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. Friday’s Penguins/Capitals matchup served as a reminder to enjoy what Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin provide to the game while you can. They met for their 70^th regular season head-to-head matchup on Friday, literally joined at the hip as long-time divisional rivals and the franchise players for their respective teams. What’s also remarkable is that for as long as both have been in the NHL, they are both still fantasy relevant in the 2024-25 season. Evgeni Malkin, who has been along for nearly all of the ride too, scored the game-winning goal in the third period of that game. (nov9)

2. Daniel Sprong has re-sprung in Seattle. The Canucks sent Sprong down the I-5 to the Kraken for the oft-traded future considerations. Sprong’s brief time in Vancouver ends with a goal and two assists in nine games. With the reputation of not being defensively conscientious, Sprong likely wasn’t a favorite of Rick Tocchet and had even been healthy scratched a few times.

In his only full season with Seattle (66 games), Sprong scored 21 goals and 46 points – both career bests. He should fill the role of a secondary scorer in a team full of them, likely with 11-13 minutes per game and second-unit power-play time. His reacquisition shouldn’t have a huge fantasy impact on the Kraken overall, but it could push someone like Shane Wright, Andre Burakovsky, Eeli Tolvanen, or Oliver Bjorkstrand out of the power-play mix completely. Given his usual lack of icetime and even the possibility of a healthy scratch, Sprong himself doesn’t seem trustable in fantasy leagues. (nov9)

3. Kirill Kaprizov continues to amaze. With 27 points in 14 games, Kaprizov is second only to Nathan MacKinnon in the NHL scoring race, which is a major reason that Minnesota has exceeded expectations early in the season. He is shooting the lights out with a 22.0 SH% with nine goals, so he will cool off at some point. I won’t suggest that you sell high, since his upside is as one of the league’s best. However, you’ll need to budget for him to cool off a bit. Despite that, reaching 100 points this season is a very real possibility. (nov9)

4. Across Philadelphia’s first nine games, the only forward to have more ice time per game than Matvei Michkov was Travis Konecny. However, in his next four games, Michkov failed to reach 16 minutes in any of them, and averaged 14:41. This team is still coached by John Tortorella, so the writing was on the wall, and Michkov was healthy scratched on Thursday night.

This really isn’t a big deal. It is hard to be a rookie in the NHL and there are a plethora of examples of young players being healthy scratched, or even sent to the AHL, only to turn into the stars they were likely to be (Seth Jarvis, Quinton Byfield, and Cole Caufield come to mind). (nov8)

(Ed. Note: On Saturday, Matvei Michkov was a healthy scratch for the second consecutive game.)

5. It was October 28^th when Edmonton’s Connor McDavid left a game early after jamming his foot into the boards. He escaped serious injury, but the timeline was 2-3 weeks before a return.

We can throw that timeline out the window because just nine days later, McDavid returned to action on Wednesday night with the Oilers at home against the Vegas Golden Knights. From what looked to be a serious injury to just three games missed and back in the lineup nine days later. Fantasy managers everywhere rejoice. (nov7)

6. I was perusing Quinton Byfield‘s numbers (as he entered Thursday action) and something stood out to me: He has seen a rise in ice time of nearly a minute per game, which is good. However, that is misleading for fantasy purposes because in 2023-24 he was almost never used on the penalty kill, but is now one of Los Angeles’s top penalty-killing forwards. The reality is that on top of being stuck on the second power play unit, he’s lost 46 seconds per game at even strength. So, despite the rise in overall ice time, he has dropped 1:12 per game in total even strength/power play minutes. Those are the offensive minutes for point production, and losing those minutes hurts his fantasy upside.

It got me thinking about which other players are seeing similar changes, so let’s use some Frozen Tools data (along with Natural Stat Trick) to look at even strength and power play changes among forwards when compared to 2023-24. We will use a 50-game cutoff for last season and 10-game cutoff for this season. (nov7)

7. There are the obvious names. We know Philipp Kurashev had, until recently, lost his role next to Connor Bedard (we’ll see how long he stays on Bedard’s line now), and that Jeff Skinner‘s role in Edmonton would not be the same as it was in Buffalo. Let’s look at some other forwards.

Michael Bunting

You can probably justify dropping Michael Bunting for his ice-cold start of no goals and one assist in his first 12 games. (Ed. note: Bunting has goals in two of his past three games. He has also accrued nine hits over his past three games.) (nov9)

Anyone that drafted Bunting knows the deal already, but his offensive role has been crushed so far this season. After being traded to Pittsburgh last year, he earned 62.7% of the team’s power play time. He also earned 28% of the team’s even strength ice time. So far this season, those numbers have crashed to 27.3% and 25.5%., respectively. It has caused him to lose three minutes per game of ice time, and he just registered his first goal of the season on Tuesday night. Including his time in Carolina to start the 2023-24 campaign, Bunting has seen one of the largest declines in percentage of offensive minutes (%Off).

(At time of writing:) The good news is his individual points percentage (IPP) at 5-on-5, or the rate he’s earning a point when Pittsburgh scores a goal with him on the ice, is 33.3%, a career-low. It is good news because it indicates a turnaround from here on out – he averaged 64.1% across the three prior seasons. It is very plausible his 5-on-5 points rate doubles over the balance of the season.  

The bad news is that without a PP role, and with a declining 5-on-5 role because the team has loaded the top line, Bunting might not even be a half-point per game player from here on out. He is shooting and hitting a good clip, even for his minutes, and if he can keep that up, he’ll have meagre multi-cat value. Until the team starts using him more, meagre multi-cat value is as good as it gets. (nov7)

8. Eeli Tolvanen

Another sizable drop has come from Eeli Tolvanen, who has gone from the fourth-most used forward on Seattle’s power play last year to the ninth-most used forward this year. He has lost a minute of PPTOI per game thus far to go with his 1:04 drop in even strength ice time per game. That has led to one of the larger drops in combined percentage of offensive minutes, and in line with a couple veterans in Gustav Nyquist and Sean Couturier.

I do find these kinds of things funny because Seattle was 21^st by PP goals per minute last year and have improved all the way to *shuffles notes* 20^th by PP goals per minute this year. At nearly 2.5 hits per game, Tolvanen retains some multi-cat value, but he’s shooting 25% and skating 13:32 per appearance. Seattle coach Dan Bylsma is already starting to sit veterans and it’s a wonder how long until Tolvanen is one of them. He needs a huge turnaround in his usage to be useful outside of depth for banger formats. (nov7)

9. Cole Sillinger

Until he was injured, Ross Colton had seen a huge increase in offensive deployment thanks to Colorado’s other injuries. Alex Laferriere has seen a demonstrable role shift in Los Angeles with the largest improvement in share of the power play time of any forward in the league. However, just behind Laferriere in terms of offensive role increase is Columbus’s Cole Sillinger.

With all the losses that Columbus has endured, injury and otherwise, it’s not a surprise that Sillinger has seen an improved even strength role (38 more seconds per game than last year). What is surprising is that he has seen one of the largest power play role increases, too, going from sparse usage in 2023-24 to a consistent top PP role in 2024-25 over Adam Fantilli, or even the recently-returned Dmitri Voronkov.

With Sillinger on the ice for the power play, the Blue Jackets are scoring 7.6 goals per 60 minutes. That isn’t necessarily a good mark, but it is a drastic improvement on the 5.4 goals per 60 minutes the team scored on the power play last season.  How much of it is Sillinger and how much of it is the other four players is a fair question (he has zero PP points this season), but with a decent shot rate, and good hit rate, Sillinger will continue to have fantasy value in most formats. (nov7)

10. Conor Garland

A bit further down the list of improvements is Vancouver’s Garland. Being moved to the top PP unit so early is a bit of a surprise, but as with Sillinger, it’s hard to argue with the results: at 5-on-4, the Canucks are generating roughly 50% more shots, and double the goals, than they were without him. The power play still is not where we expect it to be, but the improvements are there, and that’s good enough for now.

With over 40 minutes of ice time in his last two games, Garland is starting to see a very large role for the Canucks. Whether it lasts, we’ll see, but they are starting to use the bottom two lines less than last year, and with more minutes allocated to the top of the lineup, Garland is seeing a huge improvement in his offensive role, and likely needs to be owned in most fantasy formats outside of the shallowest leagues. (nov7)

11. Will Cuylle has really surprised me with his jump in production. I had him pegged as someone that would be stuck as a physical third liner, but his production at mid-week of last says that he can be a solid second line player. However, that doesn't mean he's likely to keep up his current pace. He's due to see his team's shooting percentage with him on the ice regress by at least 20%. That would likely take about the same percentage away from his scoring pace. Expecting Cuylle to finish closer to a 50-point pace is much more realistic, as the rest of his underlying numbers don't look too out of line. Stack that on top of his two shots and four hits per game, and he's still certainly worth rostering in setups that count all three of those categories. (nov6)

12. More young guys: It’s been a noteworthy start to the season for Jackson Blake and Connor Zary, both pacing for over a point every second game (at time of writing). Zary is racking up more shots, but Blake is producing despite playing nearly six fewer minutes per game. Both look like decent options to keep producing in fantasy leagues. Your typical 12-team setups might see these guys as longer-term streamers, but anything deeper than that and these two should likely be rostered full time. Matt Coronato kept pace by scoring the equalizer in the third before potting the winner seven seconds into overtime. He's up to four points (all goals) in eight games now. (nov6)

13. Mikael Granlund coming up as one of the best value draft picks this year was not something I expected. After underwhelming with both Nashville and Pittsburgh, Granlund is thriving in San Jose as he eats up all the ice time available. It does look like instead of seeing a slightly diminished role with Macklin Celebrini returning to the lineup, Granlund is instead splitting faceoffs with him. If he does get bumped down the lineup he would be an immediate sell-high candidate, but it seems unlikely as Granlund paces the team in ice time from the forwards. (nov6)

14. Rick Roos is looking for a few more mailbag questions to be answered in next week's article. To get your questions to him, private message “rizzeedizzee” via the DobberHockey Forums or email [email protected] with “Roos Mailbag” as the subject line. No one does a deeper dive on your questions than Rick, and now is the time to get those buy-low, sell-high, nd other roster fix questions in before it's too late.

15. The Islanders don't have a lot going for them right now, and perhaps the only player exceeding expectations is Maxim Tsyplakov. When looking at free agents in one of my leagues though, Kyle Palmieri stood out as someone who is quietly producing well too. He had 11 points through his first 13 games, on top of some solid power play exposure. His 2.8 shots per game are a big fantasy boost as well. The underlying numbers show that he might have an extra assist or two thus far, but the shot volume and scoring seems relatively sustainable with the lineup as it is. (nov6)

16. Lukas Dostal has been the big bargain goalie of the first portion of the season, but with John Gibson due back at this point, and goals being a very fickle position when projecting production, here are a few goalies to keep an eye on for the second quarter: 

Joel Hofer

Jordan Binnington always seems to fall off in the second half, so be ready for Joel Hofer to turn the second half of the year into a timeshare in the Blues' net. The Blues seem to just churn out goalies over the last decade, and Hofer looks to have all the makings of being a full-time NHL starter in the near future as well. He just needs that window to crack open.

Alex Lyon

Cam Talbot is 38 years old and fell off last year in a very similar situation with the Kings. Detroit has the pieces to be a playoff bubble team, and they will ride the hot hand in net, which won't be Talbot for the whole season. There are bound to be some hiccups. (nov6)

17. Ilya Samsonov

Samsonov is outplaying Hill to this point, and as long as he's healthy then he should be able to keep this up behind the Vegas defence. The Golden Knights haven't let politics dictate their decisions in the past, so the contract favoring Hill isn't going to stop Samsonov from stealing starts as the year goes on. At the moment though, Samsonov is the one out with an injury, so he’s not someone you need to jump on right away.

Charlie Lindgren

Lindgren was one of the best value goalies last season, and is playing behind a Washington squad that really seems to have taken a step or two forward from last year. Yes, Logan Thompson does seem to be taking more starts than Darcy Kuemper was, but Lindgren is still their incumbent goalie, who is more familiar with the team. I would expect him to finish closer to 50 starts than 40. 

Alexandar Georgiev

The Bulgarian netminder is struggling at the moment, to say the least. However, as I mentioned above, the Avalanche are getting healthy, and with that their goaltending is going to be a lot more valuable. Despite Georgiev taking a lot of flak for poor play, he is still the best bet to provide value here. There won't be a better buy-low window on him. (nov6)

18. Just before the season started, I posted my 82-game projections for some defencemen that stuck out to me. The higher-end guys were discussed here and the middle-of-the-road options discussed here. With only two games on Monday night and the fact we’re a month into the season, let’s take stock of those defencemen to see where things have gone right or wrong, and what we can expect moving ahead. Data from Natural Stat Trick or Frozen Tools (at time of writing):

Josh Morrissey

My preseason projection for Morrissey, based on 82 games played, was just shy of 80 points. At time of writing, he had 15 points in 12 games, so things are off to a good start.

One concern is that he was registering a point on 62.5% of Winnipeg’s 5-on-5 goals scored with him on the ice (IPP, or individual points percentage), and that would be a career-high, having never reached 55% before. The good news is the team was shooting 6.6% with him on the ice at 5-on-5, which would be a career-low. Once the team starts scoring more, even if he falls to 50% IPP, the point production should be fine.

The bigger problem is the team was shooting 20% with him on the ice for the power play, and no defenceman reached even 19% last season. Once that falls, his PP production will go with it. A full season still likely means the 70-point range, but probably closer to 70 than 80. (nov5)

19. Dougie Hamilton

Hamilton was just under Morrissey for my preseason point projection at 78-79 points. With seven points in 14 games (heading into Monday night’s game against Edmonton), it’s safe to say Hamilton is undershooting that by a lot.

It isn’t as if he’s had a poor start, generally speaking. The entire problem is he’s registered a point on 24.1% of goals scored with him on the ice, which is by far a career-low mark. He has never been lower than 37.5% in any season, and averaged 49% across his first three seasons in New Jersey. If he is at that 49% average, he’s a point-per-game defenceman. So it goes.

New Jersey’s defencemen are being tasked with much fewer zone entries at 5-on-5, and that’s bleeding over to Hamilton’s involvement. With his usage, points should improve somewhat, but it’s clear the team’s offence is not being run the same under Sheldon Keefe as it was under Lindy Ruff. If he’s not carrying the puck into the zone, it makes sense he’s not racking up points at his usual rate. (nov5)

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20. There’s been chatter about Brandon Hagel‘s new top power-play role this season being a boon for his fantasy value, but it hasn’t really factored into his strong start. Fourteen (14) of Hagel’s 15 points have come at even-strength.. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise considering only seven players in the league had more even-strength points than Hagel last year. (nov4)

21. The biggest story coming out of Boston last week was Jim Montgomery benching David Pastrnak, presumably as a result of a careless turnover. Pastrnak has had a slow start to the season by his standards and was already due for some corrections given an unsustainably low team 5on5 shooting percentage, but perhaps this statement from Montgomery motivates Pasta to elevate his play sooner. (nov4)

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Be sure to also grab your copy of the 2024 Dobber Fantasy Hockey Prospects Report!

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Have a good week, folks!

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