Just a heads up for everyone that Bubble Keeper Week here at Dobber Hockey is set to start next week! It is the time of year when both the columns and the Ramblings talk about those final keep-or-toss decisions that are made each fantasy season. For example, should a fantasy manager keep Aliaksei Protas or Tyson Foerster? What about Elias Lindholm or William Karlsson? Who stays and who goes between Mattias Ekholm and Devon Toews? Those are the types of questions were are interested in. Send them in to the comments below, reach out to me on Twitter here, or reach out to me on BlueSky here.

*

A reminder that the 2025-26 Dobber Hockey Fantasy Guide is now available! It has projections, a draft list, team-by-team breakdowns, articles covering breakouts, declines, category-specific players, and a whole lot more. It is also updated throughout the offseason and training camp to reflect new trades, signings, and injuries.

There is also the Dobber Keeper Pack, which adds the 2025 Prospects Report to the Guide itself. Get ahead of your competition and help support what we do by picking up a copy of the Guide, or the entire Keeper Pack, today!

*

Vitali Kravtsov, the 9^th overall pick from the 2018 draft who has spent the last two seasons in the KHL, signed a one-year deal with Vancouver. It is for the league minimum and a two-way deal, so he can be sent to the AHL. He finished second in points per game among skaters age-25 or younger this past KHL season.

It is not given that Kravtsov will earn an NHL roster spot in October. Vancouver has Brock Boeser, Conor Garland, and Jake DeBrusk as its top three wingers. They brought over Evander Kane, they still have Nils Hoglander, they had Kiefer Sherwood in a bigger role last season, and have Drew O'Connor as well. A skilled player like Kravtsov should play with other skilled players, but he's going to be no higher than the fourth winger on the depth chart, may well be a number-7 or number-8 winger, and there is still Jonathan Lekkerimaki for consideration. For fantasy, Kravtsov is a wait-and-see type of player, not a draft-in-September type, unless we are in a verydeep league.

*

In a Ramblings last week, I talked about Best Ball formats, and why they are popular with some fantasy managers. For anyone unfamiliar with Best Ball formats, go check that out.

I wanted to talk today about my first Best Ball draft of the season. I am not sure how many I'll do, exactly, but I did 18 of them last year and will probably be around 20 again this year. As a first foray into fantasy values for the season, getting one done this early can help set a baseline to measure ADP movement (a couple more drafts in the next week or so will help create the true baseline). It also helps with seeing what kinds of players are being drafted early or late, who might be a value right now, and so on. Let's break down my first fantasy draft of the season.

A reminder that this is a points format that gives points for goals (6), assists (4), power-play points (0.5), shots (1), blocks (1), and hits (0.5). Goalies get points for wins (6) and saves (0.6) while losing points for goals against (-3). These are 12-team leagues with centres, wingers, defencemen, goalies, and one skater utility spot.

*Editor’s Note: This year, Underdog Best Ball Formats have moved up to two utility skater slots.

The First Round

I was drafting fourth overall and here is how the top 10 picks broke down:

While the order is a bit different in the back half, this isn't wholly different from how the top-10 looked in a lot of drafts last year. Guys like Matthew Tkachuk or Jack Hughes may have snuck into the 9-10 range, but that's about it.

Some people may scoff at Cale Makar at 7^th, but it makes a lot of sense. No defenceman has been as consistently super-elite as him and he has back-to-back 90-point seasons. He provides a big relative advantage at the position.

Rounds Two and Three

Once we got past the first round, there was a huge run on wingers. In the 15 picks between 13^th and 28^th, 12 wingers were chosen. Part of it is because two wingers are needed each week in this format (only one centre, one defenceman, and one goalie), but part of it is something I wrote about a couple weeks ago where right wingers in 2024-25 were as-or-more productive than centres in every area except blocks.

Anyway, I was especially intrigued by this run in the mid-20s:

Here is the thing with Jason Robertson: he had 109 points in 82 games in 2022-23. In 2021-22, 2023-24, and 2024-25, he had 79, 80, and 80 points. He skated under 18 minutes a game last year and went from Dallas' number-1 forward by share of even-strength and power-play time up until the Trade Deadline, per Frozen Tools, to the number-2 forward over the rest of the regular season once Mikko Rantanen arrived, and the number-3 forward in the playoffs (and off the top PP unit). Yes, his injury plays a factor, but it matters.

A fun fact: There has been one winger this century to reach 90 points while skating 18 minutes a game or less, and it was Matthew Tkachuk in 2021-22. No forward in either of the last two seasons skated 19 minutes a game or less and reached 90 points. Robertson also averaged 280 shots per 82 games from 2021-2023 and has now averaged 221 shots per 82 games over the last two seasons. His shot volume has dropped 21% and he's a longshot to reach 90 points. Is he really worth a second-round pick?

Early Goalies

There is always the debate about whether to take a goalie early or not, so I wanted to share the draft position of the goalies taken in the first six rounds:

• Connor Hellebuyck 15^th overall (ADP of 15)
• Andrei Vasilevskiy 21^st overall (ADP of 20.1)*
• Jake Oettinger 30^th overall (ADP of 28.7)
• Igor Shesterkin 31^st overall (ADP of 34.3)
• Mackenzie Blackwood 48^th overall (ADP of 48)
• Filip Gustavsson 50^th overall (ADP of 42.9)
• Ilya Sorokin 51^st overall (ADP of 50.8)
• Darcy Kuemper 52^nd overall (ADP of 62.4)*
• Sergei Bobrovsky 56^th overall (ADP of 57.6)

*These were my picks

That makes no goalies in the first round, two in the second round, five in the first four rounds, and nine in the first six rounds.

If I could do it over again, I would have skipped on Darcy Kuemper at 52^nd overall and grabbed Jacob Markstrom a couple of rounds later. I thought Markstrom was slept on last year and I think he's being slept on again this year. He had the eighth-best goals against average in 2024-25 and that was with a .900 save percentage. If he can boost that save percentage a bit, and New Jersey's blue line stays healthy, I think he's in for a very good season.

Blackwood is a good pick at the end of the fourth round. He is locked into being Colorado's starter and has been a top-10-ish goalie by Evolving Hockey's Goals Saved Above Expected on a per-shot basis over the last two years. He feels like a very good bet for 30 wins with good ratios and I wouldn't mind having him as my top netminder if I miss out on the top tier.

Roman Josi and Mid-Round Defencemen

As mentioned, Makar went in the first round, which isn't a surprise. Also not a surprise is Zach Werenski in round 2, Quinn Hughes and Evan Bouchard in round 3, and Rasmus Dahlin at the top of round 4. What is surprising is how far Roman Josi fell. So, here are rounds 5-7 which include some key defencemen outside the top tier:

Josi has been a second- or third-round pick for 5-6 years now (maybe even 1^st round in some drafts) but fell outside the top-50 here. It is fair to wonder how much he can bounce back after missing 29 games last year. He turned 35 years old in June, Nashville was the lowest-scoring team at even strength in 2024-25, and the lineup isn't really much different for 2025-26. Even if he improves by 10% across the board, he still wouldn't reach the highs he had in 2023-24. There is a long way to go to being elite again, he's on the clear downside of the aging curve, and his team isn't very good. I don't really mind the pick because if he turns back the clock one more time then this pick is a home run, and if he's about the same, then he's basically Victor Hedman. The question is how likely he is to turn back the clock, and if there aren't better bets later on like Jake Sanderson or Moritz Seider a round later.

Value Picks

To finish things off, some rapid fire of picks I think were good values:

• Mikhail Sergachev (D – 116^th overall) – Sergachev had 53 points in 77 games last year and did it with the lowest individual points percentage (IPP, or the rate at which he earns a point when his team scores) in six years at 43.4%. Had he averaged what he did over the previous three years in Tampa Bay (50.8%), he would have had 62 points. And Utah should be better.
• Cutter Gauthier (W – 127^th overall) – If I'm remembering right, this is about where he went last year. So, Gauthier has a 20-goal season as a rookie on a bottom-3 offensive team that is improving, and his ADP stays where it was?
• Quinton Byfield (C – 136^th overall) – The one thing keeping Byfield from truly ascending in the fantasy game is power-play production. A consistent top PP role means a 70-point season, and a 12^th-round pick is a good gamble to take on that happening.
• Sean Monahan (C – 153^rd overall) – There are always injury concerns with Monahan, but he was over a point-per-game last year, is Columbus's top centre, had Zach Werenski on the ice with him for 60% of his ice time, and has great chemistry with Kirill Marchenko.
• Jet Greaves (G – 156^th overall) – I am not sold on Columbus being a playoff team, but Greaves has been great in very limited NHL action, has been excellent over the last two years in the AHL, and Columbus wants to be a playoff team. As long as he plays well, I think he'll get the bulk of the starts, and that's worth a gamble as the 30^th goalie off the board.