We have reached the final week of August and that means training camps are right around the corner. If anyone hasn't picked up their copy of the 2025-26 Dobber Hockey Fantasy Guide, now is a great time to do it! This guide has projections, team-by-team reviews, category-specific articles, a schedule breakdown, and a whole lot more. Importantly, it is updated all through the preseason so people with the Guide can have a nice before-and-after snapshot of player values/projections in the six weeks leading to the regular season. Help support what we do by heading to the Dobber Shop and grabbing a copy today!

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With training camps starting soon, I want to take my next four Ramblings to talk about my personal projections. Every year I do my own projections mainly because my major focus once the season starts is Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) so I need something I can update daily. I also like to use several sources when thinking about player values, my own projections and those from the Dobber Fantasy Guide being two important ones.

Let's go through some of the projections I've come up with. We are going to go alphabetically through the team list, so today we're starting with Anaheim and finishing with Colorado, covering a player per team. These projections are all based on 82 games played, and data for the projections is from Evolving Hockey, AllThreeZones, and Frozen Tools.

*Note: I still have to do age adjustments and add rookies. These aren't a finished product, and some players may change a fair bit based on their age, particularly those under 25 years old or over 30.

Anaheim Ducks

This projection for Leo Carlsson was very interesting to me:

I was expecting a bigger jump in his production, but two problems came up, and that's ice time and the Anaheim power play. As for ice time, Carlsson averaged 16:14 per game in 2024-25. While the Ducks have a new coach, they still have Mason McTavish as a similarly young and improving player while Ryan Strome is a veteran hand. They also brought in Mikael Granlund who has been a centre for most of his career. How much centre Granlund plays is uncertain, but there is competition for prime minutes. These projections have Carlsson adding about a minute per game (most of it at even strength) but not taking a huge leap in TOI.

Then there is the power play. Anaheim's has been bad for years, and when the even-strength scoring took off last year after the Four Nations break, the power play remained the worst in the league by goals per minute. And without any true superstars (yet), there is enough talent to split across two PP units, which is a problem. If Carlsson can get a lot of PPTOI on a good top PP unit, he's a 60-point player. If Anaheim's power play is only a bit better, or more of the same, rather than a big improvement, then 60 points would be Carlsson's upside.

Boston Bruins

Here is a projection I was not expecting to see from Casey Mittelstadt:

Basically, this projection brings us closer to his 2023-24 season than his 2024-25 season. That is despite posting just six points in 18 games with the Bruins. The two big reasons are the expectation of a healthy Charlie McAvoy and Hampus Lindholm (neither of whom played a single game with Mittelstadt in the lineup) and Mittelstadt getting a healthy chunk of power play time. Even with the bad 2024-25 season, he is still a 90^th percentile forward by 5-on-5 assist rate over the last three seasons, and is still just 26 years old. There should be some belief in a bounce-back year, and he's a guy to keep in mind for mid- and deep-sized leagues.  

Buffalo Sabres

In a Ramblings last week, I wrote about how Zach Benson is a player to look for in terms of a Dylan Holloway-type breakout. Well, here is Benson's projection right now:

With an age adjustment, I imagine this gets closer to 22-23 goals and around 20 assists. That isn't really a huge breakout season but look at the power-play point total. The assumption is that he gets mostly secondary PP minutes and that Buffalo's top unit will be heavily used. If Benson's even-strength point projection comes in around where I think it will after the age adjustment, it would be in the high-30s for 82 games, which is a pace that would make him a low-end top-line forward by that measure. If he can somehow manage top PP minutes for significant chunks of the season, or *gasp* nearly all year? Then this could be a true breakout. There is a lot of work to be done before we can call Benson a reliable 60-point forward, but I think he's a lot closer to that level than his 58 points in 146 career games indicate.

Carolina Hurricanes

Ok, this is the first projection that really made me stop and double-check to make sure my inputs were all correct. They are, and here is what I have right now for offseason addition Nikolaj Ehlers

It really isn't that crazy. Over the last two years, Ehlers' 82-game paces are for 27 goals, 41 assists, and 221 shots. An 82-game projection of 32 goals, 45 assists, and 224 shots isn't all that far off, and as we can tell by the power-play point column, this jump largely comes from the man advantage: Ehlers averaged 16 PPPs per 82 games over those last two years.

I am also a bit leery of such a big projection for a player moving to a new team and a new system. I don't have any real concerns that Ehlers will fit in well with Carolina, but things break easier with more moving pieces, and literally moving to a new team is a big change. There is also the issue of him staying healthy as he's averaged 65 games played per season over the last four years. He did play all 82 games in 2023-24, but he also played fewer than 70 in the other three campaigns in that stretch.

If I were to make a bet on whether Ehlers reaches 75 points, I would take the under just because of the necessary PP production and requirement to stay healthy. I would draft him assuming something like 25 goals and 35 assists and then anything above that is gravy.

Columbus Blue Jackets

There are a few interesting projections in Columbus but this one from Kent Johnson stuck out:

It stuck out because that's a 20-goal/82-game projection for a soon-to-be 23-year-old with 198 career games who had 24 goals in 68 games last season. It is also a drop in assist rate. Once an age adjustment is made, he's probably in the 22- to 24-goal range and the 33- to 35-assist range. That would still just basically match last season in 14 more games played.

The problem is three-fold:

1. A big sign of regression that he shot 19.5% in 2024-25 after shooting 11.4% in 130 games across his first three seasons.
2. Another sign of regression is that after averaging 0.32 secondary assists per 60 minutes at 5-on-5 in those first three seasons, Johnson managed 0.66 in 2024-25.
3. These projections don't think very much of the Columbus blue line past the top pair of Zach Werenski and Dante Fabbro. They play a lot, but there are more minutes with them off the ice than on, and that hurts.

This is a projection that scares me because I think Johnson is better than this shows. For reference, the 2025-26 Dobber Hockey Fantasy Guide has Johnson for 61 points in 70 games, and I think that projection is closer to right than mine is.

Calgary Flames

A week ago, I wrote about selling MacKenzie Weegar's fantasy value as a top-5 defenceman in multi-cat leagues. Maybe I should have waited until his projection was finished because, uh…

To be clear: I think 17 goals is lofty and after a small age adjustment, that probably comes down closer to 15 goals. Even still, if he's a 15-goal, 40-assist producer, with the shots, hits and blocks he can bring, he's easily a top-5 multi-cat defenceman.

Here's the crux: as mentioned earlier, there aren't rookies in the projections yet, and Weegar is projected for 21 power-play points. If Zayne Parekh looks like he's going to take some PP1 time from Weegar, then those projections probably come down to somewhere near 11 goals and 35 assists, or much closer to what he did last season. That would leave him in a tier below Cale Makar, Zach Werenski, Quinn Hughes, and Rasmus Dahlin, but at the top of the next tier. In multi-cat leagues, there doesn't seem to be much reason to not draft Weegar as a top-8 defenceman unless Parekh has the top PP role all season.

Chicago Blackhawks

Oh boy… here is Connor Bedard:

Bedard has averaged 25 goals, 45 assists, and 219 shots every 82 games for his career. The projection here represents a jump in goal scoring by 43%, assist total by 12%, and shots by 6%. The assists and shots… fine. The goal projection is a tough one to swallow.

Here is what happened. My projections are partly based on similar players from prior seasons. Bedard is in the top-third of the league's forwards by shot volume in his two seasons. He also has a below-average shooting percentage. In my data, teenage forwards with high shot volume and low shooting percentages see a sizeable increase in their shooting percentage in Year 3. That would make Bedard roughly a 12.6% shooter in 2025-26. My projections also think the Chicago blue line will be a lot better in 2025-26 than in 2024-25, and the additional puck-moving skills from the back end will elevate even-strength goal totals. Put it all together and we get Bedard's 36-goal projection.

Even knowing all that, a 43% jump is a lot. If he can be a 30-goal, 50-assist guy, that will be a great year. I haven't done all-around values yet, but my assumption is that if Bedard can be drafted anywhere around or after the 50^th pick in a draft, I'd be pretty tempted to do it.

Colorado Avalanche

Let's finish with a defenceman that really grew on me in 2024-25:

For reference, Sam Malinski's career 82-game paces are for 7 goals, 14 assists, 121 shots, 107 blocks, and 59 hits. This projection is an across-the-board increase, and a guy who can threaten double-digit goals, a mid-30s point total, and over 300 combined shots/hits/blocks is nothing to ignore.

A few things about Malinski are important here. First, his shot rate at even strength for his 99 career games is inside the 90^th percentile of all regular defencemen, and in line with names like Noah Dobson and Jakob Chychrun. Secondly, his tracking data is largely above-average to very good in things like playmaking, zone entries, and zone exits.

Lastly, and this is key: Colorado looks to have good secondary scoring once again. Gabriel Landeskog is healthy, Valeri Nichushkin isn't suspended, and Brock Nelson is there for a full year. As long as the top of the lineup stays off the injured list, they may have their best second scoring line since 2021-22. Cale Makar and Devon Toews play a lot with Nathan MacKinnon, so good secondary forward scoring is vital to point production for the rest of the blue line, and the team looks to have that once again. That makes Malinski an attractive option for deeper fantasy leagues.