Welcome back to The Journey, where we track the development of prospects as they excel in junior, make the NHL, and push towards stardom.

I was going to focus on rookie performances in the playoffs, but aside from Matthew Knies (TOR, four points in seven games) and Wyatt Johnston (DAL, four in eight), first-year players are not dramatically impacting the scoresheet this postseason. Calder favourite Matty Beniers (two in nine) has yet to come alive offensively despite his team's success.

So instead, I will take the opportunity to highlight a few young players to target in deeper leagues who have promising underlying stats but have not yet made waves in fantasy. These are players to keep on your radar when designing Strategic Overpay trades in the off-season—which is "when you add extra players/prospects to a deal to push it over the top because you know you can pick up replacements of comparable value off the wire for free."

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Dante Fabbro (NAS) is a name I did not expect to feature in The Journey again. He is 24, has 253 NHL games under his belt, and scored only 11 points in 79 games last year. But his 2022-23 campaign had some odd quirks to it that warrant further exploration.

Long story short, I suspect that his points will come back up next year into the 30-35 range again supplemented by a solid 1.5 shots, hits, and blocks per game. Excellent value for a young player likely available for free on your league's waiver wire.

Fabbro has been a slooooow burn for the Predators since they drafted him back in 2016 after he ripped up the BCHL with the Penticton Vees. He then spent three years with Boston University (NCAA), where he eventually scored a promising 33 points in 38 games as a junior. He then made the jump straight to the NHL, a challenging transition, and seemed to be building momentum in fantasy as a solid two-way defender who offered poolies a bit of everything despite not excelling in any one area.

His point pace was climbing steadily (14 → 25 → 30) until this year when it plummeted down to a lowly 11 points instead of pushing into the mid-30s as expected—especially because he passed his 200-game Breakout Threshold in early November. So what happened?

Well, he was unlucky (985 PDO, 2 S%); largely separated from his usual running mate, Roman Josi (81% → 24%); given far fewer offensive zone starts (60% → 46%); and his shorthanded shifts nearly doubled (17% → 32%) despite his overall ice time falling by over a minute and a half. So he was leaned on more defensively despite playing a smaller role overall—which is kind of a strange combination.

Looking at the Predators' deployment chart, it is no surprise that Fabbro drove play most effectively (53% Corsi For) when playing with Josi. His other two running mates Jeremy Lauzon (47% CF) and Ryan McDonagh (44% CF) both sport ugly orange bubbles and are characterized as "Struggling Top-Four Defensemen." Fabbro is still in the "Average" range, and played a fairly sheltered role for a player of his experience but was still one of the better Preds defenders in terms of raw play-driving.

Digging deeper, Fabbro finished in the 76th percentile in terms of even strength defensive impact, and many of his microstats (tracked by Corey Sznajder at AllThreeZones) are very promising—not just defensively but in transition and on offence too. He is an efficient passer who helps generate shots and scoring chances for his team, both on the rush and once set up in the offensive zone. He especially shines at receiving pucks around his own net and moving play back up the ice.

His strong underlying metrics did not translate to measurable offence, however, as shown by his low Goal (8%) and Primary Assist (13%) rates. He also struggled with shutting down opponents attacking off the rush. Bit of a mixed bag overall but there are certainly some promising bright spots here.

Now that Tyson Barrie is on board for another year, offensive opportunities may continue to be scarce for Fabbro in the short term. The Preds signed him to a one-year "show me" contract that pays him $2.5 million for one more year, after which he will be a restricted free agent. We have seen in the past how motivated players can be in contract years, so I will be curious to see how Nashville deploys the young blueliner in 2023-24 and how that impacts his value in fantasy.

After averaging 19 minutes a night for the past three years, Fabbro inexplicably hovered around 16 minutes for the first 75% of 2022-23. He then clocked almost 21 minutes a game in the final quarter—just as Nashville was trading older pieces (Nino Niederreiter, Mattias Ekholm) and throwing tons of ice time at some of its other young guys. That is a major cut in playing time followed by a major boost.

Can Fabbro be part of the Predators' youth movement? He is already firmly embedded in their top four, and the growth in his hit rate (1.05 → 1.43) makes him more rosterable in fantasy. If he can push back into the 30-point range and maintain 1.5 shots, blocks, and hits per game, he could hold sneaky value in multi-cat formats moving forward—especially because most poolies have dumped him by now.

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It is not often that a 26-year-old rookie has fantasy appeal, especially one who gets traded three times in his first year in the league, but let me introduce you to Michael Eyssimont (TBL).

The first stat that brought him onto my radar was his Expected Goals For/60. Although he averaged a mere 12 minutes per game and scored only five goals in 2022-23, Eyssimont generated xGF/60 of 3.4, which tied him with Sidney Crosby and Jake Guentzel, just behind Connor McDavid (3.43) and just ahead of Nikita Kucherov and Andrei Svechnikov (3.38). I am still learning the ropes with Expected Goals, and it baffles me that guys like Damon Severson (3.64), Tomas Tatar (3.51), and Derek Stepan (3.5) finished in the top 10 for xGF/60, but that is impressive company for the young Bolt nevertheless.

Drafted by the Kings way back in 2016, Eyssimont wrapped up a successful three-year college career (102 points in 115 games) and moved on to the AHL in his Draft+3 campaign. It took him a while to get his bearings in the pro game (66 in his first 162 games), but something finally clicked in 2021-22 after he was traded to the Jets. He scored 42 points in 58 games for the Manitoba Moose (AHL), then opened this last campaign with nine in his first nine—enough to earn a call-up to the big club. He then bounced around between the Jets, Sharks, and Lightning, scoring at a 23-point pace overall.

That total will not move the needle in fantasy, of course, but he also offers 1.17 PIM, 2.3 shots, and 2 hits per game. Those peripherals combined with his off-the-charts xGF/60 has me wondering if there might be something here for poolies. Keep in mind that he racked up those numbers bouncing around between three teams and playing only 12 minutes a game.

It is too bad he didn't stick with the Sharks. During the third quarter of the year, which he spent primarily with San Jose, he scored at a 36-point pace, saw decent power play time, and took a whopping 3.2 shots/game, playing 15 minutes a night. Those totals dropped to a 12-point pace, 2.1 shots/game, and 11 minutes a night to end the year with Tampa.

Eyssimont is signed for two more years at a very reasonable $800 000 cap hit, so it could be that his role with the Lightning grows over time. If he can earn more ice time and opportunity, he is the kind of player who could get plopped onto a top line as an energizing puck hound and suddenly put up useful numbers.

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Mason Marchment (DAL), 27, is signed for three more years at a fairly sizable cap hit of $4.5 million. He earned that contract after coming out of nowhere in 2021-22 to put up a 71-point pace with Florida. His production fell to a lowly 37-point pace this year with Dallas, so what should poolies expect from him moving forward?

There is very little on paper to explain why his point pace fell so dramatically. He actually earned more PP time (17% → 33%) and overall ice time (14:07 → 15:42) in Dallas than he had in Florida. He took about the same number of shots, but accumulated more penalty minutes and blocked shots as a Star.

Perhaps the strangest part is that he went from being the second-strongest play-driver on the Panthers (in terms of relative Corsi For) to one of the worst play-drivers on the Stars. His xGF/60 dropped quite a lot (3.31 → 2.54) while his xGA/60 increased (1.91 → 2.63). So he generated fewer chances and allowed more in his own zone. His declining Individual Points Percentage (77% → 66%) further shows that he was less involved in his team's scoring than he was previously.

It feels like Marchment is still settling into his new team and trying to find out where he best fits. Last year with Florida, he played almost 50% of the time with Sam Reinhart and either Anton Lundell or Eetu Luostarinen. This year with Dallas he saw a similar percentage of shifts alongside Tyler Seguin (~48%) but the third player on their line was a revolving door: Radek Faksa, Ty Dellandrea, Denis Gurianov, Matej Blumel, and Max Domi all took turns. Plus, Marchment also saw a significant stretch in the second quarter alongside Jamie Benn and Wyatt Johnston—a trio that had much less success than when Marchment paired with Seguin.

If he can find his identity in a Stars jersey, there might still be a chance that Marchment is a 50-point player who can throw in a couple shots and hits per game. So far in the playoffs, he is scoring at a 40-point pace with nearly three hits per game, and he ended the regular season with five points in five games. So there is clearly potential here. The nice part is that all this uncertainty should make him come quite cheaply in fantasy. For that reason, he makes a solid low-risk, high-reward investment right now.

Thanks for reading! Follow me on Twitter @beegare for more prospect content and fantasy hockey analysis.