Every Sunday, we share 21 Fantasy Rambles from our writers at DobberHockey. These thoughts are curated from the past week’s 'Daily Ramblings'.

Writers/Editors: Ian Gooding, Michael Clifford, Alexander MacLean, Brennan Des and Dobber

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1. Every season, there are players that break out offensively and provide fantasy owners with tremendous value. We are at a time of the year where decisions about the future of keeper/dynasty rosters need to be made as far as buying/selling goes. The question becomes: which breakout performances are for real (Robert Thomas in 2021-22) and which are not (Andrei Kuzmenko in 2022-23)? Let’s try to parse that out and help trade decisions. As usual, data will be from Natural Stat Trick, Frozen Tools, Evolving Hockey, or AllThreeZones, unless otherwise indicated. At time of writing:

Joel Farabee

A team having a season like Philadelphia needs multiple players with great years. That can be said of Farabee, who needed just 48 games to set a career-high 40 points, currently sitting with 42 in 56 appearances. Though it’s his first 40-point season, it isn’t as if he’s been unproductive. Farabee’s first four seasons saw him post 132 points in 252 games (43 points/82 games), and just 14 of those points came on the power play. His points/60 minutes at 5-on-5 in those four years was 2.11, a rate that was higher than names like Mark Scheifele, Zach Hyman, and John Tavares, and an 80^th percentile mark among forwards.

This season, Farabee’s 2.68 points/60 at 5-on-5 is near the top-10 in the league. He is doing that thanks to a variety of positive marks. First, his scoring chance assists/60 minutes at 5-on-5 is 3.78, much better than the league average of 3.03, and in line with names like Tim Stützle and Aleksander Barkov. He plays a lot off the rush as his rush assists/60 is in the 85^th percentile of the league, nestled between Carter Verhaeghe and Martin Necas. He plays fast, is good at finding teammates for chances, and is consistently a high-percentage shooter at 5-on-5.

The concern is Farabee registering a point on 87.2% of goals scored at 5-on-5. It is a career-high, a top-10 mark in the league, and well above his three-year average of 70.7%. The upside is if Philadelphia can ever shows us a league-average power play, a drop in that percentage will be outweighed by vastly improved PP production. Once he earns more ice time, he should easily be a 210-shot, 70-hit forward with 70-point potential. He is a player to hold onto. (feb20)

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2. The minor trade on Thursday involving Emil Bemstrom and Alex Nylander should barely generate a ripple in most fantasy leagues. Yet since I was discussing it with at least a couple people in private conversations, I’ll share my thoughts here. With the injury (and possible trade) of Jake Guentzel, Bemstrom is in a similar boat to Matthew Phillips, who was picked up off waivers by the Penguins from the Capitals a week ago. Both Bemstrom and Phillips are now in their mid-20s that have posted strong (PT+/GP) numbers in the AHL, but they haven’t been able to gain much traction at the NHL level. The Pens are bringing both in to see if something clicks, but beyond that treat this situation as now or never for both. For now, they’re only worth adding in the absolute deepest of pools.  

3. The price to acquire Bemstrom (Nylander, conditional sixth-round pick in 2026) is not all that costly. The condition seems like quite a jump, as the sixth-round pick becomes a third-round pick if Bemstrom scores at least six goals over the remainder of the season. This type of condition might make trades seem less entertaining to armchair GMs, but it encourages more trades in a time when we don’t see them as often. Remember, part of the fear of making trades is that the player you trade away turns into a star with their new team. I wonder if one day keeper fantasy leagues will enable an option like this.

Also, in case you haven’t noticed, Bemstrom has already played 200 NHL games. He is only 24, so he is the same age as what I’d consider an “old” prospect. If an under-25 player has spent time in the NHL but then is sent to the AHL, can they go back to being a prospect? (feb24)

4. By observing one of my fantasy teams, I had thought that Jordan Binnington has been playing well. Yet after reviewing the most recent Geek of the Week, I didn’t know how well he was playing. Updating Ryan’s article by a few days (and at time of writing), Binnington is now the league leader in quality weeks and quality week percentage (15 QW, 75.0 QW%). If you’re not familiar with quality weeks, it is described as “when a goalie has performed above the weekly average in two out of three of the main goalie categories (Wins, SV%, GAA).”

Since January 1, Binnington has posted only one really bad start in 14 games, which is also impressive. Binnington had an average draft position of 170 in Yahoo leagues, and I managed to grab him at pick 227 in one of my Yahoo leagues. Fantasy teams have stayed away from Binnington because his numbers have declined since his rookie Stanley Cup run in 2019, but he is making a case to be one of this season’s examples of why Zero G can work.

On a side note, I don’t usually watch many Blues games. But I haven’t seen any shenanigans from Binnington this season. Maybe he’s made a conscious effort to handle adversity differently, which is making a difference in his results. (feb24)

5. Another goalie that was identified in the Geek of the Week article as having a strong true value was Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen. While Binnington was third in true value, Luukkonen was seventh. He added to that on Friday, stopping 25 of 26 shots in the Sabres’ 2-1 win over Columbus. UPL continues to be hot, as he has four wins and four quality starts over his last five games. Remember when multiple Dobber writers told you not to focus on Devon Levi but instead turn your attention to Luukkonen if you were targeting a Sabres’ goalie? Levi might be their goalie of the future, but Luukkonen is their goalie of the present. (feb24)

6. Buffalo got some good injury news as Owen Power was skating in a non-contact jersey. He had been skating earlier this week and is now taking the next step to his own return. Especially with Mattias Samuelsson out, this team is not deep enough on the blue line to have Power out for an extended absence, though any faint playoff hopes have been dashed by now. (feb23)

7. Connor Ingram looks to be making his way back to the team as Matt Villalta was sent back to the AHL. Ingram has only been out a week, so it doesn’t seem as if it was anything serious. He has been a good fantasy option since getting to Arizona, particularly this season with 17 wins in 33 starts, posting a .912 save percentage. The team has been taking a lot more penalties of late, though, and that’s something to be concerned about if you’re an Ingram owner. (feb23)

8. Vegas updated the status on Mark Stone by saying he is week-to-week with a lacerated spleen. To me, that doesn’t sound like a player and a team that just wants to stuff someone on LTIR until the playoffs, so all the best to him in that recovery. It sounds like a very painful and un-fun way to spend the next month or so. (feb23)

9. Kris Letang is now on pace for over 50 points and that’s with just two PP points on the season (thus far). Add the 89 blocks and 97 hits to his profile and it’s been a great fantasy season, even without the PP production. (feb23)

10. Entering Saturday action, Pyotr Kochetkov had a .930 save percentage in his last 18 appearances dating back to a game where he was pulled in less than six minutes after allowing three goals on six shots. It is a scary thought if this Carolina roster can get goaltending approaching anything of that level for the playoffs. (feb23)

11. Robert Thomas is up to 65 points in 57 games, equalling his total from last season in 16 fewer games played. He is turning into a true star in the NHL, and he’s even two shots per game to float a bit of peripheral value in fantasy. (feb23)

12. In yesterday’s Ramblings, we discussed players that drive the bus – are responsible for zone entries in transition – like Nikolaj Ehlers and Pierre-Luc Dubois. We also touched on David Perron, who is the opposite of those guys this season.

Without diving too much further, one more name stuck out to me: Tye Kartye. Of the 237 forwards in the sample using data from AllThreeZones, Kartye is in the 33^rd percentile for zone entries/60 minutes league-wide, so he does get some work but he’s not the heavy lifter. What stuck out was that he had the third-lowest percentage of zone entries with possession (either with a pass or carrying it himself). Only Perron and Phil Di Giuseppe were lower, and names like Barclay Goodrow and Connor Brown were just ahead of Kartye.

This is interesting for two reasons… (feb23)

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13. There was good news out of Toronto as goalie Joseph Woll was sent to the AHL for a conditioning stint, the next step on his way back from an ankle injury that has kept him out of the lineup for two and a half months. How many games he ultimately plays down there remains to be seen. The Marlies have (/had) a back-to-back this weekend but don’t play until the Wednesday after, so if they want to give him more than one game, it seems like banking on a return to the NHL by next weekend, at the earliest, is a reasonable expectation. (feb22)

14. Entering Saturday, Charlie McAvoy was up to 40 points in 50 games, or 0.80 points per game. It represents the fourth straight season of increased points/game production from the defenceman as he’s turned into one of the best two-way defenseman in the league. He also had 198 hits+blocks in 50 games, so there’s a lot of multi-cat value here. (feb22)

15. Which players drive the bus (or the offensive play), and which players are just along for the ride is always important to parse. The former can transfer between teams while the latter relies often on others to boost their fantasy value. Using data from the tracking site AllThreeZones, let’s look at some of the underrated bus drivers this season. For today, we are looking only to forwards at 5-on-5 (minimum of 200 tracked minutes which gives us 237 forwards). Additional data is from Natural Stat Trick, Frozen Tools, and Evolving Hockey as of Wednesday afternoon. For example (at time of writing):

Jeff Skinner

There are three forwards in the sample that carry the puck into the zone at least 80% of the time, but one of them does way less heavy lifting in terms of per-60 entries than the other two:

(Player : Sum of 5v5 TOI / Entries per 60 / Carries per 60 / Carry %)

• Matt Duchene: 226.95 / 23.27 / 19.30 / 83.0%
• Brayden Point: 293.17 / 19.85 / 16.17 / 81.4%
• Jeff Skinner: 184.43 / 12.04 / 9.76 / 81.1%

There are a number of reasons why Buffalo’s offense has suffered this season, but it’s notable that Skinner and Alex Tuch carry the puck into the zone much less often than Tage Thompson does – 9.76/60, 9.96/60, and 14.47/60, respectively. The team creates far fewer scoring chances off Tage’s entries (20.5%) than the other two (both between 38-40%), so it appears that the wrong person is paddling the canoe and it’s taken the offense over Niagara Falls.  

Skinner’s 82-game pace is for fewer than 60 points, and that’s a three-year low. Part of it is due to an awful power play, but part of it is that the team isn’t doing a whole lot on Thompson’s entries. (feb22)

16. Connor McMichael was up to 22 points in 54 games before Saturday's games, and both his ice time and shot rate are slowly trending up. He’s a season away from his breakout threshold, but an early jump at the beginning of next season could be in the cards depending on which players return for the Capitals. (feb21)

17. When looking at starting goalies, it dawned on me that I had no real sense of how Adin Hill was doing this season; turns out, pretty damn well. At time of writing, he was leading the league in the save percentage column by a fair margin with his .930 mark, and would be receiving a lot of Vezina noise if it wasn’t for his injury earlier this season. For some added context, teammate Logan Thompson was sporting a .909 save percentage, and was much closer to a .500 win-loss record than Hill’s 14-4-4 record. The pair of them are still in their mid-20s, so it’s easy to be a little jealous of how set Vegas is in nets moving forward. Just another example that even some of the more tuned-in fantasy players on the East coast can still have a complete blind spot for certain players out West. There is a market inefficiency to be taken advantage of here. (feb21)

18. The DobberProspects crew had their midseason draft rankings published this week, and it’s always something I stop whatever I’m doing in order to read.

I wanted to give some of my thoughts on this crew, even though I am more of a scouting report-connoisseur than a scout myself. For fantasy purposes, I’ll run through how I see the tiers breaking down.

Macklin Celebrini:

Similar to other solid top-picks before him, Celebrini looks to be a player like Steven Stamkos, Nathan MacKinnon, or Rasmus Dahlin, that can jump into an NHL lineup, not look out of place, and still be fantasy relevant even if he isn’t blowing the doors off in his first season. Not too much to overthink here with the first pick.

Ivan Demidov:

Even if the play style isn’t extremely comparable, Demidov’s nationality, high upside, and timeline will keep the Michkov comparisons coming until they have both become their own players at the NHL level. As a result of contracts signed to stay in Russia for the next number of years, it could be another three or four seasons until we see them both in the NHL full time. That has its advantages if it fits your competitive window timeline, as well as if it can work around games played limits for fantasy minor-league eligibility. Weigh that against the next group likely starting to make an impact in two years, though having a lower ceiling than Demidov. (feb21)

19. Zeev Buium, Zayne Parekh:

The first two defencemen on the board could be grouped in with the next three as well, and they aren’t necessarily behind that above group of three forwards, but I digress, these two are likely the cream of the 2024 blueliners. Both are putting up record numbers in their respective leagues, and have the excellent vision and hockey sense that we are seeing in all of these young puck-moving defenseman that are taking over the game. It’s near-impossible to trade for a Quinn Hughes, Adam Fox, or Miro Heiskanen type in the NHL, and in most fantasy leagues, so if you want one, this is often the place to reach and get one.

Sam Dickinson, Artyom Levshunov, Anton Silayev (plus and HM to Carter Yakemchuk):

Luckily, if you miss out on Buium and Parekh, there are more options worthy of a top-10 selection, though likely not a top-five pick. I’m not as sold on Silayev as some others, and especially with the Russian factor I think he will slide in fantasy drafts despite his size making him likely to go early in the NHL draft. Dickinson is also likely to end up a more of a two-way player than a top-scorer/power play specialist, but he still has a high offensive floor as a top-pairing player. Levshunov (and also Yakemchuk to a slightly lesser extent) have a higher offensive upside, but some more questions about their speed and how they process the game, perhaps topping out as a more offensively-included second-pairing player. That’s still valuable, and likely comparatively so to the more defensively responsible top-pairing guys. (feb21)

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20. The big game from last Monday was the absurd 10-7 (not a typo) win the Minnesota Wild posted over the Vancouver Canucks. The teams combined for nine (!) goals in the third period alone with Kirill Kaprizov, Joel Eriksson Ek, and JT Miller all recording hat tricks (also not a typo). It might be shorted to do this in bullet form:

• Kaprizov: three goals (one PP), three assists (two PP), seven shots, and two blocks.
• Eriksson Ek: three goals (one PP), three assists, four shots, two PIMs, and a hit.
• Matt Boldy: one goal, three assists (one PP), and five shots.
• Mats Zuccarello: one goal (PP), three assists (all three PP), one shot, two PIMs, and a hit.
• Marco Rossi: one goal, and two shots.
• Jonas Brodin: one goal, one shot, and three blocks.
• Miller: three goals (one PP), one assist, four shots, two blocks, two PIMs, and five hits.
• Brock Boeser: one goal, one assist (PP), two shots, and a hit.
• Pius Suter: three assists and two shots.
• Elias Pettersson: one goal, four shots, one block, and two PIMs.
• Ian Cole: one goal, one shot, and four blocks.
• Nikita Zadorov: one goal, two shots, one block, two PIMs, and a hit.
• Quinn Hughes: two assists (one PP), one shot, and two hits.
• Casey DeSmith, Filip Gustavsson, and Marc-André Fleury: 16 goals against on 49 shots.

Best wishes to the head-to-head players with no Wild/Canucks skaters on their roster. (feb20)

21. With Jake Guentzel injured, here are a few wingers worth considering (at time of writing):

Juraj Slafkovksy – The first overall pick from 2022 has been racking up points and turning heads lately, but those paying attention know his strong play isn’t a sudden phenomenon. For some time now, Slafkovsky has put up a high-level of play to match his high-level opportunity. Over the past two months, he’s averaged roughly 19 minutes of action per game, enjoying a 72% share of Montreal’s time with the man advantage. That’s led him to 22 points in 24 outings, which translates to 75 through 82. He’s been shooting the puck more frequently in recent games, racking up 25 shots in his last seven appearances.

Owen Tippett – The Flyers’ winger has 13 points in his last 13 games, skating 18 minutes a night and seeing significant time with the man advantage. Over the past two months, Tippett has taken 4.36 shots per game. David Pastrnak and Nathan MacKinnon are the only players averaging more shots during that span. (feb19)

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Have a good week, folks!
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