The Final Fifty

It’s almost time for the greatest time of year - the NHL Regular Season. The playoffs are cool, but the regular season is where the money is. The regular season is where the hard work gets rewarded.

But first, we have to get a few things done:

• Draft 56 more BPC teams, as-of Wednesday, October 1st. With five days to go, this will be quite the undertaking, but I think it’ll be quite doable, especially once we are able to multi-table lobbies this weekend and probably into Monday/Tuesday.

• Do a couple streams, maybe even three, with another Live Draft with DJ on Thursday evening, a season preview pod where we talk about… whatever we want, I suppose, and then the Tuesday DFS slate preview, where we’ll cover every angle on the three-game DFS slate that starts at 5PM EST on Tuesday.

• Write up something about the forthcoming season. I am thinking it’ll be a “Season Headlines” piece similar to two years ago, as I really liked that one. I was too burnt out from {gestures wildly at all the stuff above and all the DFS I am currently still dedicating time and effort towards} but think the slow drafts I entered, effectively not fast-drafting anything in the past two weeks other than a couple of drafts last night, have preserved my sanity down the stretch.

And of course, this newsletter. Here, I’m going to go over what I have done so far, take an analytical look at where my largely-vibes based approach has brought me, and make a few plans for the homestretch to ensure my Best Puck portfolio looks the way I want it to look.

With all of that said, let’s get into it.

Today’s Primary Point: Here are my current top exposures by position, recall that most of these were slow drafts I started in early September, while the rest are split between July/August drafts and streamed drafts over the past month. I am not particularly worried about the closing line value I am gaining/losing on these drafts, though COUNTMC (Manno19 in MSP Discord) posts a lot of ADP trends and is someone you should absolutely follow if you like fantasy hockey (and want to learn from a better drafter than I):

Jack Eichel is a target in the late first round for me, as he’s the guy this year who I think could break into that vaunted top four C range next year with Marner on his wing. Given the late stacking options in Vegas, I’m going to keep piling into Jack in the late first round, as I think he’s also got a sustained floor such that I’m not too afraid of his downside.

Mika Zibanejad is a go. I wrote about him in my last piece, as I did several other entries on this list, so make sure you’re up to date with all the arguments I laid out here based on contextualized smaller samples than last year’s full season stats.

I am mostly sticking to fewer centers than the field, though I am much more lenient than last year’s strict 3-7-3-3 positional build. I have taken 3.48 centers per draft, which you can basically call 50/50 split between 3Cs and 4Cs (with one or two 5C teams I built earlier in the summer before the Manifesto Update where I thought the flex changes would be more extreme, positionally speaking).

Leo Carlsson is a late riser of mine, though with Mason McTavish now likely to play opening night, I’ll continue splitting between the two and probably won’t rise much above this level. Josh Norris I hope to get upwards of 16-18% of, he looks to be Tage’s center and is locked into a perimeter role on the Sabres PP. Zach Benson is the exact linemate you want your fantasy studs to have, as he’ll create lots of offense without using any of it himself, and he’ll just make his linemates look really good. The fact that Josh Norris is a long-time Moods’ Dude is just an added bonus.

I think the first surprise in my W room is Lucas Raymond. Legitimately every other player I have gushed about in the past couple of years. I will dive more into Raymond in a second, in the goalie section (I swear it is relevant).

Considering the current price and what we’re learning through the preseason, I intend to get Jason Robertson up in to the 20s and I will try like hell to get Mikko Rantanen in rd1 when I can’t get Eichel. Don’t shoot the messenger, but I have zero shares of both Cale Makar and Brady Tkachuk. I just can’t get there on using my most valuable pick on a guy at position I feel is best attacked in the middle of the draft who probably gets overshadowed by his own teammate in MacKinnon if he has a season for the ages (and he has struggled with health, but that feels like a lazy crutch) or a guy who by my money is the least talented player getting drafted in the first two rounds. The rates are phenomenal, but is there a case he is even ADP 6.5 next year? I just don’t see it.

Cutter Gauthier appears to be established in the Anaheim top six, and while the PP1 role doesn’t seem to be materializing out of the gate (though McTavish not practicing makes that not a certainty), the TOI bump he seems in line to get looks to be remarkable. Reminder that he put 8 UDPts per game averaging less than 14 minutes down the stretch last year. In a three-game week, that’s already scoring ~50% of the time, and if the role grows from there, or he naturally evolves as a player, or Leo Carlsson takes the next step to superstardom and takes his most-frequent preseason linemate with him, there’s an awful lot of meat left on the bone.

Mitch Marner looks set to QB the Vegas PP1. Uh Oh. With Pavel Dorofeyev set to miss time, perhaps even opening night (but not much longer), Shea Theodore may actually get the first crack at the right half-wall, but I think Theodore is more likely to be a PP2 defender with PK time and a hefty 5v5 role. My bags will probably consist only of Eichel + Theodore teams from this point on, rather than using Theo to plug holes in any D room. The upside is still there, but the certainty that a PP1 role would bring is not. We’re relying on Theodore adding a lot of TOI and some shots/blocks to his sterling 5v5 point-producing rates.

Morgan Rielly appears set to do the exact thing we thought he’d do. It’s just too cheap of a price for a guy on a great team with elite talent who has shown some chops running a PP1 in his past. He’s not exactly the sexiest pick in the world, and he’s not a steak-and-potatoes type of play, but he and Erik Karlsson are just fantastic 3rd-guy-in to your D room. I don’t think last year’s Karlsson season was examined enough for just how strange it was, but according to Manno’s sheet he produced as D30, was mired on PP2 for a team that rode unsustainable shooting to actually produce a great PP out of literal dogshit (and Sidney Crosby), and looked equal parts horrendous for stretches of the regular season and unbelievable as a key piece of the Swedish Four Nations blueline. These two go back-to-back at D25 and D26 at the moment, and in the majority of my drafts they are the last D I select before then wrapping up my C and W picks, where I feel there is more depth.

Rasmus Dahlin, Zeev Buium, and Sam Rinzel are three guys I want to aggressively target down the stretch. I haven’t gotten much Rinzel, as I didn’t want to buy the PP1 role without seeing it, but they really haven’t even so much as flinched in that deployment. It could all still blow up in my face, but with my Donato shares that don’t appear likely to get first crack at PP1, it’d be nice to have some access to the Bedard unit without having to spend an early pick on Bedard himself. Bertuzzi/Teuvo/Frank Nazar don’t cut it for me.

I have a lot of Darcy Kuemper. Again. After 31% of him last year, it’s shaping up to look awfully similar this year. Part of it is just a stubborn belief in this Kings team and system, even with a questionable offseason that effectively turned Gavrikov and Spence into Dumoulin and Ceci, but the other part of it is.. look at this range? What the fuck else am I going to do, especially if I want to up my Michkov/Guenther exposures in rd4 where a glut of goalies tend to go?

Once Adin Hill is off the board, if my team needs a goalie, am I really going to lose sleep over passing up Timo, Tuch, Sebastian Aho, etc. to get the goalie I need? I don’t think so. I like a 2v2 of Kuemper/Michkov so much more than Gustavsson/Tuch that yes, I am willing to let Jim Hiller hurt me again.

Yaroslav Askarov and Spencer Knight are just two guys on bad teams who should be solid starters, especially in the playoff weeks. I don’t expect either of these guys to carry me into the Best Puck Playoffs, but as a G3 I’m paying the cheapest possible price for access to a guy who could get a 3-start in the playoffs at the right time and carry that week in case of schedule weirdness or goalie randomness. Both guys are seemingly big parts of their teams’ futures (Knight signed a $5Mx3 extension, believe it or not), so I expect them to get a lot of run down the stretch when the fantasy games count the most. They also won’t be in the Olympics mix, which is cool when trying to project random days off for masked men stopping vulcanized rubber with pillows on their legs and knives on their feet five months from now.

Samuel Ersson deserves a mention, as he’s truly the last guy I am comfortable clicking. The paths to clear failure for Ersson involved free agency (Vladar! Oh no!), Carter Hart (not in the mix) and lastly Connor Ingram (now in Edmonton). Ersson still needs to, you know, make saves, but I think the role will be there, and the Flyers have the pieces to be a strong defensive squad and perhaps being out of the Torts system alleviates some of the shot volume concerns.

I wouldn’t read into too many of my goalies, as I’m usually just a victim of circumstance when it comes time to click a goalie, where I am not finding an option I want to add at another position more. If they are a firm starter, odds are I’m clicking them between 5-12% of the time without much more concern than that.

In additon to players I want to take a quick look at my combinations, first thinking about stacking. As I covered in the Manifesto Update, 3-man stacks are my sweet spot in 25-26, and as such I have tried to get one in each draft I do. The following chart includes all stack sizes up to 5+, but is sorted by this key 3+ percentage.

Vegas being the top team is no surprise, with Eichel/Marner/Dorofeyev/Theodore/Hertl all being very much in the Best Puck mix for me this year. I did not pull goalies out of this equation, so Adin Hill could possibly be counting toward this total on occasion, as I have 12.8% of him and am not intentionally taking him with/without other Vegas pieces.

Washington before Ovi seemed certifiably human/injured in the preseason was a common target, looking something like Ovi-Wilson-Defenseman (Chychrun or Carlson), with the occasional other piece. I have cooled on Ovi a good bit, but still want a decent chunk of him. After all, he’s the only person on earth literally born to score fantasy points. After limited preseason watching, I have an additional concern, that being that Ryan Leonard takes a massive step and makes both Cs and McMichael irrelevant as far as the PP and top six is concerned, and will probably default to minis of Washington going forward. I really like Washington as a team, but think they do it more by committee this season than I did a month or two ago.

Dallas and Florida are major opportunities, for wildly different reasons. No Jamie Benn makes Dallas quite clean from a stacking perspective, and you can make cases for combinations of up to nine players. Rant/JRob/Hintz are the clear targets, with both Miro and Harley being players I will be over the field on (slightly) this year, but you can make arguments for Wyatt, Duchene, and even Seguin now with how he’s looked this preseason. I really want Tyler to stay healthy but can’t get there myself, but there’s a solid case for him plus Duchene. Dallas is gonna rock. If we get a top-line Bourque in the final week of preseason, I will click him at least once. I promise you that, as he’s next in line of the incredible development cycle Dallas has operating over the past several years. Florida, meanwhile, has this massive vacuum of opportunity left by the gaping hole the Barkov and Tkachuk absences leave. Reinhart is still the focal point of this offense (and I think Lundell is good enough to support him still, the less said about Bennett the better), while Bennett/Verhaeghe/Jones are cheap enough to feel quite good about with the current PP1 roles they look locked into. I am mixing in small amounts of Lundell and Brad Marchand down the stretch as well, as this team should still be strong and I think either one could pop off if given run alongside Samson.

Zero Isles is odd, even in a 2+ stack, but I like enough of their forwards that I expect that to change. Anders Lee appears healthy and in a top-six role, and while I’ll need to dig more into their PP units in camp, I think he matches well with Horvat or Barzal. The news that those two will be the centers, at least to start the year, cushions some of the “shit, JG Pageau is this guy’s center for the next sixty games” concern I had about stacking Isles. I am not 100% sure Schaefer plays the full NHL season, so I am holding off on him for the moment, though early returns seem solid on his overall ability to play at an NHL level.

I have 127 stacks of 3+ players across 94 teams, which seems about right. I am getting mini-stacks to support the “main stack” of my team, but don’t want to overprioritize correlation over the other things I think about when drafting, chief among them being strict ADP value so as to ensure my successful combinations of league-winners don’t wind up dominated by similar pairings with better supporting pieces (a 8th round pick in place of my 10th round pick, if I am reaching two rounds for the eventual league-winner, for example).

My NJ 5-stack is Jack Hughes (at Pick 15!), Jesper Bratt, Timo Meier, Dougie Hamilton, Jacob Markstrom. That team has Rantanen-Duchene-Heiskanen and Vatrano-McTavish-Kreider, though I do not love my Lafreniere pick (even with Fox in the fold). The MIN 5-stack squad is a true work of art, with Kaprizov-Boldy-JEEK-Buium-Rossi. The entire slow draft is just a perfect intro to my portfolio and my league-wide favorites:

Here are my most frequent combinations of specific players, regardless of team, again in my 94 drafts to-date:

I find it rather intesting that more than half of these, even removing the goalie-related ones, are not team-based stacks, but merely a mixture of where on the board my pick was (front half/back half/middle) and my exposures. Theodore and Cutter making up four of the five team pairiings on this list makes sense, too, as both involve later picks that I feel more comfortable giving up 5+ picks of ADP value to connect on my roster. Michkov and Tippett also fits this mold, though there doesn’t appear to be a ton of natural correlation in those two at this point in time, so I may want to focus more on other stacks on Michkov teams (or figure out what the hell to do with Zegras).

My triplets also don’t look too strange, on a scroll. Matthews-Guenther-Rielly is fun, while Theodore/Cutter also show up a lot here too. The McDavid-JRob duo is one that I’ll be mindful of down the stretch, though I think if I stack around either (Bouchard/Harley/Miro) that’d immediately take care of any duplication concern, as it seems I have largely random players as the third with those two right now.

Shout out to my super slappy four Bedard-Cutter-Michkov drafts. One of these years the slappy picks will win, and then who will be laughing?

I hope you enjoyed this tour of my drafts to-date. These final fifty-ish drafts of mine will be chock full of Isles stacks, Sam Rinzel, and Florida Panthers 3rd liners. Great. What is your worst take that you’ll be drafting a bunch of as we end the drafting stage of the Best Puck Classic? Let me know in Discord (where many of you have already been doing so, zing!) or on X.

We’ll be back for all sorts of #Content as we approach Opening Puck Drop, so get your asses into the UD lobbies and into the NHL Preseason DFS streets. It’ll be a long six months of fighting over Thomas Harley, Shea Theodore and Cutter Gauthier - as they happily man 2nd PP units - and bemoaning all 32 of the idiots who coach the perfect players we love so much.

As always, thanks for reading!

Follow me on X @FakeMoods, and to subscribe to this newsletter. I write ~once a week during the NHL DFS season, previewing DFS slates or reviewing the major contests on DraftKings. You should also subscribe to DJ Mitchell’s YouTube channel, where we draft at least once a week (there are also some in the library if you want some background noise!) and stream live (or post right after recording), including the podcasts on Monday and Wednesday nights. I am posting some stuff on my own personal YT channel as well, with a few drafts up at the moment. And join the Discord (DM me if you want in the MSP Discord), if you somehow haven’t already.