We move through more defensemen today going through my Top 40. For those that didn't see my Top 20, you can check that out here. I have some good news before I get going with these rankings. JKJ is going to be back! He's going to shift his focus this season towards defensemen, similar to what he does on the baseball side of things with relief pitchers. Look for him to be writing again in the near future, with a rebuttal to my defenseman rankings the first thing coming. And now, let's get to it!
We're keeping it moving here at Razzball Hockey HQ today looking at the top 20 defensemen in my 2022-23 Fantasy Hockey Rankings. My goaltending rankings and top 20 overall are easily available on the Razzball Hockey home page. Unlike when I made a list of players that I considered for my Top 20 overall where I had 35 potential candidates, I only wrote down 22 names for Top 20 defenseman candidates. Defensemen remains an extremely top heavy positions, so differentiating the players in the 11-50 range will go a long way. Last year, I nailed Ekblad as an elite D ranking him 6th, and also had DeAngelo and McAvoy well above consensus in my Top 20. Andersson and Seider were my big wins lower down. For failures, Barrie and Petry lead the way, along with ranking Doughty too low. Let's hope for better this time around. Let's get to it!
Today, I'm going to complete my goaltending rankings with tiers 5-8. If you draft one of these guys as your #2 goalie, you're carrying a bit of risk that they could implode. There are guys in tiers 5-7 that have upside, whether it's needing an injury to the other goalie on the team, or being the #1 on a team with a lot of variance. Let's get to it!
Today, I move from overall rankings to goaltenders only. I'm going to cover my first four tiers today out of eight. This will take me through 16 goalies. These guys all have a realistic chance of finishing as a top 10 goalie this season to varying degrees. There are some guys in the lower tiers who have an outside chance, but a lot will have to go right for them. That post will not be as detailed as the previous three posts. It will be in part, but when we get to tiers that are beyond desperation, it will be more of a list. But enough about tomorrow's post, let's get to the top goalies!
We're moving along to the players ranked 11th-20th overall today. If you missed the Top 10, you can check that out here. I'm sure this is going to be another long post, so let's get to it!
11) Mitch Marner - As talked about in the last post, there's not much separating the players from the end of the top 10 through the top 20. At the end of the day, I'm going to continue to play it safe and go with high floors. Marner set a career high in points last season with 97 in only 72 games. He was above three shots per game for the first time, and we know the plus-minus will be quite good. He's a little light on the penalty minutes, but at some point, you have to accept that and take a player who is probably a favorite to score 100 points this season, just like Barkov before him.
It's time to take my annual journey through the NHL writing 20,000+ words ranking everyone throughout the NHL. I'm starting with the top 20 overall today, before doing two defensemen posts, at least one goaltending post, four forward posts, and another ranking list for the top 200 overall. These rankings go towards a scoring focus, meaning G, A, PPP, and SOG, while also acknowledging plus-minus and PIMs as categories that most people use. I do not look at hits and blocks, although I will mention where there is extra value in the hits department specifically. Let's get to it!
Today, I’m going to look at all of the impactful offseason moves in the Western Conference. If you didn’t catch my post on the Eastern Conference, you can do that here. Please, blog, may I have some more?
I hope all you loyal Razzballers are doing well! We're just over a month away from the NHL season starting, and with football starting tonight (Go Bills!), it's time for people to transition to fantasy hockey drafts. I'm going to start my rankings next week, but for today, I'm going to look at every team's offseason. Some teams made massive changes and will have a longer write up e.g. Calgary, and others who did minimal will have a short blurb e.g. the Islanders. Let's get to it!
We've reached the last day of the regular season with all 16 playoff teams decided. All that's left for tonight is teams playing for seeding and draft position. With 30 teams playing today, everyone should have a full lineup on the last day of the season. It would be wise to pick up some guys for your bench just in case players sit out and you can make sure you have a full lineup. For those of you that have a lot on the line the last day of the season, best of luck. In my biggest league, I'm up one point in roto with a handful of points that can swing to potentially drop me into second. What better drama than coming down to the bitter end?
We're rapidly approaching the end of the season which means it's time to look back at what went right and what went wrong for my preseason predictions. Today, we're going to look at my 10 bold predictions, and JKJ's five to see how well we did. If you have any questions for the last three days of the season, please ask them in the comments section and I'll be sure to answer them. For JKJ's, my comments on his predictions from the preseason are italicized. Let's get to it!
We've reached the final week of the season with every team having 2-3 games left. Hopefully you're all still in contention in your leagues so these games matter to you. In this post, I'm going to take a look at each day to see how you can plan accordingly to maximize starts and stream the best players possible. Let's get to it!
The Panthers have won 11 in a row, and 14 of their past 15 games. There's been plenty of crazy games in this stretch that has them tied for the league lead in points. On Tuesday, they tied the game with less than four minutes left before they won it 20 seconds into overtime, and it was the usual suspects. Aleksander Barkov scored all three goals in the 3-2 OT win, with Jonathan Huberdeau assisting on all three goals. Barkov has a new career high in goals, 37, despite playing in only 63 games to this point. Additionally, Huberdeau now leads the league in points. Yes, that's correct, he leads the league in points. Both of them will be in the discussion to be first round picks in drafts next season. It's going to be great to see them in the playoffs, hopefully for longer than last time around. Let's see what else happened on Tuesday:
