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Happy Wednesday, Razzball faithful! Well, yesterday was my final Top 100 Starting Pitchers article and Year in Review. (Click on that link if you want to check it out!). Now, I can officially, and undistractedly, present to you a fully focused MarmosDad who has shifted entirely into hockey gear! Does that mean I’m fully invested in tracking the ins and outs of the preseason rankings that I ran through in September?  You betcha! Will I be ready to answer any questions you throw at me here each week with nothing but my day job, fatherhood, mentoring, planning, coaching in school and winter workouts for our baseball team, and the general ridiculousness of life getting in the way? Absolutely!
Instead of the usual daily notes to open the season, I'm going to give one major takeaway I have from the ten games that I watched extended parts of over the last two days.  Sorry, Seattle and Calgary, you did not make the cut on one of my TVs.  Kudos to Seattle for a big early win though, and they will be covered on Monday with every other team.  We had a little bit of everything over these ten games, so let's get right to it!
My thoughts over the years on goaltending haven't changed, so I'm going to use a similar introduction that I've used in the past. We’re onto the last position in my rankings, the netminders.  Goalies make a huge difference in fantasy hockey, but they also have the most variability from year to year.  There’s only a handful of goalies that we can consistently count on every season to finish in the top ten, and that floor is why they are ranked as high as they are.  Because of their unpredictability, I’m very unlikely to take a goalie in the first four rounds, especially in head to head leagues.  Even if your league reaches for goalies early, don’t panic.  Last season, I was extremely high on Greaves and was able to get him as my G3 everywhere.  He finished as the #7 goalie overall.  I had Blackwood as G5 and with his early injury, suggested partnering him with Wedgewood, who hilariously ended up as the #1 goalie.  Meanwhile, top ranked goalies such as Hellebuyck and Bobrovsky massively disappointed, and they were far from the only ones.  Patience is key for drafting goalies.  I’m going to separate all of the goalies into tiers, so let’s get to it!
Happy Wednesday, Razzball faithful! It’s your guy, MarmosDad, back for another preseason rundown of aggregate rankings and additional information for 2026-2027 Fantasy Hockey. Two weeks ago, I shared that the tentative plan was running an aggregate of rankings from various sources around the internet, and giving some input as to which ones made sense to me or, more likely, which players were going to be underdrafted in your fantasy drafts this year. 
Happy Wednesday, Razzball faithful! Apparently, all we needed to do to wake up the sleeping Panther kitties was to reunite the Tkachuk brothers in the Sunshine state (even if one was only visiting) and to tell Linus Ullmark that he was back with the 2020 Buffalo Sabres. Our favorite Swedish goalie, whose name rhymes with a giggle-worthy body part, had one of the roughest starts of his career in Florida on Tuesday night.  Florida struck with pointed claws just 63 seconds into the game, and Mr. Ullmark was yanked after allowing 5 goals on just 16 shots. Oh, Linus.  It was a kick in the stomach for a surging Sens squad, who found themselves out of a wild-card spot by just two points when they started the day. By the end of the night, Ullmark and the rest of his Senators brethren were on the wrong side of a 6-3 loss to the back-to-back Stanley Cup champs.
There are a couple teams making surprising runs to get back into the playoff race.  The most surprising to me, by far, is the Flyers.  In a huge showdown with Detroit on Saturday, the Flyers stomped them early and held on for the win.  Owen Tippett stole the show with a hat trick and an assist with seven shots.  He had two shots in the 2-1 OT win over the Stars, putting Philly two points out of the playoffs, albeit losing the tiebreaker to every team in front of them.  Philly has a bunch of games this week against their direct competition, so expect Tocchet to lean on their studs.  There are only two games on Friday, so Tippett has a real case to be held.  Let's take a look at what else happened over the weekend:
Like most of the Rangers, Mika Zibanejad has been extremely frustrating this season.  Before Friday's outdoor game in Miami, he had one shot on goal in the previous five games combined!  So naturally, he had one of the games of the season so far, scoring a hat trick on six shots and adding two assists in the 5-1 win over the Panthers.  The top line for the Rangers was dangerous throughout, and just like that, Zibanejad is ahead of last season's points pace.  He's just shy of a 30+40 pace now and the shot rate is back up towards three per game.  It's not exciting, and it's definitely close to the fringe, but I lean towards bottom end hold still.  The minutes are through the roof at the moment and with their lack of depth, I can't imagine that changing any time soon.  Let's take a look at what else happened over the weekend:
Happy Wednesday, Razzball faithful! I know you’re all getting things ready for the holiday, so let’s keep this brief and focused. There’s one group of NHL players who are certainly NOT on Santa’s naughty list this year. They'd also be perfectly happy to find just one thing underneath the tree tomorrow morning. A written guarantee from Santa that they’ll break the team’s 14-year playoff drought this April. I swear. I’m not lyin’. Buffalo is actually good. Sabres fans can thank Alex Lyon - 24 saves on 26 shots, and the 3-2 OT win at OTT.  Don’t look now, but the Sabres have won 7 straight games!
I was extremely bullish on Jakob Chychrun last season after his move to Washington, and was a bit above consensus this season.  He's now blowing my expectations out of the water.  Chychrun scored two more goals on Thursday, helping the Capitals beat the Maple Leafs 4-0.  He now has a fantastic 14 goals on the season and has firmly played his way into the Olympic picture.  He's the #2 overall defenseman on the season for fantasy purposes, and while I wouldn't rank him there for the rest of the season, Chychrun is crushing across the board.  He's a clear #1 in all formats.  Let's take a look at what else happened on Thursday night:
Happy Wednesday, Razzball faithful! I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there’s a pretty popular show on Netflix these days that the kids are losing their ever-loving minds over. And as much as I was hoping to roll out a bit about Ivan Demi-dov-Gorgon, the Ottawa Senators had other plans (more on that below). Well, as they say, Stranger Things have happened than writing up a full round-up without a main star’s full stat-sheet to recount. And thankfully, a Motown defenseman gave us a performance to feature in our lede today. Moritz Seider took a page out of the alternate universe and flipped the Bruins into the upside down last night in Detroit with 1 G (4), 2 A (15), +1, 4 PIM, 1 SOG, 1 PPA, 4 BLK, and 22:55 of ice time.  It was a nice bounce-back of sorts for the big German blueliner, after being held off the scoresheet in his last 3 games. Seider led the charge for the Red Wings in this revenge game after he was beaten (on the scoreboard and in a fight by Mark Kastelic) on Saturday afternoon. But was that the only player worth highlighting from a Tuesday night 10-game slate?
Happy Wednesday, Razzball faithful! We had an 8-game schedule to dip into on Tuesday night, and none had a bigger asterisk in the record books than the New Jersey Devils’ visit to Tampa Bay to face the Lightning. Coming into Tuesday night’s game, superstar Lightning forward Nikita Kucherov: 1 G (9), 1 A (9), 2 PIM, 2 SOG, 1 PPA, 1 GWG, 1 HIT - sat tied for third place on the all-time Tampa Bay goal-scoring list with 365 goals.  It was only a matter of time before Kucherov blew past an old legend, and current Montreal bench boss, Martin St. Louis. The good news is it didn’t take Tampa’s active star RW very long to snap #366 past the Devils’ giant netminder, Jakob Markstrom, on their way to a 5-1 win.  If you can guess which two players sit above Kuch on the All-Time Lightning Lamp-Lighting List, throw it in the comments below. I messaged Viz last night and said I really wished it were Brian Bradley. Alas, he’s 14th (111 goals) and nestled between Vaclav Prospal (127!) and Brandon “Cream Cheese” Hagel (102).