Brock Seguin’s Fantasy Hockey Player Profiles 1-100 (2026-27)

48 goals and 138 points were McDavid’s answer to an injury-shortened 100-point year, his best goal-scoring season since the 64-goal masterpiece. McDavid played all 82 games for the fourth time in his career and finished with a 96th-percentile creation grade and dead-even finishing luck. He’s now led the NHL in points in four of the last six years and is the safest pick at No. 1 overall. The only thing that can make Nathan MacKinnon better in Fantasy is goals, but McDavid finished with 300+ shots for the third time in his career, and if he maintains that volume, he will be a lock for a sixth 40-goal season.

Mackinnon has had at least 111 points over the last four seasons, including leading the NHL in SOG for three straight seasons, leading in assists in 2025 and in goals in 2026. Last season, he finished with 53 goals and 127 points at age 30, built on a 98th-percentile creation grade and finishing almost exactly at expected. No luck to give back; very few missed games in recent years. 45 goals, 125 points, 330 shots. That’s not the dream scenario; that’s just another year. MacKinnon has finished 2nd, 1st, and 1st in Fantasy Points over the last three seasons. He should be No. 1 or No. 2 off the board in every format.

The hip questions are ancient history. Kucherov has played 76-plus games over the last four seasons, scoring 144, 121, and 130 over the last three. At 33, his playmaking shows no decline. The only red flag from last season: Kucherov finished about seven goals above expected, so the goal total may decline even if the 95-assist engine hums along. Over the last three seasons, he’s finished 4th, 2nd, and 2nd in Fantasy Points, so there’s an argument for him to go No.1 overall, and he’s a gift at No.3.

Price the games, not the talent. Draisaitl’s 97 points in 65 games last season worked out to 1.49 points per game, a clip only the elite of the elite reach, on top of back-to-back 106-point seasons. But the games-played column has now declined for three straight seasons, and that’s the entire negotiation at his draft slot. When he’s in the lineup, 40 goals and an 110-point pace are simply what happens. Over the last two seasons, he’s finished No. 5 and No. 2 overall in fantasy points per game, so he’s safely a top-5 pick, with top-3 upside if he can stay healthy.

Only Wayne Gretzky (137 points) in 1980 and Sidney Crosby (120 points) in 2007 had more points as teenagers than Celebrini’s 115 last season. Pretty good company. The data backs it up as repeatable: 95th-percentile chance creation, finishing luck of exactly zero, nothing borrowed anywhere in the profile. A 20-year-old coming off a jump that size earns some honest regression in any projection, and mine applies it. He still comes out fifth on my board. The market hasn’t fully caught up — his ADP is 9.7, which means in half your drafts somebody hands you the Gretzky-Crosby club at the back of the top ten. Teenagers who score like this don’t have “wait-and-see” careers. The minimal risk of regression isn’t worth taking him over bona fide year-to-year studs in the top-3, but he’s shown he can finish there, having ranked No.3 overall behind only Connor McDavid and Nathan MacKinnon last season.

Makar is coming off what many would consider a “down year” by his standards. He still finished as the No. 3 fantasy defenseman with 20 goals and 79 points in 75 games. He’s finished as a top-3 fantasy defenseman in each of the last three seasons and was in the 100th percentile for chance creation last year. High-80s with 200 shots and heavy blocks is the rebound case, and it barely qualifies as a projection. He’s played in 232 of a possible 246 games over the last three seasons, so the early-career durability questions are gone too. He’s as safe a bet as you can make at the position.

Four straight years over 100 points, through lineman roulette that would sink most wingers. That’s the Pastrnak resume: 110, 106, and 100 in the last three (finishing 6th, 3rd, and 5th in fantasy points) produced next to whoever Boston happened to pair him with that month. The one quiet flag in the data is that the Bruins shot well above expected with him on the ice last season, so a slice of those 71 assists came from teammates running hot. The helpers should settle while the goals push back toward 40. It nets out at the century mark. Again.

A defenseman in the first-round conversation across every format, and he earned it: 21 goals, 95 points, 25-plus minutes a night, the best fantasy defenseman in the NHL last season. What makes it fantasy gold is everything beyond the points — 220-plus shots, triple-digit blocks, a permanent seat on Edmonton’s power play, and a 97th-percentile creation grade underneath. The points can sag into the high-80s and probably will. The shots and blocks don’t sag. And here’s the part I can’t explain: his ADP is 20.8. I have him eighth. The room is letting a first-round defenseman fall into the second, making him one of the best early-round values. Starting a draft with Jason Robertson or Kirill Kaprizov and Evan Bouchard at the 1-2 turn sets an elite foundation for your fantasy team, and it makes me wonder whether it’s worth spending the No.8 pick on Cale Makar.

Seven goals. That’s the number doing all the work in Hughes’ price. He spent the season shooting under 4%, and his teams finished nine goals below expected with him on the ice, yet he still piled up 69 assists. Now the fit: he played nearly 28 minutes a night after the trade to Minnesota, quarterbacking the power play with Kirill Kaprizov and Matt Boldy. His creation grade was in the 95th percentile, so ordinary puck luck alone would restore double-digit goals and the 90-point neighbourhood. He’s going in the 2nd round, but I have a 1st-round grade on him, so if you don’t land Cale Makar, Hughes is one of the best options available in Round 2.

The breakout checks out. Robertson jumped from consecutive 80-point seasons to 45 goals and 96 points, and unlike most detonations, the underlying numbers support it: a 90th-percentile creation grade and finishing only mildly hot. Four straight years without a missed game. 40 goals and low-90s points on 250 shots reads as a repeat — and the market still prices him as needing to prove the breakout, letting him slide to the middle of the 2nd round, while I have him in the late-first. He also signed a one-year deal this summer, so he’s playing for a payday. I’m not usually one for contract-year narratives, but with numbers this clean, it’s a free sweetener.

Quinn Hughes now runs the power play. That’s the new fact in Kaprizov’s file. He’s the best setup man he’s ever skated with, arriving just as Kaprizov bounced back with 45 goals and 89 points. The Wild’s power play went from 21.8% before Hughes to 27.8% after the trade — fourth in the league — and Kaprizov was tied for second in the NHL in power-play goals over that stretch. And for anyone still holding the injury year against him: even that wrecked 41-game season ranked fifth among all forwards in fantasy points per game. The talent has never blinked. There’s triple-digit upside here, and I’m comfortable taking it in the mid-to-late first.

No defenseman shoots more. Werenski’s 240-plus shots led the position again, following back-to-back seasons of 81 and 82 points on north of 27 minutes a night, with a 99th-percentile creation grade underneath it all. He’s finished as the No.2 fantasy defenseman two years running — and first and second in fantasy points per game over that stretch. When he’s in the lineup, very few (if any) at the position give you more. That’s the honest wrinkle, too: his injury history gives his games-played range a wider spread than other elite blue liners carry. Another year around 80 points comes with the heaviest shooting volume on any blue line, and in points formats, those shots do serious work on their own.

Vasilevskiy struggled in 2024, prompting questions about whether it marked the start of a decline. He answered with a resounding “no” over the last two seasons — leading the NHL in wins (77) and SV% (.917), ranking second in GAA (2.24), and tying for fourth in shutouts (8). Last season, he posted a career-best 72.4 quality-start percentage, a stat that simply means he almost never had a bad night. That consistency, plus a Lightning roster that keeps making winning routine, keeps Vasilevskiy at the top of my goalie rankings.

Two competing stories, one player. The worry: Necas finished nearly eight goals above expected during his 100-point season, then scored once in 13 playoff games on 3.1 percent shooting. Which is exactly what regression looks like when it arrives. The counter: after the Olympic break, he ran at a 51-goal, 69-assist pace (a 120-point clip) while logging 21:30 a night next to Nathan MacKinnon. The deployment is fantasy gold, and nobody is taking it from him, so my projection lands in the mid-90s with high-30s goals. We’re paying for the role, the volume, and the continued improvement, rather than the hottest stretch of shooting or punishing him for an underwhelming couple of weeks in the playoffs. The market has him priced right at my rank.

59, then 68, then 74. Dahlin’s point totals keep climbing by a step each year while he soaks up over 25 minutes a night in Buffalo. At 26, there’s no reason the staircase stops here. He’s been a top-six fantasy defenseman three seasons straight, and his creation grade sits in the 98th percentile. What separates him from other offence-first blue liners is that he hits and blocks too, with triple digits in both, which most elite power-play quarterbacks never reach. And yet his ADP is in the late third against my second-round grade — the room is handing out a top-five defenseman 10-20 picks late, maybe because Buffalo’s power play has ranked 21st, 24th, and 29th the last three years. That’s the bet: if that unit climbs into the top 15, this is a career year, and you got it at a discount.

The trajectory says, superstar. 65 points to 71 to 86, with 45 goals at age 22, a fantasy climb from F61 to F47 to F15 without missing a single game in three years. This is where the projection has to be the adult in the room. Johnston already shot 21.8 percent. He already played 20 minutes a night. And his 27 power-play goals tied for the second-most in any season in the last 20 years, a list whose recent members came back to earth hard: Sam Reinhart went from 27 to 13 the next season, Chris Kreider from his spike to eight. None of that makes Johnston a fade; it makes 45 potentially the outlier, with high-30s goals and mid-80s points the honest repeat. My projection pays for the climb and the iron-man attendance, but don’t expect a PPG repeat.

Two seasons in the low-70s, then 42 goals and 85 points. Boldy’s breakout came at 25, right on schedule for the win-now stretch of a scorer’s curve, and the data largely support it — a 90th-percentile creation grade with only mild puck luck. He scored at a 47-goal, 47-assist pace after Quinn Hughes arrived, so there’s league-winning upside here. Boldy finished 11th in Fantasy Points, and 10th in FPts per game last year, yet he’s dropping into the late 2nd-round. Buying a breakout is usually a leap of faith. This one comes with receipts.

Thompson pairs a true workhorse share on a top team with ratios that anchor both percentage categories, plus a shutout pace that leads my projections outright. The part that matters most: the save percentage is backed by underlying save talent, measured after accounting for shot quality, so this isn’t a team effect wearing a goalie’s name. He’s the No. 2 goalie on my board, and the market is letting him slip to the mid-to-late 3rd round — in a position where the elite tier is maybe five deep, that’s a gift. Elite goalie, great team, heavy workload. Every box checked.

Quietly, Eichel has become one of the safest first-round-adjacent picks in fantasy. He’s been top-11 among forwards in points per game for three seasons — through a knee injury, through Vegas’s roster churn, through everything — with 94 points in his last full campaign. His creation grade sits in the 96th percentile, and his finishing is clean, so he doesn’t need luck to repeat his nearly identical back-to-back 2025 and 2026 seasons. He averaged 28 goals, 65 assists (93 points), 31 PPP and 247 SOG in those two years. The games column is the only conversation: 74, 77, 63 over the last three years. When he plays, he’s a top-15 fantasy forward, full stop.

Here’s the whole Matthews debate in two numbers: F72 in total fantasy points last season, F17 in fantasy points per game. The 60-game year dragged down his raw output, but the machine underneath — the 300-shot pace, the goal rate, and the F4-per-game finishes he posted the two seasons before — never went anywhere. Durability is the discount, and it’s why he’s available outside the top-12. I have him ranked near ADP, a mid-2nd-round pick. If Matthews stays healthy, he could be one of the biggest steals on draft day, but missing 22.6% of games over the last two seasons makes that far from a guarantee.

Three straight seasons: 61, 62, 61 games. Also three straight seasons: top-13 among forwards in fantasy points per game, including F9 last year. No player on the board has a wider gap between what he is and what he’s returned. The market prices the frustration instead of the talent — which is exactly how you end up buying elite per-game production in the second round. The shot volume is real (280-plus pace), the creation grade is elite, and New Jersey’s offence runs through him. In his last healthy season, he had 43 goals and 99 points, so we know there’s a triple-digit ceiling here if he can stay in the lineup.

The data shows almost no season more snakebitten than Brady Tkachuk’s: a 97th-percentile chance-creation rate, finishing nearly 10 goals below expected, and 59 points in 60 games that should have been much higher. Here’s how good the underlying year actually was — even shooting that cold, he still ranked eighth among all forwards in fantasy points per game. Third straight season in the top nine per game. Then the offseason move to Florida, onto a contender built around exactly his forecheck-and-chaos game, with his brother already in the room. The volume never wavered through any of it — close to 290 shots and 250 hits across a full season, and nobody else in hockey offers that pairing. Normal puck luck plus health puts him at 30 goals and 70-plus points before the Panthers environment adds anything.

There are no surprises here, and that’s the pitch. Connor followed his 97-point career year with 92 more, on finishing luck that graded exactly neutral, which means this is simply his level. 260 shots. 40 goals. Health you can set a watch to, and a power-play role nobody in Winnipeg is taking. What he doesn’t give you in hits and blocks, he repays by never once making you think about his roster spot. He’s a great late-2nd/early-3rd round selection.

Rantanen is coming off a 77-point season, his lowest full-season output since his rookie year. Though “lowest” needs an asterisk because he played just 64 games and ranked F23 in fantasy points per game at a 99-point pace, the rate never left; the games did. The clearest bounce-back case is the power play, where his goals were cut in half, and he shot two below expected on the man advantage. That’s luck, not decline, and it comes back. The structural piece doesn’t: he’s playing two fewer minutes a night than at his Colorado peak, the exact deployment Martin Necas is feasting on now, and that gap is why 100-point seasons are harder to project in Dallas, even if the talent is still there. “The Moose” is a safe late-2nd/early-3rd-round pick with a sneaky boost in leagues counting PIMs.

For a few years, Hellebuyck was among the easiest players to project. You knew you were getting 35+ wins with a 2.30 GAA, .920 SV%, and elite SO totals. But 2025-26 raised some questions, compounded by a summer of trade rumours, and suddenly we have uncertainty surrounding the Gold Medal-winning goalie. The Jets project as one of the worst teams entering 2026-27, which will limit his win equity. He also faces more competition for starts after Stuart Skinner signed this offseason. He’s no longer a lock for 60-plus starts and 30-plus wins, but the talent is still there, and he should be among the most stable GAA and SV% options on the board.

The market is punishing Nylander for a real reason, but it may be overdramatic. His shot volume has slid for two straight years, from 3.9 a game to 3.1 to 2.4, so he looks like a player drifting toward a playmaker rather than a 40-goal threat. The data still grades his creation near the 80th percentile, even as his shot quality has become ordinary. That’s a real downgrade from the elite tier, and I’m pricing it. What I’m not pricing is a collapse — the two seasons before the injury year were F11 and F12 in total fantasy value across 82 games each. He still owns a seat on Toronto’s top power play, and 35 goals with 55 assists is the honest middle of this profile. His ADP has drifted all the way to the fourth round, while I view him more as a third-round pick. He certainly doesn’t look like the player who went at the 1-2 turn last year, but the fourth round is overcorrecting.

The 47-goal season wasn’t the outlier; the injury year was. Tage has now posted F10 and F28 finishes in his last two seasons, with shot volume (280-plus pace) and a role that make 40 goals his baseline, not his ceiling. The market and I basically agree on the price, and there’s little to argue about: a 6-foot-6 centre who shoots this much, on a Buffalo team that finally broke through, at a price that reflects exactly what he is. Sometimes the pick is just good.

The market fell in love, and honestly, the player earned it. Hutson had 60 points as a rookie, then 78 in year two, a D10 finish, and an assist rate only the true power-play maestros reach. I’m not doubting Hutson. I’m doubting the price of a third leap. His late-2nd-round ADP is a little rich, and that gap comes down to three things: the per-game finish (D16) trailed the total, so part of the D10 was simply never missing a game. His shot volume is modest, so value rides almost entirely on assists, and those assists could regress after he finished with a league-high 18 goals scored above expected while he was on the ice. More growth could offset some of the regression, but at his current ADP he basically has to be Quinn Hughes, and he doesn’t shoot nearly enough. He’s a great fantasy asset, but I don’t love the draft-day cost.

Split Caufield’s 51-goal season in half and two different players show up: 21 goals in his first 47 games on under three shots per game, then 30 in his final 34 on 3.6 per game and 24.4 SH%. That closing stretch is why he finished plus-12.3 goals above expected (per SportLogiq) — the highest mark in the NHL — and a number like that is a heater, and heaters end. The volume ramp might not, though, because Montreal spent the stretch run funnelling everything through him. At three-plus shots per game and his career 14.2 percent conversion, 40 goals is close to a floor rather than a ceiling. The playoff volume regressed some, so the truth probably sits somewhere in the middle. Bank 40 with mid-70s points, and let someone else pay for 50.

Suzuki exploded for career highs of 101 points and 72 assists at 26, powering Montreal’s rise. The catch: Cole Caufield finished a dozen goals above expected, and Suzuki collected the assists, a huge leap for a player who’d averaged mid-40s helpers over the previous four seasons, and roughly half that spike is luck due for a refund. Around 30 goals with assists settling toward 60 still makes for a great season, but the ADP is banking on a repeat of last season that is unlikely to be repeated.

Tkachuk missed the first three and a half months of 2025-26 and stepped back in like he’d been there all along — 34 points (13G/21A) in 31 games, a 34-goal, 90-point pace, good for a top-25 fantasy points-per-game finish among forwards. With the injuries in the rearview mirror and Brady now in the same room in Florida, the path back to the 100-point seasons of 2022 and 2023 is wide open. And even if the points settle short of that, the profile stands alone: no other player can be confidently projected for 30 goals, 90 points, 260 shots, and 125 hits. In leagues that count the rough stuff, he’s not a pick, he’s a cheat code.

The midseason trade to Los Angeles changed Panarin’s sweater and almost nothing else: similar minutes to his Rangers deployment, 27 points in 26 games after arriving, and a power play that jumped from 15.6 percent, 29th in the league, to 20.3% after he showed up. The 2024 shot volume looks like an outlier season, so the expectation resets to 225 shots and 30 goals, with the elite assist totals that never leave. The fantasy catch is unchanged, too, because he contributes almost nothing outside the scoring columns, with hit and block totals among the lowest of any forward. Mid-80s points are great, but his ceiling is capped in leagues where peripherals count.

From 2021 to 2023, Oettinger ranked fifth among qualified goalies in GAA (2.42), eighth in SV% (.916), and tied for eighth in wins (78). Over the past three years, he’s 10th in GAA (2.63), tied for 13th in SV% (.905), and third in wins (106). The game has slipped from elite to serviceable, but it barely matters. Dallas hands him 55 starts behind a contender every year. The win totals remain top-shelf, and the shot suppression that reduces his save volume also protects his rates from cratering. If the usage remains the same, Oettinger will be among the league’s win leaders yet again, but Casey DeSmith has played very well (.911 SV%) in his first two years in Dallas and could start to eat into Oettinger’s workload.

No timeshare drama, no team-quality issues, nothing to litigate. Swayman has settled into the full workhorse role in Boston, and his profile is rare, playing in every format: strong ratios for category leagues and heavy save volume for points. A career-best 70.4 quality-start percentage last season (5th in the NHL) means a good night seven starts out of ten, and that’s exactly what you want from your No.1 fantasy goalie. The projection is a top-five starts total with above-average efficiency across the board. Elite nowhere, valuable everywhere, and the least stressful goalie pick on the board after Andrei Vasilevskiy and Logan Thompson.

Fox’s point total has declined for four straight seasons, but 2025-26 was more about injury than erosion. When he returned to the Rangers lineup after the Olympic break, he posted 25 points (5G / 20A) in 25 games, so the elite playmaking hasn’t gone anywhere. But with a wave of young defensemen emerging in fantasy, Fox’s quality is getting overlooked on draft day, and he’s dropping into the fifth round. That’s not just value; it’s roster leverage: you can load up on forwards or lock in an elite goalie in the first few rounds and still walk out with a defenseman who produces like a top-five option at the position. A return to 70 points and triple-digit blocks is well within reach.

200 hits and 200 blocks in the same season has happened five times in NHL history (per NHL.com). Seider did it in 2025-26, while also posting a career-high 60 points. The other four to pull it off? None had more than 25 points. In leagues that count both hits and blocks, there’s a legitimate top-24 case here, and you won’t have to pay anywhere near that price, because he’s currently the tenth defenseman off the board. The one thing that could stall him is Detroit itself: another backward slide would park the points in the 50s, but the hits and blocks don’t read the standings.

Keller has posted back-to-back 90 and 88-point seasons, and the latter came while he finished nearly nine goals below expected, among the most snakebitten marks among any top-50 scorer. That means last year’s output was unlucky. With neutral puck luck, a career-best season could be in store in 2026-27. He’s a rare established star whose most recent season understates him. If you miss out on some of the elite wingers in the first couple of rounds, Keller is a great consolation prize in the fourth round.

The roster in front of Shesterkin has underperformed for years, and his save talent has never wavered. He remains one of the most gifted goalies of his generation, and the splits have anchored fantasy teams through every rocky Rangers season. New York projects at just 86.5 points, which caps the ceiling but might be enough to nudge him back toward 30 wins on his usual heavy workload. The only question anyone has ever had about him is how good the team around him can be. If you don’t want to use a 1st or 2nd-round pick on a goalie, Shesterkin is a great No. 1 goalie option in the late-3rd/early-4th round.

Forsberg scored 40 goals at age 31, his second 40-goal season in three years, and did so while finishing nearly eight goals above expected. So the goal total owes something back. The rest of the profile doesn’t: 250 shots, one of the heaviest hit totals among scoring wingers, and points that have drifted from 94 to 76 to 75. If the last three years have taught us anything, you can pretty much bank on 30-plus goals, 75-plus points, 250-plus shots, and 120-plus hits. A very well-rounded profile that won’t come with a high cost on draft day.

Guentzel has quietly posted 77, 80, and 88-point seasons, and his finishing luck last year graded out at exactly zero. This is simply what he produces. Tampa’s top six gives him elite linemates and premium power-play time, and his 40-goal seasons come without shooting-percentage asterisks. Another year of high-30s goals and high-80s points is the boring, bankable expectation. He’s the least-discussed elite scorer in fantasy, which is exactly why he returns value. He’s among the safest late-3rd/early-4th-round picks you can find.

The 39-goal, 90-point season in 2023 set expectations Stutzle has spent three years trying to meet, and he has averaged 77 points (25G / 52A) per season since. Reframe it: that average is the floor for a top-line centre entering age 24, delivered with a physical edge most playmakers don’t possess: 120-plus hits per season. Last year, he pushed back over 30 goals; the second time in his career he’s shot above 17 percent, so the high-end finishing exists even if it doesn’t show up annually. Our projection is 79 points, assist-heavy as always. The 90-point ceiling needs the shooting percentage to remain sky-high. The 77-point version needs nothing. Stutzle has back-to-back top-40 fantasy finishes, so he’s a safe pick in the 4th round with some upside.

Marner went from one of the easiest players to project to one of the most difficult coming into 2026-27. A few things are certain: he’ll finish under 200 shots with a goal total in the mid-20s. Where the assists land is the whole question, and it’s the difference between a decent fantasy pick and a great one. He finished with 80 points in his first Vegas season, down from 102 in his final Toronto year, as the Golden Knights’ spread-it-around attack cut into a playmaker’s share. But then he led the entire playoffs with 29 points in 22 games during the deep run, which makes you think the 90-to-100-point Marner could show up again. Either way, he’s a mostly one-dimensional fantasy asset who is more valuable in points leagues than category formats.

Gauthier jumped from 43 points to a 41-goal, 69-point breakout at 23, and the data backs most of it: a 93rd-percentile creation grade on 280-plus shots, with about six goals above expected. The projection conservatively lands at 70 points, with mid-30s goals, and the Troy Terry injury should work in his favour early in the season. Terry is expected to miss a couple of months, which hands Gauthier extra minutes right out of the gate. We may finally get to see what Cutter looks like with more than 17 minutes per game. If you include the playoffs, he finished with 41 points (25G / 16A) in his final 41 games of the 2025-26 season. He’s just getting started.

Sorokin isn’t the same fantasy asset he was in the first three years of his career. From 2021 to 2023, he led the NHL in shutouts (16), ranked second in SV% (.924), third in GAA (2.34), and 12th in wins (70). Over the last three: third in shutouts, eighth in wins and SV%, 24th in GAA. Don’t get me wrong, he’s still one of the league’s premier goaltending talents, but he’s no longer a lock for elite ratios. What he is now is a points-league darling, facing some of the heaviest shot volume in the NHL year after year, and every one of those saves pays in points formats even when the Islanders lose. That’s the split: a middling team caps his wins, and his ratios have settled from elite to good, so he’s a No.1 fantasy netminder either way, but he might be No.1 overall in points and closer to seventh or eighth in category leagues. No goalie’s rank swings harder on scoring settings.

Over the last two seasons, Scheifele ranks 12th in the NHL in goals and sixth in points. That’s elite production, full stop. The structural reason it continues: Winnipeg seriously lacks scoring depth, so Scheifele, Kyle Connor, and Gabriel Vilardi keep playing massive minutes. Heavy usage, combined with his conversion rate, makes another 35-goal, point-per-game season doable even if the Jets’ offence sags as a whole. Our projection lands in the high-80s, with some SH% regression. He keeps making that look conservative, but use Brayden Point as a cautionary tale. Just when we bought into 20+ SH% being somewhat sustainable, he came crashing back down in 2025-26. Scheifele is a low-end No.1 fantasy centre that allows you to take some of the thinner positions in the early rounds.

After three straight seasons of 90-plus points, Crosby posted just 74 points (29G / 45A) in a 68-game, injury-affected season. Assist production remained great; he was on pace for 54 assists, but shot volume is a concern heading into 2026-27. His 2.4 SOG/gm was the lowest of his career and will likely keep his goal total under 30 unless he maintains last year’s 18.1 SH%. At age 39, the decline is baked into the ADP, making him a fine pick in the fifth round. He’s a low-end C1/high-end C2 entering his 22nd NHL season.

Josi is still creating chances at a 98th-percentile rate at 36 years old. Availability is the whole discussion now, and it’s not a generic aging story: he’s managing Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, which wrecked one season at 38 points and limited him to 68 games last year. When he was in the lineup, 55 points came easily. Give him 75 games, low-60s points, 200 shots, and heavy blocks, and he’s alive — at a price that assumes they aren’t. He’s a No.1 fantasy defenseman going in the seventh round, one of the biggest draft-day discounts on my board. If your strategy is to wait on defence, Josi is an ideal target.

Almost nothing New Jersey shot went in last year, and Bratt’s stat line paid for it, sliding from 88 points to 71 while his shot generation and assist rates held steady. The Devils scored an astounding 37 goals below expected with Bratt on the ice — second-worst in the NHL behind only his teammate Nico Hischier, and four of the league’s five coldest on-ice numbers belonged to Devils. That’s not a Bratt problem; that’s a team-wide anomaly, and puck luck that ugly doesn’t follow a roster into the next season. League-average finishing around him restores the high-80s without Bratt changing a thing. He’s one of the easiest bounce-back candidates to spot, and he comes at a major discount in the 7th round.

Schaefer scored 59 points as a teenage rookie defenseman, and the smart money says he does it again, just in a different fashion. It’s rare that a defenseman sustains a double-digit shooting percentage, so the goals could come down, but the Islanders finished well below expected with him on the ice all season, quietly starving an assist column that should climb past 40 on its own. Schaefer graded in the 96th percentile for chance creation, so he’s just getting started. The scariest part for the rest of the league is that 2025-26 was likely his floor.

After Christmas, Sanderson put up 28 points (7G / 21A) in 30 games. While there’s some regression coming for his SH% from that stretch, it firmly entrenched him as a 60-plus-point defenseman when healthy. After all of the elite defensemen are off the board, Sanderson provides excellent category coverage at a lower cost. There’s a real chance he finishes with 60+ points, 20+ PPP, 175+ SOG, and 150+ BS, a combination that maybe a handful of defensemen can achieve.

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The consistency read on DeBrincat might be underselling him. Yes, three straight healthy seasons, climbing from 67 to 70 to 85 points. F54 to F36 to F12 fantasy finishes, a staircase with no missed steps. Last year, he also put more pucks toward the net than at any point in his career, with career highs in both attempts and shots on goal. That’s usually what the year before a goal spike looks like, not a plateau. The uncertainty surrounding the Red Wings and Patrick Kane’s departure cast some doubt on DeBrincat, but 285 SOG will lead to close to 40 goals regardless of who’s around him.

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