The opening week of the season always brings opportunity. Injuries, new line combos, and early experimentation have pushed several players into premium roles — some temporary, others potentially season-shifting. These 10 low-rostered names have landed in fantasy-friendly spots to start 2025–26. Some will stick. Some will fade. But this is when savvy managers get ahead [...]
The 2025–26 season is shaping up as a test case for how different kinds of young talent translate in fantasy hockey. Connor Bedard has already proven he can drive play on a weak Chicago roster, piling up elite per-60 production despite a below-average shooting percentage and limited support. Matvei Michkov enters Philadelphia with a chance [...]
For years, Nikolaj Ehlers has been one of the NHL’s most efficient scorers on a per-minute basis, but limited usage in Winnipeg kept his totals capped in the 60-point range. Carolina changes that equation. Early preseason looks have him alongside Sebastian Aho and Seth Jarvis on the top line, with top power play duties as [...]
This week’s Analytics Advantage takes a different angle: using percentile ranks to compare players not just by points, but across the full set of fantasy-relevant categories. By scaling per-60 production and peripherals to position-specific percentiles, we can see who truly separates from the pack in goals, assists, shots, hits, blocks, and ice time. From there, [...]
This week’s edition zooms out from individual player trends to the league itself. Over more than a century of NHL history, the numbers tell a clear story: the game changes in eras, not in a straight line. Scoring booms, defensive clamps, rule resets, and modern surges all leave their fingerprints on league-wide rates. The line [...]
This week’s edition shifts focus to player movement. With several notable names landing on new teams this offseason, the question for fantasy managers is how those skill sets translate in a different environment. To dig in, I’m leaning on all-situations, per-60 rates compared against position-specific league averages. This strips out raw ice time inflation and [...]
For the last 22 years (13 with The Hockey News) Dobber has reviewed each team from a fantasy-hockey standpoint and graded them. The 23rd 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, but in the realm of [...]
Building on last week’s MoneyPuck work, I tightened the visuals and focused them on location. The shot maps now use a Kernel Density Estimation (KDE) overlay to show where shot volume piles up, and the scatter layer marks every goal with a cleaner legend (game state + shot type). The range is the last three [...]
This week’s edition takes a step back from my usual deep dive for a broader look at where shots and goals are coming from across the league. Using shot location and scoring data from MoneyPuck.com, I’ve built a set of visuals and tables that break down scoring volume, shooting efficiency, and where the league’s top [...]
This week I put together a new set of visuals using data from MoneyPuck to get a better read on how teams, lines, and goalies performed across the 2024–25 season. Each worksheet focuses on a different part of the game: shot efficiency, expected goals, rebound control, line performance, and filters for game situation like 5-on-5, [...]
