The DobberHockey Fantasy Guide is now available for download! It's the same guide that you've come to know and love every year, which includes player projections for scoring and peripheral categories in PDF form by team and by Excel list. Included are sleepers, draft review, Calder nominees, stock drops, goalies, and much more.

In addition, the Dobber 2024-25 projections are now in the Fantasy Hockey Geek system! If you have tried to generate Geek rankings with no luck, please regenerate them to receive the update. I will be playing around with the Geek projections in my leagues very soon. They're important to me, starting with…

… Bubble Keeper Week, which will be from August 11-17. In case you're not familiar with it, our writers will share players that are on the bubble on their various keeper teams. I have a few interesting names already picked out, which I'll share with you that week.

The Offseason Fantasy Grades articles for each team will debut on Tuesday, starting with Anaheim and working our way down the alphabet. Follow along at this link.

It might be the middle of summer, but there's lots happening here at DobberHockey. Doesn't seem like a holiday to me.

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This has kind of flown under the radar, but two of the five players from the 2018 Canadian World Junior team charged with sexual assault have signed in the KHL. Former Flames forward Dillon Dube has signed a one-year contract with Dinamo Minsk, while former Devils forward Michael McLeod has signed a one-year contract with Barys Astana. By signing one-year contracts, the players may be hoping that their cases are resolved in their favor by the end of the season and they are able to resume their NHL careers in 2025-26. I'm not sure it will be that easy, given the seriousness of what they will be on trial for.

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Shooting percentage isn't necessarily a category in most fantasy leagues, but it can be used to project players that might be due for an increase or decrease in goals. Quick refresher: If a player's shooting percentage is unusually high compared to their career average, then the player could be due for a regression. Likewise, a player with a shooting percentage well below their career average could be due for some better luck. Let's take a look at a few names that could be in store for some different results in 2024-25.

High shooting percentage

Sam Reinhart (24.5%)

No one had Reinhart projected to be a 50-goal scorer entering the 2023-24 season, yet he shocked the hockey world with a career-high 57 goals. A career 15.6% shooter, Reinhart was able to get nearly one-quarter of the shots he took into the net. In addition, Reinhart's previous career high was 33 goals, so he had never had a 40-goal season, let alone a 50-goal campaign.

One thing Reinhart has going for himself: he has increased his shot volume from just over 2 SOG/GP to 2.8 SOG/GP over each of the past two seasons, reaching the 200-shot mark for two consecutive seasons as well. If he maintains his shot rate with his career shooting percentage, Reinhart will score 36 goals this season. I'm okay rounding up to 40, but reaching 50 goals again seems to be a bridge too far.  

Dakota Joshua (21.4%)

Joshua has been a heavy hitter throughout his brief career, registering back-to-back 200+ hit seasons with the Canucks. He added goal scoring to his resume in 2023-24, scoring a career-high 18 goals in just 63 games. On the surface, 20 goals seems within reach considering the games he missed due to injury. However, shot analysis paints a different picture.

No player with at least as many goals as Joshua took as few shots as he did (84 SOG). In fact, he and Robby Fabbri (97 SOG) were the only two players to score at least 18 goals while taking fewer than 100 shots. Joshua also seems destined for a bottom-6 role, which might limit his scoring opportunities.

One more from the Canucks: Nils Hoglander, who scored 24 goals on just 120 shots (20.0 SH%). Hoglander has never shot higher than 11.0% in his previous three seasons.

Other players with high shooting percentage that may be due for a decrease in goals:

Sonny Milano – 30.0 SH%, 15 goals in 49 games. Milano had the league's highest shooting percentage among players that had played at least 40 games.

Anthony Mantha – 20.4 SH%, 23 goals in 74 games

Low shooting percentage

Johnny Gaudreau (7.5%)

Let's face it, Johnny Hockey's tenure in Columbus has been less than memorable. But has bad luck had something to do with it? After shooting the lights out in his final two seasons in Calgary (17.0 SH%, 15.3 SH%), Gaudreau has had a sub-10.0 SH% during each of his two seasons in Columbus. This is not to suggest that Gaudreau will bounce back to his 115-point final season with the Flames, but slightly better performance should be a very real possibility.

Gaudreau fell nearly a shot per game from 2022-23 (2.8 SOG/GP) to 2023-24 (2.0 SOG/GP), scoring a grand total of 12 goals this past season. An increase back to the 2022-23 shot rate combined with a 10.0 SH% would result in 10 more goals, pushing him back up to the 20-goal mark. That's not the 40 he scored in his final season in Calgary, and it hardly makes his $9.75 million cap hit seem like great value. However, it could be enough to push Gaudreau back up to the 70-point mark.

Cole Caufield (8.9%)

He might get called Goal Caufield a lot in 2024-25. Caufield scored a career-high 28 goals in 2023-24 in spite of a below-average 8.9 SH%. His shot totals are impressive and place him among the elite, including 314 SOG (7^th in NHL) and 3.8 SOG/GP (9^th). Appearing in at least 70 games for the first time in his career was the main reason that Caufield's goal and shot totals were so high. He appeared in a full 82 games in 2023-24.

If Caufield were to shoot at his career average of 11.7%, maintain his shot total, and play all 82 games, he would be projected for 37 goals. I'll also take the time to mention that a step forward goal-wise for Caufield should result in a big year for his regular linemate Nick Suzuki.

Other players with low shooting percentage that might be due for an increase in goals:

Max Domi – 6.6%, 9 goals in 80 games

Mats Zuccarello – 6.9%, 12 goals in 69 games

Jack Hughes – 9.9%, 27 goals in 62 games

Matthew Tkachuk – 9.3%, 26 goals in 80 games

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