Hockey Rambling

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 [...]

The Fantasy Guide was released SATURDAY! This was very labor-intensive in a smaller window of time than I have done in the past. Usually, with several days of prep work, I can put this together in about four weeks. This time, with a shorter offseason, I got this out in 15 days. It required more [...]

It’s Christmas in (checks month) August today! Get your Fantasy Guide at the Dobber Sports shop. If you’ve preordered it, you should now be able to download it by going to Downloads on the Dobber home page. Go ahead, order it and download it, and come back and read the Ramblings later. I’ll wait here. [...]

In news that seemed to arrive completely out of left field, Joe Thornton has signed a one-year, $750,000 contract with the Florida Panthers. Thornton is picking a team that he believes can help him land that elusive Stanley Cup (fill in obvious Florida retirement home joke here). In case you think Thornton is washed up, [...]

The Jets and Andrew Copp avoided arbitration, agreeing to a one-year, $3.64 million extension. In a shortened season, Copp set career highs in both goals (15) and points (39). In other words, he was very quietly on a 58-point pace. That’s not bad for a player who received spurts of top-6 icetime, but whose most [...]

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 [...]

Only three more days until the 2021-22 DobberHockey Fantasy Guide drops! Order yours here before you’re behind the eight-ball and trying to play catch-up with your league-mates. Jumping back into my takes on the offseason moves, this week I’m going to review a whole wack-load of signings, some of my thoughts on fantasy impacts, and [...]

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 [...]

The Fantasy Guide is out SATURDAY, August 14! * As I write these Ramblings I have worked my way up to San Jose in the Fantasy Guide. Some rosters were harder to put together than others. I found a few interesting things when putting them together and I figured I would share them here. Anaheim [...]

Yes, as the title suggests, today’s Ramblings will mainly focus on goalies. But I need to get a few other things out of the way first. - It was a slow news day on Saturday. The only semi-noteworthy signing was Brendan Perlini signing a one-year, two-way contract with the Oilers. Perlini was drafted in the [...]