Brock Seguin’s 2026-27 Fantasy Hockey Must-Draft Players
Every fantasy hockey draft comes down to a handful of decisions that shape your entire season — and the easiest wins are the players the market simply has wrong. A must-draft player isn’t necessarily a sleeper or a breakout pick. It’s a player whose price has drifted well below his proven value: an established producer sliding rounds past where his track record says he should go, a bounce-back candidate the room is punishing for bad luck, or a foundational piece available at a discount that won’t exist by November. If you leave your draft with several of these players, you’ve already banked an edge before the season starts.
The DFO Fantasy team has identified the players they refuse to leave drafts without in 2026-27. Below, each of our four analysts shares their must-draft targets — and the reasoning behind why the market is wrong about each of them.
What is True ADP: True ADP reflects where a player is actually being selected across all draft rooms — not just the ones that drafted him. A player’s raw ADP only averages the leagues where he was picked, so for someone drafted in just 25% of rooms, True ADP blends his draft position with the reality that he goes unselected everywhere else — telling you when a typical league actually takes him.
All Must-Draft Lists:
Beebs Bondy’s Fantasy Hockey Must-Draft Players
Matt Larkin’s Fantasy Hockey Must-Draft Players
Nick Szeman’s Fantasy Hockey Must-Draft Players
Rasmus Dahlin (BUF — D) — True ADP: 35.2
Dahlin is the biggest early-round value on my board. He’s currently the seventh defenseman off the board, but I have him ranked as D5 with an early-to-mid second-round grade. Dahlin dropping into the late third round lets you pass on the defensemen going inside the top 20, spend your first two picks on elite forwards, and still land an elite fantasy defenseman with your third.
He’s earned the ranking. Dahlin has finished top-five among defensemen in fantasy points per game three straight seasons, and he’s coming off the best year of his career — 19 goals and 55 assists (74 points) — with 195 shots and a real peripheral floor — his hits and blocks dipped to 67 and 79 last season, but he posted 101 and 98 the year before, and even the down version out-bangs the finesse defensemen being drafted ahead of him.
And look at who he’s going behind. Four of the six defensemen ahead of him — Makar, Hughes, Werenski, Bouchard — are proven superstars; no argument there. But the other two are Lane Hutson and Matthew Schaefer, both coming off terrific seasons, and both being drafted on the assumption they’ll do it again. Here’s the problem: both finished behind Dahlin in fantasy points last year — Schaefer was D9 and Hutson D10 to Dahlin’s D6, and Dahlin did it in five fewer games (he was D5 per game; they were D14 and D16). And both carry real regression risk. Hutson rode a 15.7 on-ice shooting percentage and led all defensemen in on-ice goals scored above expected (18.2). Schaefer shot 10.4 percent as a defenseman, which history says is very difficult to sustain. So the market is asking you to pay picks 20 and 32 for two players who need everything to go right again just to match what Dahlin does in a normal year. That’s not a knock on either kid. Dahlin is just mis-priced.
There’s still untapped offence here, too. Buffalo’s power play has ranked 21st, 24th and 29th over the last three seasons, and it’s held Dahlin outside the top 12 at the position in power-play points. He’s producing top-five value with a bottom-third power play to work with. If Buffalo finishes 2026-27 with an above average power-play, Dahlin will easily finish above a point-per-game and potentially fight for the crown of No.1 fantasy defenseman.
Jesper Bratt (NJD — LW/RW) — True ADP: 76.5
You’re going to notice a theme in this post: I am ALL-IN on the New Jersey Devils’ bounce-back in 2026-27. Bratt is the first of three Devils off the board that I’m actively targeting in every draft this season.
The four worst on-ice goals scored below expected in the NHL last season all played for the Devils, and Bratt was second at -37.1. Bratt himself finished nearly five goals below expected, so it wasn’t just poor finishing luck from his linemates. The fact that Bratt still finished with 71 points (22G / 49A) and No.23 RW is remarkable. Now he’s being drafted as the No.19 RW off the board, after finishing No.9 in 2025 and 2024. The bounce-back case is easy; my projections expect modest puck luck to restore the 60-plus assist pace, along with 20-plus goals, 175-plus SOG, and close to one hit per game. He has an underrated category-coverage profile, one that compares directly to Nick Suzuki’s, who is going 64 picks earlier.
| Player | ADP | G | A | Pts | SOG | PPP | Hits | Blks |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nick Suzuki | 12.7 | 29 | 58 | 87 | 178 | 32 | 75 | 67 |
| Jesper Bratt | 76.5 | 25 | 62 | 87 | 177 | 28 | 85 | 34 |
Suzuki had some of the best on-ice luck of anyone in the league (+14.3 goals scored above expected) — while Bratt’s ran historically cold. I’d much rather buy low on the positive-regression candidate than pay a first-round premium for someone who needs everything to go right again.
Roman Josi (NSH — D) — True ADP: 78.6
Making a bet on health in the 7th round is a much easier bet than making one in the first couple of rounds. If you’re hesitant to take a player like Jack Hughes — who has missed 20-plus games in three consecutive seasons — in the second round, I’d understand not wanting to sink your pick into that risk when there are other elite forwards available around No.20. Josi, on the other hand, is effectively being drafted at his floor. He missed 14 games last year and still finished as the No.16 defenseman, and he’s currently the No.15 defenseman off the board. When he’s in the lineup, he remains a top-10 fantasy defenseman, ranking No.9 and No.6 in fantasy points per game over the last two injury-affected seasons. And the last time he played all 82, in 2023-24, he finished as the No.1 fantasy defenseman outright.
The age and the POTS diagnosis are the reasons for the discount, but the game is still intact: Josi ranked sixth among defensemen in Offence Generating Plays per game and sixth in individual expected goals per game last season, all while eating 24:53 a night as the alpha on Nashville’s blueline. To me, this is still an elite offensive defenseman on a team that should be better than it was a season ago.
Since his should-have-been Norris season in 2022, Josi has averaged 20 goals and 54 assists per 84 games. That’s the kind of production that anchors a fantasy blueline, and it comes much cheaper than the elite options. Building around Josi as my No.1 defenseman is a strategy I love in drafts where I miss on Dahlin: load up on forwards through the first six rounds, then start your blueline in Round 7 with a player who can easily finish as a top-10 fantasy defenseman.
Nico Hischier (NJD — C) — True ADP: 143.3
Only one player in the NHL had worse on-ice luck than Bratt last season: Nico Hischier. The Devils scored 37.6 goals below expected with Hischier on the ice, the worst mark in the league by half a goal over his teammate. Of those unrealized goals, 11 came off Hischier’s stick. However, this isn’t a case of a player whose shot abandoned him. He converted at 13.3 percent, right at his career average, on 211 shots. The problem wasn’t finishing; his chances warranted far more than 28 goals. SportLogiq graded his ixG at 39.0 last season, eighth-best in the entire NHL, to go along with top-10 Offence Generating Plays and top-20 on-ice xG. A player creating at that level should be a 30-plus goal scorer and producing at a point-per-game.
So you have a player who generated top-10 scoring chance volume and quality, on a team due for the league’s biggest shooting correction, dropping into the 12th round as the No.28 centre off the board. That’s below his floor. In a season where nothing went right, he still finished as the No.16 centre in fantasy points, his second straight top-20 finish. The market is pricing him closer to C30 than C20 for the crime of having unlucky linemates. The underlying numbers don’t just support a bounce-back; they sketch a career year. If the Devils Discount has a single best expression, it’s Hischier at pick 143.3.
Luke Hughes (NJD — D) — True ADP: 162.8
Hughes completes the Devils’ trifecta, and if you read my 2026-27 Fantasy Hockey Breakouts post, you’ll know why. Hughes is where the Devils Discount gets cheapest.
First, the player. Hughes has been solid through three NHL seasons, averaging 42 points (7G / 35A) per year. Last season, every input jumped. His ice time climbed from 21:09 to 23:01. His shot rate climbed to 5.71 SOG/60, producing a career-high 150 shots despite 14 missed games. A 23-year-old defenseman getting more minutes and shooting more is supposed to produce more. He didn’t, because Hughes’ 35.5 on-ice goals below expected was the worst mark of any defenseman in the NHL, and his own shooting told the same story: top-10 among defensemen in expected goals per game, with the third-most goals below expected (−7.3). No defenseman had a more snakebitten season. Rising inputs plus rock-bottom luck scream BREAKOUT! And ordinary puck luck alone would spike his goals and assists.
Then there’s the power play. Last year he and Dougie Hamilton split PP1 time almost evenly, despite Hughes grading as the better quarterback by every tracking metric (all stats per 60, per SportLogiq):
| Player | Offence Generating Plays | Possession Driving | Slot Driving Plays |
|---|---|---|---|
| Luke Hughes | 46.7 | 116.4 | 26.2 |
| Dougie Hamilton | 31.5 | 50.3 | 15.4 |
That’s not a competition; it’s a formality the Devils haven’t finalized. If the job becomes his outright, the assist ceiling opens completely — and unlike the luck rebound, his role doesn’t need variance to cooperate, just a coach reading the same numbers.
And the price is the punchline: drafted in only 62 percent of leagues, meaning in over a third of draft rooms he’s a free agent. A 23-year-old, 23-minute defenseman with the league’s best luck-rebound case and a PP1 promotion pending, free or nearly free. He has the upside to finish as a top-20 fantasy defenseman, and combined with Josi, he really helps you wait on defensemen in the draft.