Hockey Rambling

It’s only the preseason and all of Auston Matthews, William Nylander, and John Tavares are already dealing with injuries. All of the injuries have been described using the words “day-to-day”, “minor”, “dinged up”, and “precautionary,” so none of these players need to be pushed down draft rankings. Just don’t be surprised if one or more [...]

Despite the Toronto Maple Leafs icing a mostly-NHL lineup on Thursday night, Auston Matthews was not in the lineup. He left practice a couple of days ago but it was not considered a serious issue. As always, the hope with things like this is the team is just being very cautious with a key player, [...]

We will start today with some injury news. There have been nervous fantasy managers around the league as far as goaltending is concerned. Thatcher Demko’s season out in Vancouver is still very muddled, Jeremy Swayman has yet to sign with Boston, and now another quick update on New York Islanders goaltender Ilya Sorokin: https://twitter.com/stefen_rosner/status/1838964384464327075 Sorokin [...]

With a three-year-old and infant twins at home I haven’t done nearly the research or the number of mock drafts that I would usually like to when approaching draft season, but regardless I have still zeroed in on a handful of my favourite selections after pick 150 or so. We’re using Yahoo’s ADP numbers because [...]

Anthony Duclair was still on the New York Islanders’ top PP unit in practice yesterday. Projections will be discussed later but having L1/PP1 status matters a lot to Duclair’s 2024-25 fantasy outlook. * Buffalo Sabres defenceman Rasmus Dahlin was skating before Buffalo’s practice as he had been injured very, very early in training camp: https://twitter.com/engelheather/status/1838210339076296809 [...]

The Canucks were finally able to agree to terms with Kevin Lankinen on Saturday, signing him to a one-year contract worth $875,000. Lankinen played in 24 games with Nashville in 2023-24 as Juuse Saros’s backup, finishing with a solid 11-6-0 record with a 2.82 GAA and .908 SV%. The main takeaway from the Lankinen signing [...]

The Utah Hockey Club has secured a big part of their future, agreeing with Dylan Guenther on an eight-year contract with a cap hit of just over $7 million. This AAV and term serve as proof that Utah really believes in the 21-year-old over the long haul after just 78 NHL games. By also acquiring [...]

Thatcher Demko worked out on the ice on his own before the start of Canucks’ training camp on Thursday. However, he did not participate with his teammates afterward during main camp and would not offer a timetable for his return. The positive from all this is that Demko did not appear to look the part [...]

Be sure to pick up a copy of the 2024-25 Dobber Hockey Fantasy Guide! It is available for purchase in the Dobber Shop right now, and includes projections, depth charts, prospects to watch, and many articles worth consuming. Training camps are starting, and because this is an online-only edition, it allows Dobber to update constantly [...]