2021-2022 Fantasy Hockey Draft Recap

I don’t think I’ve ever drafted as low as 10th in a 12 team league. Looking at some of the options for the spot, I didn’t mind the draw as the 2nd pick would come around quickly. 1.10 C Aleksander Barkov was precisely the guy I had circled for the pick. His defensive play gets all the attention and rightfully so as he earned his first Selke Trophy last season. But keep in mind, he has 468 points in 531 career games. That includes 96 in 82 in 2018-2019 and 58 in 50 just last season. This is clearly a premier offensive player too. And the 2021-2022 Panthers team is shaping up to be the best he has ever been a part of with a very deep skater group. Barkov is a dark horse Hart Trophy winner if he maintains his elite level of play while the talent around him gels under the tutelage of Joel Quenneville. The narrative case will be there if the Panthers can break the stranglehold that the triumvirate of Lightning/Bruins/Leafs have had on the Atlantic. Barkov will easily return 1st round value once again.

In two NHL seasons, 2.3 D Cale Makar has won a Calder Trophy and finished 2nd in Norris voting. The 23-year-old is the Norris favorite this season on a team looking to run away with the league. Makar is as good as it gets offensively for a defenseman and figures to rack up a point a game with the help of his unreal skating and passing ability and over 4 minutes of PP time per game. I wanted to go defenseman here and was between Makar and Victor Hedman. Makar’s age advantage and Hedman’s injury last season swayed me in Makar’s direction.

Mitch Marner and Kyle Connor were the 2 guys I had circled for the 3rd round but both were scooped up. I can’t believe he fell this far, but 3.10 C Brayden Point was still available with the 34th(!) overall pick. The 1st line center of a projected top-5 offense and the back-to-back Stanley Cup champions is a fine consolation prize to the other two. The playoffs are where he’s really gone bonkers, but a full 82 game regular season should see him go 30 and 50 with a potentially very good +/- (yes, we use that category).  

I tried to swap a forward for 4.3 D Roman Josi a few seasons ago but had no luck. This time, I’ll just draft him. He’s now on the wrong side of 30 on a Predators team that is still known more for goal prevention than creation. Still, he should continue to rack up the shots and points as few defensemen get as much powerplay time and Ryan Ellis is no longer around as another option. The forward group isn’t great with the loss of Viktor Arvidsson and the decline in play from Ryan Johansen and Matt Duchene. The offense the team does create should often flow through Josi.

Really needed to go winger here with 2 elite centers and 2 elite defensemen already in tow. Flames winger Matthew Tkachuk was taken at 5.8 and I grabbed 5.10 LW Johnny Gaudreau two picks later. Last year, I tried to buy low on Gaudreau’s longtime running mate, Sean Monahan, to no avail. They ended up playing apart at even strength much more than they ever had in the past (436:39 minutes where one was on the ice without the other). Monahan’s stock is down while Gaudreau remains one of the best creators in the league. He’s slated to play with Tkachuk (moving from LW to RW) and Elias Lindholm (moving from RW to C). Gaudreau stays on the left and, regardless of who he plays with, he always racks up the assists.   

Perennial 300+ SOGs guy on an elite team who should clear 30 goals yet again: it’s 6.3 LW Max Pacioretty. His playing style (shoot the puck often and accurately) meshes so well with linemate Mark Stone (steal pucks, get into the offensive zone, and dish it off). It’ll be my 3rd season in a row with Pacioretty. There were some injury issues towards the end of last season and into the playoffs that create cause for concern.

This could definitely turn into a “reach” and overreaction to his playoff performance last season. 7.10 RW Cole Caufield often looked like the most dangerous player on a Canadiens team who made a surprising run to the Finals last season. Caufield and center Nick Suzuki are expected to improve Montreal’s goal output, especially on the powerplay where they have been middle-of-the pack or worse the past few seasons. Caufield is the Calder Trophy favorite and taking him in the 7th round before more established right wingers is a vote of confidence that he will win it. There is always downside risk with rookies, however.

I wanted to get an immediate offset with some of the risk involved in taking a rookie quite early while also getting to 2C, 2D, 2LW, and 2RW through 8 rounds. 8.3 RW David Perron’s return to St. Louis, the place where he started his NHL career, has been a resounding success. The team won the Stanley Cup and he keeps churning out productive seasons as he approaches 1,000 career games played. The forward group is very solid and he will play on a line with 2-way wizard Ryan O’Reilly.

Bona fide PP1 defensemen started flying off the board: Tyson Barrie, Thomas Chabot, Quinn Hughes. I went back to the well with 9.10 D Neal Pionk who has been a great pickup for the defensemen-starved Jets. He will continue to log heavy minutes but there is some worry he won’t be a true PP1 defenseman like last year with the addition of Nate Schmidt. Morgan Reilly was still on the board and, in hindsight, I should have probably gone in that direction. Pionk is unlikely to get completely bricked in favor of Schmidt but he might not get as many points as last season or compared to Reilly. The hits are a strong mitigating factor here.

10.3 C Joel Eriksson Ek, 4th place in Selke voting last season, is playing on a line with Calder Trophy winner and human highlight reel Kirill Kaprizov. Eriksson Ek isn’t here just to be the responsible defensive center with the run-and-gun winger like Jori Lehtera with Vladimir Tarasenko back in the day. Eriksson Ek is a quality offensive player too. He probably won’t shoot 16% again, but his shot volume should go up with the passing ability of Kaprizov in a way that keeps 25+ goals a strong possibility. This could turn into a really nice pick if Eriksson Ek’s offensive game continues to develop beside one of the top offensive players in the league at both 5v5 and the powerplay. His real life value was rewarded with a nice new contract. His fantasy value should also jump this season.

I added 11.10 RW Jesse Puljujarvi through free agency last year after he started to really produce alongside Connor McDavid. They’re running it back again in what could be a true offensive explosion for the 23-year-old. Leon Draisaitl is also expected to play on that first line even with the free agent signing of Zach Hyman. Puljujarvi gets to play with the 2 most recent Hart and Art Ross winners at even strength. Sounds like a nice spot. Puljujarvi is said to have fallen a pick in his draft year. Here, he seems to have fallen several rounds. (sidenote: I really wanted William Nylander here but he went 12 picks sooner).

The longtime offensive defenseman, 12.3 D Torey Krug, is the pick here to round out a group of 4 quality defenseman who run top powerplays. He’s been durable throughout his career and, as mentioned in the Perron section, the Blues figure to be a decent offensive team. Justin Faulk is still around but shouldn’t be a huge threat to take powerplay time. Krug averaged 2:51 to Faulk’s 0:52 per game last season.

I got 13.10 C Jack Hughes in the 15th round last year and he made tremendous improvements to his game in his sophomore season. The underlying numbers (shot assists, controlled zone entries, etc) were excellent while the surface level stats (points, shots, etc) were just okay. Look for the surface level stats to catch up this year and for Hughes to launch at age 20. The Devils are also a team moving in the right direction talent-wise with additions like Dougie Hamilton and Tomas Tatar. There is tremendous upside with Hughes as a 13th round pick to be a 4C. This will probably be the last season (ever?) to get him this late.

I believe what 14.3 LW Sam Bennett showed in his 10 games with the Panthers last season is closer to what we’ll get this year than his 402 in Calgary. It’s easy to get fooled by small samples, but this could be a situation where a change of scenery actually works. He shot 15.4% in those 10 games which is a little high but he was also getting 3.9 shots on goal per game. He was getting 5 minutes more of ice time per game than he did with the Flames in 2020-2021. His 18:04 per game with the Panthers is more than any of his full seasons in Calgary by 3 minutes. He doesn’t need to drive the offense in Florida or continue scoring at the rate he was last season with the Panthers to justify this 14th round pick. I was wrong on a bounceback for a current Flame last season (Sean Monahan) but hope to be right on a breakout for a former flame in Bennett. Who would ever think that Bennett (whether from center or the wing) becomes a guy with more Fantasy relevance than Monahan?

15.10 G Anton Khudobin has been a career backup goalie with a quality .917 save % and a heroic run to the Stanley Cup Finals in 2019-2020. He is the backup once again with Braden Holtby nominally the starter. It’s anyone’s guess how long that lasts with Holtby really struggling the past two seasons. Complicating matters further, Jake Oettinger (.911 save % in 29 games last season, his 1st in the NHL) and Ben Bishop (missed all of last season with a torn meniscus but has a higher salary than the other 3 guys and performed well before the injury) are with the Stars too. There are 4 goalies to sort through. For now, I’ll roll with the healthy one who played at an average level last season.

Spencer Knight is nipping at his heels, but 16.3 G Sergei Bobrovsky is being paid $10M. If healthy, he’s going to play. His career epitomizes the highs (2 Vezina Trophies and some international success with Team Russia) and lows (playoff blowups and 2 poor seasons in Florida after signing a massive contract) of being a goalie. The positional volatility is insane. Let’s see if we can catch him on a high where he performs well in 50 or so starts while being pushed by Knight and with great goal scoring support.

The 3rd goalie in a row to finish the set is 17.10 G Kaapo Kahkonen. He was generally pretty good last year as Cam Talbot’s backup and I added and dropped him several times during the season. I expect him to get about 40% of the starts once again in front of a quality defensive team. If it breaks bad, I’ll play goalie roulette again with adding and dropping. That’s mentally easier to do with a 17th round pick than a 7th round pick.

I didn’t have much conviction with whom to take here. 18.3 D Rasmus Andersson is slated as the point man on the Flames 1st powerplay unit so I ran with that. With our daily lineup setup (2 C, 2 LW, 2 RW, 4 D, 1 UTIL), it usually makes sense to carry a 5th defenseman rather than an 11th forward to maximize playing time. For now, this will probably be a “streaming” roster spot for a hitting defenseman, an 11th forward, or spot start goalie depending on the needs for the week.

Recap:

I noticed that no forwards were given multi-position eligibility during the draft. I would imagine that this changes as the season goes on. That type of flexibility is important to get everyone in as much as possible. I have had success targeting “buy-low” type guys with several picks in past years (Stamkos in the 4th round in 2018, Jeff Skinner in the 12th round in 2019, Max Pacioretty in the 12th round in 2020, etc) but didn’t really do that this year. I bought more into the consensus hype side on guys like Cole Caufield and Sam Bennett. Maybe Jack Hughes still qualifies as buy low? This should be the best defensive group I’ve had and the goaltending situation might shake out a little better to where I end up keeping 1 or 2 of these drafted guys the whole season (that’s unusual for my teams). I’ll need to track the hits situation as the season goes on. Goals, assists, and shots should be no issue. Hits are cheap to add in-season.

Max Pacioretty – Aleksander Barkov – Cole Caufield
Johnny Gaudreau – Brayden Point – David Perron
Sam Bennett – Joel Eriksson Ek – Jesse Puljujarvi
Jack Hughes

Roman Josi – Cale Makar
Torey Krug – Neal Pionk
Rasmus Andersson

Sergei Bobrovsky
Anton Khudobin
Kaapo Kahkonen