What do we make of the San Jose Sharks? At this point, given all that’s gone on this offseason, I am assuming that Evander Kane is not going to be in the lineup opening night. They have an aging blue line that is wildly overpaid and the trio of Burns/Karlsson/Vlasic are all in decline. In [...]
Dobber's offseason fantasy hockey grades – Carolina Hurricanes For the last 18 years (12 with The Hockey News) Dobber has reviewed each team from a fantasy-hockey standpoint and graded them. The 19th annual review will appear here on DobberHockey throughout the summer. This is not a review of the likely performance on the ice or in the standings, [...]
I was writing about the Carolina Hurricanes and their offseason movement and one player we haven’t really talked much about is Andrei Svechnikov. It wasn’t that long ago that I thought he was on the verge of genuine superstardom. He hasn’t reached that peak yet, and in fact took a step back pretty much across [...]
For the last 18 years (12 with The Hockey News) Dobber has reviewed each team from a fantasy-hockey standpoint and graded them. The 19th annual review will appear here on DobberHockey throughout the summer…er, winter. This is not a review of the likely performance on the ice or in the standings, but in the realm [...]
The Dallas Stars had a very tough season in the shortened 2021 campaign. They had their own COVID shutdowns, which was something many other teams had to deal with. But they also had a slew of injuries that really held this team back. Out of a possible 56 games, Alexander Radulov played 11, Tyler Seguin [...]
Minnesota avoided arbitration with one of their top forwards by signing Kevin Fiala to a one-year deal worth $5.1M. The Other Swiss Superman turned 25 in July and had both 20 goals and assists last season in 50 games played. He has averaged 68 points/82 games over the last two years with Minnesota, doing so [...]
A few days ago, Jakub Vrana signed a three-year extension with the Red Wings. That specific type of contract really caught me by surprise. A three-year deal covers his age-25/26/27 seasons, walking him right to free agency. Steve Yzerman is, habitually, a very smart general manager. He knows that if Vrana shows out for these [...]
While there has been a lot of handwringing in the offseason about what went wrong in Philadelphia in 2021, it really came down to goaltending. They managed .895 goaltending at 5-on-5 this past season, which is horrific. For comparison, two teams (Los Angeles, Vegas) had higher save percentages on the penalty kill, at .900 and [...]
It is the end of the work week so I want to take some time to talk about one of my favourite topics in hockey: defencemen, particularly younger defencemen. The game of hockey, specifically in the NHL, has changed enormously over the last decade. With that change has come an evolution of the blue liners [...]
One of the few dominoes left in free agency was the final destination of former Montreal forward Tomas Tatar. He was in a very weird spot where he was healthy scratched for most of the playoffs in favour of players like Paul Byron (who just had major hip surgery), Jake Evans (who could play centre), [...]
