Every Sunday, we share 21 Fantasy Rambles from our writers at DobberHockey. These thoughts are curated from the past week’s 'Daily Ramblings'.

Writers/Editors: Ian Gooding, Michael Clifford, Alexander MacLean, Puneet Sharma, and Dobber

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1. Because I play DFS nearly every day, I am constantly going through a lot of data both at the team and player level. Sometimes, there are things that just start gnawing at the back of your brain that something isn’t quite right, and I had that feeling on Monday morning. To me, it seemed as if goal scoring and expected goal rates weren’t quite aligning as closely as they had in the past, so I went and looked at it.

As of Monday morning, we were 600 individual team games into the regular season. Here are the adjusted 5-on-5 rate of goals-for per 60 minutes and expected goals-for per 60 minutes from each of the prior three seasons, this season, and the difference between the two (data from Evolving Hockey), at similar points of those campaigns:

The expected goals model at Evolving Hockey usually overshoots the actual goal production early in the year, but this is way above anything in recent history. I really don’t know why this is the case, but it’s something to keep an eye on in the coming months. These models are extremely useful for fantasy managers, and this isn’t done with any intent to denigrate them, it’s just to monitor how well they’re aligning with actual on-ice performance, especially compared to recent seasons. (nov18)

2. Connor Hellebuyck is expected to miss the next 4-6 weeks, as he will undergo a minor arthroscopic knee procedure. The timeline should make Hellebuyck available in January, about a month before the Olympics start. After starting in the 4 Nations last season, Hellebuyck has the inside track to be the starting goalie for the USA during the 2026 Olympics.

Hellebuyck has been the gold standard for durability and reliability among goalies up to this point, as he has played at least 60 games for the past four seasons and six times in his career. Since the start of 2021-22 only Juuse Saros has more games played among goalies than Hellebuyck (267), while Hellebuyck has more wins (158) than any other goalie during that span. It’s an unfortunate break for Jets fans and fantasy teams, but the decision for surgery may have been made with an eye on being ready for the Olympics. (nov22)

3. While Hellebuyck is out, Eric Comrie is expected to take on the starting role in Winnipeg. Comrie wasn’t expected to play much before the season, with his highest single-season games-played total being 20 games from last season. Comrie has shot up to being rostered in 32% of Yahoo leagues and 35% of Fantrax leagues with this news. That means you’ll have to act quickly if you have any interest in adding him. Thomas Milic has been recalled from the AHL to be Comrie’s backup.

The Jets were involved in one of four games on Friday, which meant that Comrie had only two days of rest following his previous start on Tuesday. He allowed four goals on 26 shots in the Jets’ 4-3 loss to Carolina. In his return to Winnipeg as a member of the Canes, Nikolaj Ehlers registered an assist on the game-winning goal from Andrei Svechnikov. Ehlers took 12 games to score his first goal with his new team. However, he has 10 points in his last 10 games, so he is adjusting to his new surroundings after a slow start. (nov22)

4. Alex Ovechkin scored twice late in Washington’s road game in Montreal on Thursday night, capping off his first hat trick of the season in the Capitals’ 8-4 win. He had scored earlier on the power play, his first power-play goal of the year. Entering Saturday, he had eight goals, five assists, and 23 shots in his last nine games. (nov21)

5. Forward Andre Burakovsky left the Blackhawks' Thursday game late in the first period after taking a hit to the head. Whether people thought it was clean or not, I’ll leave it up to them (it wasn’t), but the fact remains that Connor Bedard is having a full breakout season with Burakovsky often on his wing – whose status was yet to be determined entering Saturday. (nov21)

6. In calendar 2025, and at time of writing, Jason Robertson had 38 goals, 40 assists, and 211 shots in 67 games. His 38 goals were fourth behind David Pastrnak (41), Leon Draisaitl (39), and Morgan Geekie (39). (nov21)

7. After starting the season 0-4-2, the Sharks have gone 10-4-1 in 15 games over the last month (stats before Saturday action). They were 1 of 5 teams with a points percentage of at least .700 in that span, trailing Colorado, Dallas, Ottawa, and Tampa Bay. That stretch of games also saw them lead the league in save percentage at .917. Who’d have thunk it? (nov21)

8. Nashville Predators reporter Alex Daugherty had video of defenceman Roman Josi participating in team practice on Wednesday following their return from Europe. Josi has missed four weeks with an upper-body injury but indications are that he may be ready to go in the next few days, if not next week. A great sign for a guy who has had some injury trouble over the last couple of seasons. (nov20) (Update: Josi returned to the Predators’ lineup yesterday after missing the past month with an upper-body injury.)

9. The Florida Panthers announced that forward Eetu Luostarainen is going to miss some time due to burns suffered during a BBQ accident. Hopefully this is nothing too serious, though it’s a bit absurd that he and Jack Hughes both suffered freak off-ice injuries within a week of each other. (nov20)

10. Joseph Woll could be a bit of a difference maker for the Leafs. Even if on paper he isn’t much better than Anthony Stolarz, sometimes teams get in their own head and play better in front of one goalie than another, and I wonder if we see a bit of that moving forward, as the Leafs have been terrible in front of Stolarz thus far. (nov19)

11. Joey Daccord returned to the net for Seattle this past week, which was just in time too as Matt Murray was injured in his last game, and Philipp Grubauer doesn’t appear to be starter material anymore. Unfortunately, we have to wonder if the bubble is popping for Seattle, who on paper looks primed more to be a deadline seller than a Playoff/Cup contender. (nov19)

12. Jamie Benn made his return to the lineup Tuesday after missing the entire season after having a procedure done on a collapsed lung. He started out on the fourth line, but don’t expect that to stick for very long. He’s not at the Art Ross winner level that he once was, but he’s still a middle-six winger, even though he’s playing catch-up a quarter of the way into the season. Benn did make sure to throw the body around a bit and get himself into the thick of things. He might be good for a bit more peripheral volume over the next few games before he settles into the season for the long-haul. (nov19)

13. Entering Saturday, Tomas Hertl was pacing for his best season since 2018-19, at the age of 32. He's shooting a little more than his usual rate, but that's likely in part due to playing in a more offense-first role, especially since he's being flanked by Mitch Marner. Expect the 70-point pace to continue. (nov19)

14. At this point in the year, we start to get some of the AHL leading scorers called up when there are injuries or a need to shake up the NHL roster. We’ve seen a few of them in recent days who have made an impact, such as Braeden Bowman (12 points in 12 AHL games) while playing in the top six through his first games with Vegas. (nov19)

15. We’re just over a month away from the start of the World Juniors, and now might be about the time to see if you can add or buy-low on any players who are projected to be bigger scorers at the event, because there isn’t really a bigger stage that can boost the trade value of a prospect than the World Juniors. (nov19)

16. A bit of good news/bad news on the injury front for the Buffalo Sabres. While there is still no official diagnosis or timeline for defenceman Michael Kesselring, reporter Paul Hamilton tweeted that Josh Norris is considered day-to-day now. Norris played the season opener and then suffered an upper-body injury. (nov18)

17. Zach Dooley reported that Los Angeles defenceman Drew Doughty is week-to-week with a lower-body injury, but it’s not related to the ankle injury from last year. About as good as that news can be. (nov18)

18. Adrian Kempe and the Kings have locked in an eight-year extension worth 10.625M AAV. With the cap climbing over the next few years, contracts like this should not really surprise anyone. Still, it’s worth noting that Adrian Kempe is 29 now, and this deal will not even kick in until he turns 30, running all the way through his age-38 season. He has not put together a full point-per-game year yet, unless you count this season’s clean start, as he's hovering around that pace with 20 points in 22 games entering. The league’s economics are shifting fast and if you are a productive top-six forward heading into a contract year with the cap rising, you are likely going to cash in. Los Angeles knows what he is and what he brings, and this is just the price of keeping a core piece in-house. (nov17)

19. Last Sunday night wrapped up the second game of the NHL’s Global Series in Sweden, and if you did not even realize the league was playing across the Atlantic, you are not alone. The NHL somehow managed to turn what should have been a showcase event into background noise. It felt a lot like Frozen Frenzy all over again, the marketing never landed or it started late, the buzz never built, and the whole thing came and went without any real sense of occasion. These are the moments the league should be leaning into, but instead it felt like the Global Series was happening in a vacuum. Alright, rant over. (nov17)

20. At the end of October, these Ramblings covered declining fantasy production from defencemen last season and to start this season. It was an effort to look at how fantasy production has been changing, where the points and shots are going, and how it can inform our valuations of fantasy blue liners. 

Digging around a bit of data on Wednesday (data from Evolving Hockey and current as of the morning of Wednesday, November 19^th), something curious popped up. It was the fact that defencemen were assisting on a lot of goals. In fact, so far this season, defencemen are assisting on 31.1% of the goals scored with them on the ice, the highest mark in the last five years:

Of course, we’re not quite at 25% of the way through the season, so this will change, but being able to assist on just 1% more goals throughout an entire season would mean somewhere roughly 125-150 extra assists from defencemen in the NHL when compared to last year’s assist percentage. That depends on where goal scoring goes from here, but it gives us a rough idea of what might be coming for blue liners.

On top of that, this season has 24 rearguards who have assisted on at least half the goals scored when they’re on the ice. When looking at defencemen from each of the last three seasons grouped by percentage of goals they’ve assisted on, the upper end of defencemen is clearing the previous two years:

See the bars on the right, the ones with the blue boxes poking out the top? That is because the number of defencemen at the high end by percentage of goals they’ve assisted on is higher than either of the last two years. Notably, to the left, the bars with the orange/brown poking out the top is the 2024-25 campaign, which has a higher count than this year or two seasons ago. (nov20)

Being that it’s still so early in the season, we’re not drawing any conclusions off this just yet. There are still a handful of defencemen with a high assist percentage who’ve played fewer than 10 games – injuries or scratches – so we need a bigger sample before saying there’s been some sort of trend league-wide, but it’s something to keep in mind as we evaluate defencemen for the rest of the year.

21. There are three defencemen I want to highlight, though, because they are assisting on way more goals than they usually do, and that should be a concern.

Rasmus Dahlin

In Dahlin’s prior four years, he assisted somewhere between 35% and 45% of the goals scored when he was on the ice – there is a reason he cracked the 50-assist mark twice in the last three years. The problem here is that so far this season, he’s assisting on 60% of the goals scored with him on the ice (the highest dot):

This is a bit of a good news/bad news situation. The bad news is that he won’t stay at a 60% assist rate. For some context, in Erik Karlsson‘s 76-assist season in 2022-23, he had an assist on 50.7% of the goals scored while he was on the ice. Dahlin staying at 60% seems very improbable.

The good news is that there is potential for positive regression in other areas. For one, he’s shooting 2.4% where he shot between 7.4-8.5% in each of the prior four seasons, so he can make up some of the assist drop by just scoring more. The other area is the team is shooting just 8.6% with him on the ice, and he’s been between 8.8-12.2% in each of the prior four seasons. Maybe he has a down year and it hovers around 9%, or maybe things get way better and is in the 11-12% range the rest of the way. Regardless, the team should be scoring more, and an uptick in that area should also help soften the inevitable decline in assist percentage. (nov20)

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