The concept of arbitrage is an important one in any fantasy sport. Its roots are from finance, but for fantasy sports drafts the concept is simple: where can I find value by drafting a player who has a similar outlook to another player but is being drafted lower? For example: if someone thinks that Moritz Seider and Charlie McAvoy are going to have similar seasons in their fantasy format, and Seider has an ADP of 45^th overall where McAvoy is 75^th overall, it makes much more sense to draft McAvoy than Seider. Though that might seem obvious, there are several arbitrage opportunities every season.

Today, we're going to start a three-part series on drafting arbitrage with a focus on skaters. To shake things up a little, we will start with defencemen today before moving to wingers and centres next week.

Projections being used are my personal projections. In these projections, every player is projected for 82 games played, so if there are injury concerns about a player, that is factored afterwards. Goals, assists, power-play points, shots, hits, and blocks are the fantasy categories used for skaters.

Data for the projections come from Evolving Hockey and AllThreeZones. ADP data is from Fantrax unless otherwise indicated.

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Arbitrage #1:

Mikhail Sergachev (ADP: 55.3) and Jackson LaCombe (ADP: 93.3)

I briefly wrote about Sergachev a few days ago, stating that in a draft I did back in mid-August, he went at pick 116 in a draft on Underdog Fantasy. A few weeks later, he went at pick 98. In a draft I did on Tuesday night, he went at pick 104. It seems as if his ADP has moved up at least a round on that site, and he's going as the 14^th defenceman on FanTrax.

While LaCombe's ADP has also gone up, the difference is LaCombe's ADP remains much lower than that of Sergachev. With that in mind, here are my projections for those two players:

We can see how close these guys are in terms of production by my projections. Additionally, the Dobber Draft List has LaCombe with 12 goals and 39 assists with Sergachev at 11 goals and 42 assists, so they're pretty close in the Fantasy Guide as well.

Back in May, I wrote about LaCombe's breakout season, how a lot of the tracking data showed an excellent puck-moving defenceman, and that he's still underrated. There may be concern that he hasn't really proven anything yet since he started last season in a depth role before earning his way to a top role 1-2 months into the campaign. On top of that, there is a new coach in Anaheim who may have a different view of him compared to other blue liners on the roster.

All that said, I do believe that LaCombe is currently Anaheim's best offensive defenceman, he's good enough defensively that he won't get his even-strength ice time regulated like Shayne Gostisbehere or Dougie Hamilton, and that he'll quickly earn the trust of the new coaching staff. Let's be honest here: Anaheim's blue line currently consists of aging (declining) veterans in Jacob Trouba and Radko Gudas with young, unproven talents like Olen Zellweger, Pavel Mintyukov, and Tristan Luneau. LaCombe has proven more than the other young defencemen, and is in his prime unlike Trouba and Gudas. He has the best qualities of the two groups.

The concern is the power play. LaCombe might lose his top spot to Zellweger at any point and Anaheim's power play has been bad for years. He may lose his role, but I believe he keeps the top PP duties for the majority of the season and gets second unit duties if he's demoted. A modest improvement from the Ducks' power play overall still isn't enough to crack 20 power-play points, but he should crack 15.

While there is concern about the Anaheim power play, what about Utah? They have Clayton Keller, Dylan Guenther, and Logan Cooley guaranteed top PP minutes, and let's assume they want to have JJ Peterka on the top unit as well. If they have Sergachev, that leaves them with one centre on that quintet, and it's Cooley with his career 41.5% faceoff success rate. Does the team want one centre who is bad at faceoffs, or is this a team primed for a 5-forward power play to ensure a second centre? Or do they just leave Peterka on the second unit? All I'm saying is I don't think it's cut-and-dry that Sergachev is guaranteed PP1 minutes all season, either.

There is risk with LaCombe, but no matter what, he should have better peripherals than Sergachev, and that can help mitigate a bit of that risk. Considering he's going about three rounds lower than Sergachev, it's a risk worth taking.

Arbitrage #2:

Miro Heiskanen (97.8) and Vince Dunn (113.5)

This is a fun one. What if I told you this: Over the last two seasons, Dunn has averaged 19 power-play points every 82 games. And that over the last two seasons, Heiskanen has also averaged 19 power-play points every 82 games. Fun, right?

I can hear people yelling, "Cliffy! Seattle only had Brandon Montour for one of those seasons!" To which I say: Fair. I will reply with this: Say hello to my close, personal friend Thomas Harley. Anyway, here are the projections for Heiskanen and Dunn:

What stands out immediately is the power-play points. My projections are assuming that Thomas Harley takes the majority of top PP time in Dallas, where Dunn splits time with Montour in Seattle.

Once Heiskanen returned in the postseason, the team basically split the power-play time evenly between he and Harley. Almost regardless of how that turns out, here's what it boils down to: Heiskanen and Harley have 52 PPPs in 278 total games between them across the last two seasons. That is about 15.3 power-play points every 82 games. Over the last two years, neither defenceman has figured in on 55% of Dallas' PP goals when they've been on the ice. Of the 39 defencemen in the league with at least 250 PP minutes over the last two years, Harley is 26^th by goal participation, and Heiskanen in 32^nd. Even if Heiskanen gets a 50/50 PPTOI split, he is not nearly as involved in the goal scoring as most other defencemen. In that sense, he's much closer to McAvoy or Brock Faber than he is to the true top PP defencemen like Cale Makar and Quinn Hughes.

While Seattle's power play remains modest and Dunn will definitely split time with Montour, he had seven power-play points in 50 games last year with that setup. He did that shooting 0% on the man advantage, so if he has one goal, that's 8 PPPs in 50 games, or about 13 in an 82-game season. It is at least something.

Heiskanen has a decided edge in blocks but everything else is close. Dunn has missed 44 games over the last three seasons, so there are questions about his health, but Heiskanen has missed… *squints* … 46 games over the last three seasons. So…???

The ADP gap on FanTrax isn't that big, showing about 1.5 rounds right now. On Yahoo, the gap is about 2.5 rounds and on Underdog Fantasy the gap is about six rounds. It may depend on the site used for the draft, but to me, this is a clear case of foregoing one player to wait for the other.

Arbitrage #3

Darnell Nurse (ADP: 121.1) and Neal Pionk (160.2)

The last pair is a couple of guys who are multi-cat targets. One is a blue liner who seemingly gets drafted every year between the 25^th and 35 defenceman off the board and the other gets drafted much later. The odd thing is that over the last two years, the second guy – the one who gets drafted much later – has more goals, assists, power-play points, and hits per game than the first one. Kind of neat, huh? Anyway, here are my projections for Nurse and Pionk this season:

The thing with Nurse and his double-digit goal seasons is that he did it through volume: Of his eight campaigns where he's played at least 60 games, he has shot at least 6% in precisely zero of them. Since the Bubble COVID season, he has shot 4.4%, 5.9%, 5.5%, and 2.7%. Now he has the problem of losing the shot volume: from 2021-2023, he averaged 218 shots per 82 games, a number that has dropped to 193 shots per 82 games over the last two years. This is how the league has been trending, as players are hitting the net less and less on their shot attempts (something I wrote about back in May). Losing 25 shots in a season for a guy who is not an efficient shooter is just a bad combination.

Conversely, Pionk has shot at least 7% in two of the last four seasons, but with a wide spread between 2-8% shooting. If he shoots 2.5%, then no, he won't crack double-digit goals. That is where this can fall apart, because no defenceman in the league will reach double-digit goals shooting 2.5%. But I have him around 7%, and that's why he's projected for over 10 goals where Nurse is not.

My projections have Pionk with a decided edge in goals and small edges in assists, PPPs, and hits. On the other side, Nurse has a decided edge in shots and blocks. When we put it all together, they are projected to be relatively similar options, with Pionk going 3-5 rounds later. That makes it an easy choice for me to go over the blue liner from Winnipeg over the one from Edmonton.