Bubble Keeper Week rolls on here at Dobber Hockey. In my Ramblings on Tuesday, I answered a few questions including Wyatt Johnston, Dylan Holloway, Brandt Clarke, Marco Rossi, and more. In Monday's Ramblings, Brennan wrote about Jackson Blake, Jonathan Drouin, Mats Zuccarello, and Josh Norris. Yesterday, Alex covered his own keeper decisions including Jacob Markstrom or Lukas Dostal, Josh Morrissey or Jake Sanderson, and more.

Today, we're getting to a few more questions. The first one is a complex one from Tom Collins, who used to write the Top 10 column here at Dobber Hockey:

To sum this up quickly:

• Points-only and separated between forwards and defencemen.
• A total of 180 players are kept. Tom has seven forwards, five defencemen, and two goalies already on hold.
• There is one keeper spot left and seven realistic options.
• Any player that gets dropped goes into a draft-pick auction, and the team that drops a player gets the draft pick from that auction. For example, if Tom doesn't keep Anze Kopitar, and someone bids a second round of the draft-pick auction on Kopitar, Tom gets a second-round pick back. If a player isn't taken in the draft-pick auction, the manager that dropped them gets nothing.

Let's go through this step by step.

First, Mike Matheson isn't being kept. Five defencemen are counted each week and between Roman Josi, Victor Hedman, Seth Jones, and Morgan Rielly, there are two top-10 defencemen and four top-25 defencemen already on the roster. Drew Doughty isn't anything special, but he can put up 40 points in his role, and with Matheson's role getting diminished, 40 points would be a good season for him. I'd rather throw Matheson back and hope to get a pick for him than have him as a bench option.

If we were to keep one of the forwards, the guy I would keep is Vincent Trocheck. The 2025-26 Dobber Hockey Fantasy Guide has both he and Kopitar for 64 points, but we have to be realistic about Kopitar because he's not Los Angeles' top centre anymore – Quinton Byfield led all Los Angeles forwards in ice time after the Four Nations break last year, and in the playoffs as well. Trocheck, meanwhile, led the Rangers forwards last year with 21:06 per game in ice time (the only forward over 20 minutes, let alone 21 minutes), and did so after the Four Nations break as well (20:40 per game). There is a new coach in town with Mike Sullivan, so maybe things will change, but barring a huge shift in Trocheck's role, he's probably the team's top centre again. Along with that is top PP time now that Chris Kreider is in Anaheim.

The final aspect here is that there is a case to be made for keeping Florida Panthers goalie Daniil Tarasov, but it's a double-edged sword.

The downside to hanging onto Tarasov is that unless Sergei Bobrovsky gets injured or is absolutely awful, then he is probably making 50-55 starts, leaving maybe 30 starts at most for Tarasov. With that in mind, there probably won't be a lot of weeks where Tarasov is a top-2 goalie on this fantasy roster, so he's a player to keep for 2026-27 and beyond in case Bobrovsky does not re-sign, or retire, or whatever.

The upside to hanging onto Tarasov is that if Bobrovsky does get injured/performs terribly, you have the replacement on a team that should be a Stanley Cup contender again. And if Bobrovsky isn't with the Panthers a year from now, you have their starting goalie of the future.

Here is my answer: Keep Trocheck. Looking at the roster, the youngest player is soon-to-be 27-year-old Brandon Hagel, only 3 of 14 declared keepers are under 30 years old (Dylan Strome and Joey Daccord are the others), and none are under 25. This is a fantasy roster built to win now, not compete in three years. Heck, there are 5-6 guys on this roster who might be retired in the next 2-3 years, and a complete rebuild will then be necessary. Even if Tarasov works out, you have a 27-year-old goalie on a rebuilding fantasy roster, and who knows how good (or bad) Florida will be in 3-5 years. I would keep Trocheck and push all my chips to the middle this season. The argument for keeping Kopitar over Trocheck is that Trocheck probably gets a better draft pick in the draft auction, so that's not a bad idea, but for me, the roster composition says to maximize the one-year value of each roster spot.

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Our next keeper question comes from Twitter:

13 team, keep 7.
4 pts for G, 2 for A, bonus for PP&SH & 0.25 pts for blocks/hits/+/-
My last keeper between Konecny (262 pts last year) Batherson (272) & Byfield (201).
Leaning Batherson, but does new coach give Konecny more upside? Can Byfield get to next level & surpass them?

— Dave Foley (@foleyd7) August 12, 2025

This is an interesting one. Let's break it down player by player.

Over the last three seasons, Travis Konecny has averaged 33 goals and 44 assists per 82 games, and done so averaging about 15.5 PP points every 82 games. In those three seasons, 39 forwards have averaged between 0.85 and 1.05 points per game, and of those 39 forwards, Konecny ranks 37^th by power-play points per game (0.19). The average of those 39 forwards is 0.3 PP points per game, or about 25 PP points every 82 games. All that means is if Konecny can produce PP points equivalent to similar overall per-game producers, he's easily a point-per-game forward. His projection in the 2025-26 Dobber Hockey Fantasy Guide is 31 goals and 47 assists in 79 games.  

Quinton Byfield has seen his even-strength points per 60 minutes rise each season of career from 1.18 as a rookie to 2.09 last season. Over the last two years, his even-strength points rate is that of a bottom-end top-line forward, somewhere in the Nazem Kadri/Pierre-Luc Dubois range. Like Konecny, he has had very little PP production with 21 PP points in 161 games over the last two years. Also, with Kopitar, Adrian Kempe, and Kevin Fiala, Byfield is no higher than the fourth PP forward, and may be fifth because of Andrei Kuzmenko. If the Kings decide to go back to a 4F/1D power play, Byfield may be on the outside looking in. His projection in the Fantasy Guide is 23 goals and 41 assists in 81 games.

Lastly, Drake Batherson has averaged 27 goals, 40 assists, 194 shots, 124 hits, 32 blocks, and 27 PPPs per 82 games across the last two years. Each of those marks is better than anything Byfield has done over those two seasons. Batherson is 27 years old, so there is no significant age-related decline to contend with, and he's a near-lock for top PP minutes.

In real hockey terms, I think Byfield will be the best of the three in a year or two (and he might be already), but this is fantasy hockey – Byfield doesn't shoot much, doesn't put up big hit/block totals, and has an uncertain PP role. He might be the team's top centre now, but he doesn't have the fantasy profile of a high-end multi-category producer.

I lean Konecny between the three. What separates him from Batherson for me is that Batherson needs a lot of PP production just to be a 65-point player where Konecny has averaged 77 points/82 games over the last three years with 44% less PP production than Batherson. If anything happens where Batherson loses his top PP role, then his upside is cooked, whereas Konecny doesn't need high-end PP production for a very valuable fantasy season. And if Konecny ever does get Batherson-like PP production? He can be a top-25 fantasy skater.

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Last keeper question for today, and it again comes from Twitter:

Here's a few names: J. Eriksson Ek, RNH, Tippett, maybe Newhook?
Thx!

— Bernard Durand (@BernyBoyD) August 13, 2025

Bernard added it's a points-only cap league with weekly lineups. Each roster has 10 forwards, four defencemen, one goalie, and five bench spots.

Off the hop, Alex Newhook is tossed aside. I think he has a better season than the 26 points from last year, but with Kirby Dach (hopefully) coming back healthy, with Ivan Demidov in the fold, and with how much the team likes Jake Evans, Newhook is, at best, a third-line/PP2 guy. That just isn't enough compared to the rest.

Owen Tippett is also left aside. With Konecny, Matvei Michkov, and Tyson Foerster (if/when he's healthy), Tippett is no higher than the fourth winger and isn't anywhere close to a lock for top PP time. If this were a multi-cat format where his hit and shot contributions mattered, he'd get a lot more consideration, but that ain't this, and this ain't that.

On a per-game basis, the Dobber Fantasy Guide has Joel Eriksson Ek (0.71) slightly out-pacing Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (0.7), but Eriksson Ek has 10 fewer games projected with 70 to RNH's 80.

My answer is I would go with Eriksson Ek. I am not sold on Marco Rossi being their top-line centre to play with Kirill Kaprizov and Nugent-Hopkins saw a big downturn last year in his overall effectiveness (per HockeyViz):

Is that a one-year blip, or the start of a trend for a 32-year-old who has 1055 career NHL games between the regular season and playoffs? Only those with a crystal ball know, but that threat of age-related decline is real, so I'll go with Eriksson Ek, who will be on the right side of 30 years old for the next 17 months.

I will say that it is close enough where if someone believes that RNH will have a rebound year and get back to 65 points, I have no quibble with keeping him over Eriksson Ek. But when it comes to players with similar keeper value, I will usually go with the younger option, and that means tossing RNH back into the player pool.