During the fantasy hockey season, I basically have three types of game I'm playing: one standard season-long fantasy league on FanTrax, Daily Fantasy on DraftKings, and I play in Best Ball leagues on Underdog Fantasy. It is the last of those three I want to talk about today.

Best Ball leagues have been discussed before in these Ramblings, but they are basically draft-and-hold leagues. There are 12 teams drafting 16 players across Centre, Winger, Defence, Flex (any skater), and Goalie designations, and the weekly stats of 6 of those 16 players count each week (one centre, two wingers, one defenceman, one flex, and one goalie). It is a points league that counts goals, assists, power-play points, shots, blocks, and hits. For goalies, it counts wins, saves, and goals against.

I want to talk Best Ball leagues because there's a lot of draft data going back to the end of July that we can use. First, I want to highlight an account on Twitter called Fantasy Hockey Oracle because this person keeps track of ADP trends. Basically, we're looking at which players are rising the most and which players are falling. Let's start with the ADPs that have an upward trend over the last two weeks:

Adin Hill (Vegas Golden Knights)

It is interesting to see Hill have such a jump, rising by eight spots in the last two weeks. I did my first draft in early August and Hill was the 14^th goalie off the board (80^th pick overall). My next draft was in the middle of August and Hill was the 12^th goalie off the board (76^th pick). In a recent draft from Tuesday night, Hill was the 11^th goalie drafted (61^st overall). Basically, since the start of draft season, Hill has risen over a full round by ADP, and in some drafts the jump has been about 20 picks.  

What is weird is that it's not as if there's been some injuries to key goalies ahead of him or anything like that. There is a bit of uncertainty around MacKenzie Blackwood, but he's still consistently being drafted in the 5^th-7^th range among goalies, and ahead of Hill. It is just people straight up drafting him over options like Darcy Kuemper, Linus Ullmark, Sam Montembeault, and Jacob Markstrom.

In fairness, this system rewards goalie wins, and he should be a 30-win goalie if he can make 50-55 starts. But for a guy that has had one season of more than 35 starts and has been good-not-great over the last two years, asking me to pay an extra 1.5 rounds of premium feels like a misuse of draft capital.

Macklin Celebrini (San Jose Sharks)

Once upon a time this draft season, there was a chance to draft Celebrini somewhere in the 30s (he went 32^nd overall in my first draft about seven weeks ago). Now, if you're not ready to use a second-round pick on him, you're probably not going to get the chance to draft him. That is a pretty drastic rise for a player that was going in the middle of the third round to begin with.

That elevated draft spot is still fine. In my personal rankings he's my 13^th overall skater (14^th overall pick if we include Connor Hellebuyck). I have seen a lot of projections have him as roughly a top-20 pick, too. So, if you can draft Celebrini towards the end of the second round, it is still solid value – it's just not as good as it was 2-4 weeks ago.

Seth Jones (Florida Panthers)

This one makes a lot of sense because it seems as if drafters realized that Jones was Florida's top PP defenceman in the playoffs and led their blue line with an ice-time share over 40% (per Frozen Tools). The days of him being drafted somewhere between the 20^th and 25^th defenceman are mostly over – he's going just inside the top-20 of late.

If people are worried about the Florida power play because Matthew Tkachuk is going to miss 2-3 months, then I get it. At the same time, Jones is going to get a lot of ice time, can put up two shots and over three hits+blocks per game, and is probably good for 40 points if he can play 75 games. The issue is he's gone from a good draft value to a fair price, so I don't think there's any need to rush out to draft him anymore.

Alright, let's look at some players whose ADPs are dropping:

Quinton Byfield (Los Angeles Kings)

There are players who are just better in real life than they are in fantasy, and I wonder of Byfield isn't falling into that category – he's certainly being drafted as if that's the case. You can argue for him being a top-50 player in real life but he's not a top-100 player in multi-cat formats. At a certain point, though, he starts becoming a good draft value if he keeps falling. I had no interest in Byfield in the 10^th or 11^th round where he was going earlier in the draft season. If he starts being available in the 13^th round? That changes the equation.

Jake Guentzel (Tampa Bay Lightning)

The rise from Celebrini has been mirrored by the fall of Guentzel, who was often going at the end of the second round and can now be had early in the third round. Personally, I still think taking him somewhere in the 25-29 range overall is a bit of a reach, as I have him priced as a late-third round pick in multi-cat leagues mainly because the peripherals are not great (he had 80 combined hits/blocks in 80 games last season). But if he keeps falling, he may end up in the middle of the third round in the next week or so, and that is about when he becomes a fine draft option rather than being overvalued.

Noah Dobson (Montreal Canadiens)

Dobson is a fun player to think about for fantasy because he brings a bit of everything: He is 1 of 4 defencemen to have at least 10 goals, 25 assists, and 5.0 shots+hits+blocks per game in each of the last two seasons (the others are Zach Werenski, Cale Makar, and Rasmus Dahlin, per Evolving Hockey). But he's now on a Montreal team where he won't get top power-play time.

The thing is Montreal has started the preseason by splitting their power-play units and Dobson is on the 'second' unit with Brendan Gallagher, Patrik Laine, Kirby Dach, and Ivan Demidov. As I mentioned in Tuesday's Ramblings, that makes me think they're going to run something like a 60/40 PP split, and that means Dobson is in line for 10+ power-play points. If the Habs can finally get a good second scoring line going with Dach and Demidov, Dobson could again be a 10-goal, 40-point defenceman with very good peripherals. If he keeps being drafted closer to the Mikhail Sergachev/Shea Theodore tier rather than the Moritz Seider/Victor Hedman tier, that seems like fine value to me.

Let's wrap things up by talking some most-drafted players.

At time of writing, I've done 11 Best Ball drafts. Here are the seven players I've drafted on at least five of those 11 teams:

Carolina Hurricanes

Across the board, I think the Carolina wingers are pretty good values. In this format, my per-game projections for Seth Jarvis make him my 19^th winger and he's still going somewhere between the 22^nd and 27^th winger off the board. Over the last two seasons, he's averaged 35 goals, 37 assists, 21 power-play points, 202 shots, 111 hits, and 55 blocks. That is great multi-cat coverage and he's still being undervalued.

As for Nikolaj Ehlers, he's a guy whose ADP I just do not get. More than once this draft season I have seen Ivan Demidov get drafted ahead of him and it's kind of baffling. The only argument for doing that is concern around Ehlers staying healthy. Even still, I would take 70 games of Ehlers on the top line/top power play with Sebastian Aho over 80 games of Demidov skating next to Dach.

Then there's Andrei Svechnikov, coming off his down year. He was also arguably Carolina's best forward in the playoffs. Even if he posts just 25 goals and 30 assists, with the shot and hit counts he can post, he's being wildly undervalued.

San Jose Sharks

As mentioned earlier, I think Celebrini is a good draft value basically anytime after the 14^th pick, so if I have anywhere from the 1^st through 10^th overall pick in the first round, I'm taking Celebrini quite a bit coming back around in the second round. If someone like Jack Hughes is still on the board, I've drafted him a couple of times, but picks 15-24 is Celebrini Szn.

The nice thing with drafting Celebrini is the Sharks don't have any top draft picks requiring a 4^th-round or a 7^th-round pick to pair with him, which is why I've been drafting Will Smith a lot in the 15^th or 16^th round. Smith primarily played with Celebrini after the Four Nations break last season and he's been attached to him both at 5-on-5 and on the power play so far in the preseason. Maybe there's a sophomore slump, but for a guy with a very high draft pedigree who had a productive rookie season and is skating next to a star player at all offensive strengths, I'll take the risk.

Jet Greaves

What can I say. Once the top-30 goalies are off the board and we're staring down options like Samuel Ersson and Tristan Jarry, I'm often taking a shot on Greaves. It may not work out, but I wouldn't feel a whole lot better having one of those other guys on my teams, so it's worth the risk at his ADP.