The 18th annual Dobber Hockey Fantasy Guide is set to release two days early, coming out Wednesday! It has everything fantasy owners need for the 2023-24 season including projections, over- and undervalued players, projected line combinations, a draft list, and a whole lot more. It is also constantly updated throughout the offseason/training camp so readers have an updated version ready to download when major transactions/injuries happen. Help support us and give yourself a leg up on your competition by pre-ordering your copy.  

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The Carolina Hurricanes are bringing back a defenceman they had a couple seasons ago by signing Tony DeAngelo to a one-year contract. Dobber had his take here.

How this works with Brent Burns around remains to be seen. They could try to run two even units, go 3F-2D, or just put one of them on a heavily-used top unit. We will have to see what training camp looks like because DeAngelo’s fantasy value relies on that.

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It is Bubble Keeper Week here at Dobber Hockey. This is a time of week we look forward to each year because it allows us to really start focusing on the 2023-24 season. It is one thing to talk about potential regression, role changes, free agent signings, and increases/declines in various fantasy stats, it is another thing to start applying that knowledge to consequential fantasy decisions.

For the first article, allow me to indulge… myself… and talk about my own keeper team. I have a league that is 12 teams where each manager can keep up to 12 players each, but as few as 10, with F/D/G/Util as our positions. Rosters have moderate depth as starting lineups have 16 skaters (10-5-1) and two goalies, with seven players on the bench, and each team has five 'minor league' slots for prospects. Those prospects can be held outside of the 12 players kept, meaning each team can realistically retain up to 17 players, though five must be prospects. A player stops being a prospect once they play 25 NHL games. That means Islanders defenceman Samuel Bolduc, with 17 games played, is still a prospect but Arizona defenceman Victor Söderström, who is now up to 50 NHL games, is not. That is one reason why a team like New Jersey playing Alex Holtz just enough in 2022-23 to get him to 28 career NHL games is really frustrating. Anyway, it is a multi-cat format with the standard production stats (G/A/SOG/PPP) plus blocks, hits, and penalty minutes. For goalies, it's just wins, save percentage, and goals against average.

I have 5 forwards, 3 defencemen, and 1 goalie I am securing for at least one more season: Mika Zibanejad, Leon Draisaitl, Jack Eichel, Travis Konecny, and Timo Meier up front; Cale Makar, Zach Werenski (health pending), and Mike Matheson on the blue line; Jake Oettinger in net. Luckily, my keepers aren't due until September, so I reserve the right to change my mind, especially once I have my projections finished sometime in the next six weeks. I will say that I spent a couple years rebuilding and it's left me with several young players that are no longer prospects but may not be high-end producers for a few years. That is what's causing me a lot of consternation as I look at my roster because I think it's getting close to contention time, and I need to focus more on guys that will produce in 2023-24 rather than 2025-26.  

Let's look at five pairs of players. I can't keep them all, but it will help me whittle down my decisions and narrow my focus. Let the cage matches begin. (Data from our Frozen Tools or Natural Stat Trick unless otherwise indicated.)

David Perron (DET-F) vs. Viktor Arvidsson (LAK-RW)

Perron was a topic of mine just a couple weeks ago and I spoke to his consistency, and how he can bring stats across the board. One thing I will add is that despite his long injury history, it has been several years of good health for Perron, who has missed just 15 games over the last four seasons. He has appeared in 94.8% of his team's games since 2019, or nearly 78 of every 82 games. He was a fixture of Detroit's top PP unit in 2022-23 and will be again, even with the addition of Alex DeBrincat.

From 2016-2019, Arvidsson averaged 35.7 goals every 82 games. From 2019-2022, Arvidsson's 82-game goal average plummeted to 21.3. That rebounded to 26 goals in 2022-23, giving him easily his best fantasy season in five years. He also scored 10 PP goals, by far a career-best (had managed four a handful of times), but he did so shooting 22.7% with the man advantage. Prior to last season, Arvidsson had never reached 17% shooting on the power play.

I think my choice is Perron. His hit rates far exceed anything Arvidsson can do, and while the latter's shot rates make up for it, there are signs of regression and fewer PP minutes available.

Jack Quinn (BUF-F) vs. Wyatt Johnston (DAL-F)

This is where we start to run into our youth problems. Not that having good, young players in a keeper is a problem, but when you're trying to win a title, a 45-point season with meagre peripherals won't cut it.

I likely have a blind spot for Quinn. I was very high on him in his draft year, he excelled in the AHL, and was very good in his rookie NHL season. The problems, of course, are that there are a lot of high-end offensive talents in Buffalo that will earn ice time over him, and he's going to miss months with his Achilles injury. My belief is it may only be a few years before Quinn is a 30-goal, 70-point forward, but he clearly won't get there in 2023-24, and may not have a lot of relevance once he returns from his injury.

Johnston is running into a similar problem as Quinn, in that there is a lot of high-end offensive talent in Dallas that supersedes him on the depth chart. The upside is that he's healthy and will be on a Cup contending team. His line was a de facto second line last season, but the addition of Matt Duchene gives them a third scoring line that could eat into Johnston's even-strength minutes.

I suppose the guy to keep here is Johnston because of the health disparity, but it feels absolutely awful to let go of Quinn. I could keep him, stash him on IR, and grab someone off waivers at the start of the season, but then I'm eschewing a 12^th keeper for a guy that is outside the top-300 fantasy options drafted, and streaming a roster spot for months until Quinn returns, limiting my roster moves elsewhere. That feels like a lot of lost value in a season where the championship charge is on.

Kent Johnson (CBJ-F) vs. Oliver Wahlstrom (NYI-F)

On such a bad Columbus team, it's easy to overlook Johnson's rookie year, but he did have more goals and assists than the aforementioned Quinn. Corey Sznajder's tracking data has Johnson with a higher carry-in percentage on zone entries than Johnny Gaudreau last season:

The team generated roughly the same rate of scoring chances off his entries as players like Mikael Backlund and Mark Scheifele. With a healthy blue line and Adam Fantilli in the lineup, things should improve. How Mike Babcock treats the young forward, and handles his ice time, is another matter.

Here's a fun fact about Wahlstrom: he is inside the 90^th percentile in shots per minute over the last three seasons, but in the 5^th percentile in ice time per game. He shoots as often as Andrei Svechnikov but gets Nick Cousins-levels of run. On top of that, Wahlstrom has 208 hits in his last 152 games, or 112 every 82 games. That is with 12:11 in TOI per game, mind you. Just 16 minutes a night firmly puts 200 shots and 140 hits within reach.

I cannot get the image of a Horvat-Barzal-Wahlstrom top line out of my head, but he is far from certain to even get 14-15 minutes a night, let alone 16-17. By the same token, Johnson would have to do a lot to earn the trust of Babcock to be a heavily-used forward all season long. I might take the chance with Wahlstrom here given his peripheral superiority.

Jake Sanderson (OTT-D) vs. Jamie Drysdale (ANA-D)

Sanderson is only the fifth defenceman since the 2012 lockout to post at least 140 blocks in their rookie season. He is also one of just three defencemen since that lockout to post at least 30 points, 120 shots, and 140 blocks, in addition to Ivan Provorov and Moritz Seider. However, he paced for roughly 200 power-play minutes in a season Ottawa got just 80 total games from Thomas Chabot and Jakob Chychrun. Are those 200-ish minutes of PPTOI repeatable? Because he got over half (17) his total point production (32) with the man advantage, and his hit totals were very meagre. (I wrote about Sanderson and Ottawa's power play last week.)

I wonder how fantasy owners are going to treat Drysdale. He clearly was on an upward trajectory in 2021-22 when he played 81 games at nearly 20 minutes a night. He was limited to just 8 games last season and the team is starting to turn over the blue line. Some veterans are gone, and they brought in Radko Gudas, but Drysdale and Olen Zellweger, at the least, are expected to be every day roster players. Will the returning Ducks blue liner get a top PP role back? He may have to work for it, especially under new management and coaching. He also hasn't shown much of a penchant for peripherals yet.

This could be a situation where there really isn't a wrong answer because I feel like Drysdale has a higher PP upside while Sanderson has a higher peripheral upside. I am leaning Drysdale right now but can easily be swayed over the next month or so.

Karel Vejmelka (ARI-G) vs. Jordan Binnington (STL-G)

You can probably see why I didn't do so well in 2022-23.

Arizona brought in Jason Zucker and Alex Kerfoot up front, and have a few young guys that should bolster that depth. The blue line has been depleted, though, so it's a concern as to how guys like Sean Surzi and Söderström do without the security of Chychrun or Shayne Gostisbehere around. Vejmelka wasn't stellar last campaign and I'm worried how much better he can be if that defence in front of him is worse than it was a year ago.

If there is a goalie without a track record that I think could be a team's number-1 by Christmas, it's Joel Hofer. The last four seasons have been a steady decline for Binnington in a number of areas and if he doesn't turn things around early in the 2023-24 campaign, I'm not sure why the Blues wouldn't turn to Hofer, as they turned to Binnington back in 2018-19. It wouldn't be a shock to see Binnington get half his season's starts in October/November before falling into a backup role.

I'm going to be honest, I may not keep either here. Maybe I'll look to trade some young guys I can't keep to a rebuilding team for a more secure goalie. Right now, I'd lean Vejmelka's direction, but they may both end up back in the draft bin when keepers are submitted.

Thoughts? Comments? Concerns? Complaints? Let us know.