuck with minor updates to this point.

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Here is a thought that occurred to me over the weekend. This is from my daughter's competitive soccer getting 'mostly' canceled for now, and my niece's competitive hockey getting reduced to non-contact/no-faceoffs. It had me wondering – how is this going to impact development worldwide? The answer is – a lot. But what does this mean? Well, the impact will be subtle. So subtle that we may not notice it until 25 years into the future and we look back at it. I think players in that 14 to 18 age group already know if they are on a path to a potential career. I think those players are working out and/or doing as much as many of the pro players, so the draft class for each of the next five years or so will be fine. And perhaps even include the 13-year-olds as well.

But what about those young players between the ages of five and 12?

Hockey practices being reduced, games canceled, rules changed for the short term (no faceoffs, three-on-three instead of five-on-five). What will this do to their skill set? An entire year of development is reduced by anywhere from 25% to 100%. I know that in some cases, a 14-year-old is reduced from three practices and a game per week, plus a dozen weekend tournaments… down to just two practices per week. That same 14-year-old may have also had one practice and one game each week in his high school – and that same high school has canceled the hockey program for the year.

And that's with the kids who are still playing. I have a nephew who is 10, and very competitive. With only practices and no games, his desire to play hockey has plummeted. Zero interest. Missing practices now, and lots of them. How many kids will drop out of the sport altogether? What if one of those kids really blossoms as a 15-year-old and ends up being a star NHLer…in another life? But in this life, that same kid quit hockey this year at age nine?

With several stars (and we'll never know who), dropping out, those players in 2028 who may not have made the NHL now make the cut. The quality of the draft classes between 2026 through 2033 dips overall. Both from those unknown stars having quit as kids, but also from the lost year of proper development time. Keep in mind that an 18-year-old who misses half of his development time back when he was nine, assuming development is age five through 18, loses 1/26 of his time developing hockey skills.

Maybe this means the older players get to stick around an extra year. Perhaps we'll see stars remain stars just a little longer as the 2026-2033 crop washes through. Again, we will be unable to evaluate it until well into the 2040s. But it was certainly an interesting thought…

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Last week I looked at the situation with a few remaining key restricted free agents (here). I present to you the remainder of that list:

Jesper Bratt (New Jersey Devils) – The Devils have the cap space to get this done, so there is no question that they will. Connor Brown signed a three-year, $3.6M AAV deal with almost exact production stats (38 goals, 100 points) over the last three years. However, Brown never gets injured and is four years older, indicating his contract should be higher despite Bratt's superior per-game production. I think he comes in at an even $3.5M, but the delay is likely him trying to push this over the $4M mark.

Oliver Kylington (Calgary Flames) – The Flames are a little snug against the cap. They could sign him for $1M even, and then have zero wiggle room for deadline deals. I think the delay here is likely Kylington pushing for a one-way deal, when the Flames may be angling for a two-year contract that is two-way in the first year, one-way in the second. The dollars should end up similar to Toronto's Travis Dermott at $874,000.

Vince Dunn (St. Louis Blues) – The Blues won't have the cap room to sign Dunn until Vladimir Tarasenko and Alex Steen are placed on LTIR. After Dunn's down year, the Blues may be trying to get him in under the $2M mark, even if it's just for a year. If it's a long-term deal I would be shocked, but if it gets to four or five years then this would push above the $3.5M AAV mark. But I expect a bridge deal, likely just a year or two, for $2.5M AAV. I am not worried about him not being signed in time.

Ethan Bear (Edmonton Oilers) – The Oilers are another team with no cap space, already slightly above the max. If the team waives Gaetan Haas or Joakim Nygard it would reduce their forwards to 14 and their cap hit by around $900K. Bear has certainly earned more than that, though, after averaging 22 minutes per game of ice time and tallying 21 points as a rookie. Although he's worth over $2M on a short-term deal, I have a feeling the Oilers may convince him to pull a Kevin Labanc and do the team a favor.

Henrik Borgstrom, Aleksi Saarela, Samuel Montembeault (Florida Panthers) – The team has $8M in cap space and these three guys are easily getting under half that. The delay could mean one of two things – either they are looking at signing an unrestricted free agent (bring back Mike Hoffman?) or these players are angling for some guarantees. Or both. Nobody wants to spend more time in the minors and each one of these players has a case for getting one-way deals. Of the three, only Montembeault can be sent down without waivers. And he will, because Chris Driedger will be the backup. Both Borgstrom and Saarela have strong likelihoods of being claimed, but in the case of Borgstrom I think even if he was claimed his new team would just send him down themselves. He's almost certainly bound for the minors. As for Saarela, I think he has a place in the NHL this season and could surprise.

Philippe Myers (Philadelphia Flyers) – The Flyers have plenty of room to sign him for what his ballpark rate will be (I put him between Bear and Kylington, in terms of these negotiations). Myers may be using the Matt Niskanen retirement as leverage to push the dollars and cents a little higher. But I think the delay here is term. The Flyers know he's going to be a good one and probably want good value down the road, which they can only get in a long-term deal.

Luke Kunin (Nashville Predators) – The Preds have tons of cap space – the third most in the league right now. Kunin is a player who can play any forward position and fill any role, up or down the lineup. I think a bridge deal will net him around $2.5M AAV, but a long-term deal gets him a shade over $4M. I'm not sure where the Preds are leaning here, but I'm not worried about it not getting done before training camp.

Jonathan Dahlen (San Jose Sharks) – Dahlen is playing in Allsvenskan this season and he is the league's highest-paid player there. Last season in that league, Sweden's second tier, his 77 points were the second highest in history. Given San Jose's depth and future at forward, Dahlen could be a sneaky-good pick to stash in keeper leagues for a 2021-22 debut.

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And for a Boston weather update, let's go to this random guy on the street, later identified as Jarome something, for his thoughts (starts at 50 seconds, but you can watch the whole thing for context if you have the time):

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Did you notice our new podcast widget on the right side of the home page? With Steve Laidlaw's podcast added to the lineup, Dobber Sports now hosts four kickass fantasy hockey podcasts: Keeping Karlsson, Laidlaw, DobberProspects Radio and Dobber's DraftCast. You can access all four in our new podcast hub (via the menu up top, or simply click here). Yeah, between those podcasts and Frozen Tools, you can pretty much hang out with us here for the entire day. Go grab a coffee.

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See you next Monday.