Articles

Fantasy hockey analysis, draft calls and team breakdowns — dated, opinionated, and backed by numbers you can check.

• Teams2026-09-30

  Brock Faber Is Out, and Three Games Tonight

  Brock Faber had surgery on a fractured skull and is out indefinitely. Jared Spurgeon takes his spot beside Quinn Hughes and on the power play. Plus a look at tonight's three games: Pittsburgh at Philadelphia, the Islanders at Toronto, and Los Angeles at Colorado.

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• Teams2026-09-29

  My Division Picks for 2026-27

  All 32 teams, ranked division by division, on the morning of opening night. In the West I mostly trust last season. In the East I am betting against it: Florida up five spots, the Rangers up four, Pittsburgh down four.

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• Draft2026-09-28

  Grading Our Own Preseason

  The night before the NHL season, we check the calls this site made over the preseason against the final draft board. We got three wrong, and on the goalie we backed hardest the miss was not a small one. The board moved toward us on six others, and four are still open.

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• Draft2026-09-26

  Not One Goalie in the First Fifty Picks

  The last draft board before the NHL season opens. The top twenty-five has not changed a name since 2 September, no goaltender goes inside the first fifty picks, the board finally added two goalies, and Kevin Fiala fell another ten picks in six days.

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• Draft2026-09-23

  Nobody You Drafted Is Playing

  Fourteen preseason games in two nights filled 560 roster spots. Fifty-eight of them belonged to a player anyone is drafting. Twenty-nine of the fifty highest-ranked players have not taken a single shift.

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• Draft2026-09-21

  Sixty Players Are Fighting for Twenty Picks

  The first draft board since NHL camps opened. The top twenty-five has not changed a single name in three weeks, sixty players are crammed into the last fourteen picks, and Kevin Fiala fell further than anyone.

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• Strategy2026-09-16

  A Hot Shooter Keeps About a Third of It

  I tracked 2,433 NHL seasons to see what happens after a player shoots well above his career rate. He keeps about thirty percent of the gap, his assists do not move at all, and the draft market is not discounting any of it.

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• Teams2026-09-14

  Chris Kreider Left Four Million Dollars Behind

  Anaheim terminated a thirty-five-year-old's contract to make room for a twenty-two-year-old. He signed in Montreal three days later for a third of the price. That transaction is the whole shape of this market, and the draft board has already made up its mind about it.

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• Strategy2026-09-11

  The Contract Year Is Worth 1.8 Points

  Everyone believes players raise their game in the final year of a deal, and then coast once they are paid. I measured 1,248 of them across nineteen seasons. Half of that belief is worth under two points a season, and the other half is not true at all.

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• Draft2026-09-08

  Three of These Five Cost Nothing

  A breakout is a scoring rate meeting ice time that has not arrived yet. Five players whose rate is already on the ice — and three of them are not ranked at all, so they cost a waiver claim instead of a pick.

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• Teams2026-09-07

  Ten Avalanche, Eight Lightning

  Colorado has more ranked players than Tampa Bay and it does you no good at all. How many draftable players a team has turns out to tell you nothing about whether you will ever draft one.

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• Strategy2026-09-04

  You Have Fifteen Rounds, Not Eighteen

  The draft board holds together for a hundred and forty-eight picks and then falls apart. Everything you actually need has to be bought before that, which means three of your eighteen rounds are not really yours.

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• Goalies2026-09-02

  Pricing a Goalie Who Asked Out

  Connor Hellebuyck has requested a trade and the board has knocked him from the first goalie off the table to the fourth. That discount is priced for risk that mostly runs one direction.

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• Draft2026-08-31

  Why I Draft Ten Forwards

  Ten forwards, five defencemen, three goalies. That is what I draft, and it turns out it is what almost everyone drafts. The interesting part is why that split is right.

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• Draft2026-08-30

  The Atlantic's Power-Play Shuffle

  Darren Raddysh is going as a top-8 fantasy defenseman. Victor Hedman has fallen to D32. One of those prices is wrong, and it is not the one you think.

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