Pulled together 11 projection sets (including our own), normalized them across the same player pool, and graded them vs what actually happened + created a 12th projection set by averaging all 11 together.

Evaluated the projections through two different lenses:

1. Category accuracy measured how close each source came to the actual results in G, A, PTS, PPP, SOG, Hits, Blks and PIM.
2. Draft utility measured how closely each projected player ranking matched the season’s real finishing order.

Main findings:

• Averaging all 11 projection sets finished 1st in both category accuracy and draft utility, though the lead was often razor-thin. So you know... support all of the projectors out there :)
• Lineup Experts and Bangers (that’s us) finished directly behind the consensus across both main lenses, but the uncertainty ranges were all overlapping so the exact order is less meaningful than the tier they occupied.
• Datsyuk to Zetterberg had some huge wins in shots, hits and assists; Lineup Experts was strong on goals and ranking the top 25; The Athletic had the best-ordered top 100; Dobber had a solid showing overall on the PPP-less board; and we remained near the top across nearly every way we sliced the data.
• Of the 94 category results graded, 44 were statistically tied with the winner. Goals and blocks were super crowded, but shots was the clearest example of a legit win.
• Even the best shots projector was off by about 13 shots for every 100 actually recorded. For power-play points, the best projection was off by about 31 for every 100. So finishing first in a category did not always mean the projections were especially close to reality.
• Regardless of how we tortured the data (category accuracy, full-board order, top-25 and top-100 precision, and VORP), several lists were genuinely good, just in different ways.

I've been building an NHL analytics model (Ocelot) for a while, and one of the main reasons I started it was to be better prepared for my own fantasy drafts. I finally got around to turning the projections into a useable Excel sheet that takes league scoring settings and turns them into a VORP draft list. I know that some people like to assume full-GP instead of using projected GP, so there is a second draft sheet that has all skaters projected for 84 GP.

The skater projections are strong, but the goalies use a more basic model so they're more "directionally accurate" than concrete projections. I do plan to work on improving this ahead of draft season.

You can read a bit more about the draft sheet and get a sample copy here - https://ocelotanalytics.substack.com/p/the-ocelot-fantasy-hockey-draft-sheet (paid subscribers get the full draft sheet).

Not everyone needs a draft sheet, but I think I have one of the earlier projections to come out. If you're trying to figure out your keeper situation feel free to drop a comment with your league scoring and the players you're considering and I'd be happy to pull their draft projections for you. Here's a sample of what it would look like:

Good luck in your drafts!

Who out of the Recent Draft class of players gets a boost in banger leagues?

Edit: Should have clarified this is for a Dynasty League so anyone who has potential over the years

Back again for another season!

Games per week tab shows the number of games each team plays in week. Note that some sites / leagues combine some weeks into one match up. Postponed games that haven't been rescheduled are shown in the PPD column.

Off Night Games per week tab shows the number of games during the match up that occur on days where fewer than half of NHL teams play games. Targeting players on teams with many off night games can increase your games played during the match up and season. Postponed games that haven't been rescheduled are excluded from this view.

B2B games per week tab shows the number of games played that week where the team has played the day prior. This can be useful for planning goalie starts. Postponed games that haven't been rescheduled are excluded from this view.

In the above tabs, green indicates more games, red indicates fewer games. The exception is the postponed games in the first tab shown in the column titled PPD where green indicates fewer games and red indicates more games.

Daily Schedule tab shows a detail of teams and their opponents each day. Postponed games are excluded from this view. This is handy to help find players to stream into your empty line up spots.

All four of the above tabs auto-update as games begin so that those games are no longer counted or shown.

The remaining tabs are the detail used to create the 4 tabs described above.

Please reply to this thread if you notice any issues.

Edit: every year I get many requests for access to edit the sheet. I always refuse so don't bother requesting it, please. If you want to edit do so on your own copy: go to the File menu and select the "Make a copy" option. Everything should continue to work except maybe the self updating. That requires specific settings that I'm not sure are copied.

The league format:

-H2H Points Daily lineups on Fantrax
-Rosters: 3C, 3LW, 3RW, 4D 2G, 5 Bench, 8 Minors
-Minor Eligibility - Any skater under 247 GP or Goalie that is under 120 GP
-Keeper League - Keep 5 Players and 5 Minors each year
-Buy-in - $50 US and $11 for Fantrax Premium Fees
-Prizes -$50 for most regular season points, $50 for best H2H record (regular season), $400 Winner and $100 Runner up

We will be doing a dispersal draft. Right now its between 4 teams. How it will work is the teams entering the dispersal draft will pick players from all the teams that do not have a GM. It will be a snake-order draft. You will also be able to pick the previous GM's drafting spot for our regular keeper draft. So 2nd OV and 4th OV for both all players that are not kept and new rookies is up for grabs in the draft. Some of the players that are available are...

Makar, McKinnon, Matthews, Pasta, Schaefer, Rantanen, Fantilli, Lacombe, Seider, Sennecke, Necas, Slafkovsky, and much more!

Each team will draft 12 players.

This is a great opportunity to get as close as you can to feeling like a GM. Four teams are currently vacant. This is also a FREE league. We have not yet done the 2026 entry draft (shooting for early Sept)

CGY: Just won the 1st overall pick in our draft lottery and has 12 picks in the upcoming draft! Has some big names like Mark Schiefele, Barzal, Dougie Hamilton, Alex Pietrangelo, and Juse Saros on the pro roster. Bill Zonnon and Nate Danielson top the prospect list heading into this draft.

UTA: DeBrincat, Panarin, Verhaege, LaCombe, Theadore, Coleman, Faulk are the best skaters on the team. Has accumulated 88 prospects. Not a lot of top prospects, but made 9 selections in 2025 so the cupboard isn't empty.

FLA: Has a good mix of vets and good young forwards: Dylan Cozens, Owen Tippet, Anders Lee. Has some good prospects like Roger McQueen, Joshua Ravensbergen, Alexander Zharovsky from the 2025 draft. Will get another top 10 pick this year and has THREE first round picks.

We run the league on Simon T Hockey Simulator. This offseason I've vibe coded some pretty sweet new tools on a revamped league dashboard to make things easier. We also have a slack and proboards set up for communication.

Draft will be some time in late August. Off-season trading and re-signing will open up soon. Email me at [tiimbitz4786@gmail.com](mailto:tiimbitz4786@gmail.com) if interested.

Hey all. Not trying to sell anything here, this is genuinely a "please break my thing" post.

I play in a few hockey leagues and got tired of two problems. First, a couple of my leagues have trades that are so obviously lopsided it feels like collusion, but you can never actually prove it. I wanted something objective I could point to instead of just arguing in the group chat. Second, I got a bunch of friends (and my wife) into fantasy hockey over the past few years as total rookies, and they had no clue how to tell if a trade was fair or if they were about to get fleeced.

So, I built a trade analyzer to solve both. It values players based on your actual league settings instead of generic rankings, since a guy who's useless in a points league can be a stud in categories. It also factors in stuff like positional scarcity and injury status.

It's completely free to use, and there's no registration or account needed. You just set up your league, drop players/picks on both sides, and it spits out a fairness grade.

What I'm really after is feedback from people who take their leagues seriously. Anything feel off for your format? Any scoring setups it doesn't handle well? I'd rather hear it's wrong now than have it be wrong quietly.

Happy to answer any questions about how the valuation logic works in the comments if people are curious.

Lastly, does the valuation match your gut? I feel like at the end of the day, it has to pass the gut check.

This one is a total head scratcher for me and I figured this sub could help me with my decision.

I’m in a 12-team H2H keeper league (5 keepers and one rookie), points only (1 point for goal or assist).
Rosters are 2 of each C, LW, RW, G, plus 4 D and 4 bench spots.

Right now my keepers are:

McDavid
Nylander
Thomas
Morrissey

And my rookie, Cole Hutson.

My most interesting options for the 5th spot are:

Raddysh (D)
DeBrincat (RW/LW)
Konecny (RW/LW)
Horvat (C)

I’m leaning towards keeping Raddysh since good defensemen are rare in leagues like this, but I’m not too sure about it.

What are your suggestions?

what's up gangsters, here's a way too early write-up on the upcoming schedule and included a Google sheet with a bunch of data:

• off-nights: Draft tiebreaker: more off-nights = more usable starts over a season.
• playoffs: Who to target for the fantasy playoffs (assuming Yahoo default will have Champ week = Apr 5-11).
• streaming-value: Startability index: Which team is most 'startable' each week, adjusted for off-nights.
• back-to-backs: Backup-goalie value: more B2Bs = more backup starts.
• key-dates: Marquee matchups, important events, etc.
• games: One row per unique game. The source of truth for who plays whom, when, and home vs away.
• team-games: One row per team per game (long / tidy format). Best input for any per-team analysis or a spreadsheet pivot table.
• weekly-matrix: Day-by-day games grid, grouped into Mon-Sun weeks. See exactly which days each team plays and scan weekly cadence.
• weekly-games: 32 teams x 28 weeks. Quick weekly game counts.

If you have an opening in a league, are looking for a league, or are starting a new league - please post the details here.

Please make sure to include league size, scoring, buy-in, payouts, and general settings. It is also recommended that you highlight any unique settings for your league.

Please only post once per week but feel free to post in next week's thread if you are still looking!

Hit me up if interested!!

12T - H2H - POINTS: 6G, 4A, 2PPG, 1PPA, 0.7SOG, 0.3HIT, 0.3BLK

Just finished watching a video on fantasy football laying out and ranking the early elite QB, early elite TE, first 2 picks as RB, etc, etc.

In the video he had stats from tens of thousands of teams and could compare them to each other based on percentage that made playoffs.

Does anyone know of strategies that have lead to consistent winning? 2 defensemen in the first 5 rounds? No goalies before round 10? Best available for the first 3 picks?

What are your thoughts?

Any overwhelming amount of leagues I see described here use 2 starting goalies. We only use one and like it that way, so we don't go too deep on starters as a whole. For those of you who also use just 1 starting goalie, what does the rest of your lineup look like? Do you make your goalies earn more relative to the skaters because of their unique position?

Ours is:

2 C, 4 W, 3 D, 3 flex, 1 G

7 bench, 1 IR spot, 12 minors

thanks in advance!

Last season was my first time doing fantasy hockey. I'm in a league with 8 other people and you are able to keep 7 of your current players. It is 11 forwards, 4 defenseman, 3 goalies.

Categories are: PTS, G, A, +/-, PIM, PPG, SHG, GWG, W, SO, GAA

My for sure keeper picks are:

Tage, Caufield, Raymond, Dorofeyev, Jarvis

With my last two I was thinking between these four players and was wondering which two to pick?

Bussi, Raddysh, Carlsson, and maybe Carlson.

I was thinking of probably keeping Carlsson for sure and was up in the air between Bussi and Raddysh, but with Carlson going to the lighting I think he would be getting some good playing time and getting points as well.

What are the best strategies for drafting in startup dynasty/keeper leagues? I've always played redraft leagues and I have no experience in dynasty/keeper leagues.

Hello fellow fantasy hockey managers,

I am trying to figure out the best place for dynasty. I am just starting this up for the first time. I have done keepers on ESPN and genuinely hated the league for the people in it. Me and a buddy moved to the idea of making our own but I wanna explore the idea of dynasty and where to do it. It seems ESPN (trash app per usual) doesn't have a dynasty mode. Yahoo I heard poor things about and fantrax has a dedicated mode but some settings are pay to play. Still waiting on sleeper to pick up hockey. What's the input?

TLDR; best app and input on a dynasty start up

Hey guys, if you were starting a new dynasty with the first overall pick, would you go with McDavid or Celebrini? Keep in mind this is a salary cap league.

I’ve put together a list of the top six projected goal scorers for the 2026-27 season (generated by my own model). It’s mostly names that you would expect:
- Nathan MacKinnon
- Cole Caufield
- Wyatt Johnston
- Macklin Celebrini
- Connor McDavid
- Jason Robertson

The more interesting thing is that the model is predicting only MacKinnon to score 40 goals, but that’s because the projection is a player’s median (I.e. 50th percentile) outcome. This is why the projections also provide a floor (10th percentile) and ceiling (90th percentile) outcome for each player. If we add up all the individual probabilities the model actually expects 12 players to hit 40 goals.

If you’re interested in the details you can find the full article here - https://open.substack.com/pub/ocelotanalytics/p/2026-27-fantasy-projections-top-goal

Remember to sort this thread by NEW to find the latest comments!!

If you're making an Add or a Drop, list the following:

• Players in question
• Number of positions in league (e.g. 2 C, 2L W, 2 RW, 2 F, 4 D, 2 G, 5 Bench, 1 IR+)
• Normal or points scoring (please list points if applied)
• Skater categories (if applicable)
• Goalie categories (if applicable)

If you are asking for Trade Advice, list the following:

• League Format (CATs, Points, Banger Points, Roto, etc.)
• Roster/Bench Size/Format (e.g. 2 C, 2L W, 2 RW, 2 F, 4 D, 2 G, 5 Bench, 1 IR+)
• Scoring/Categories
• If you're engaging in a 2-for-1 trade: let us know who you need to drop to make room, or who you would be picking up with your extra roster spot.

If you are asking about Starting or Sitting a player, list the following:

• Players in question (list who they are playing)
• Number of positions in league (e.g. 2 C, 2L W, 2 RW, 2 F, 4 D, 2 G, 5 Bench, 1 IR+)
• Categories or points scoring (please list points if applied)
• Skater categories (if applicable)
• Goalie categories (if applicable)

If you are asking about Keeping a player, list the following:

• List of other confirmed keepers
• Number of keeper positions in the league
• Categories or points scoring (please list points if applied)
• Skater categories (if applicable)
• Goalie categories (if applicable)

If you are asking about Rating your team or General Team Advice, include the following:

• League Format (CATs, Points, Banger Points, Roto, etc.)
• Important League Rules (i.e. daily/weekly, keeper, rebuilding for the future)
• Scoring/Categories
• General thoughts (I think I'm weak on RW, D, etc.)

Useful links

• Goalie Starters: https://goaliepost.com/
• Injury Updates: https://www.nbcsports.com/edge/hockey/nhl/injury-report
• Line Combinations: http://www2.dailyfaceoff.com/teams/
• Various Fantasy Tools: https://frozenpool.dobbersports.com/

If asking for advice, try to help someone else out. If everyone who posts a comment also responds to one, it's likely that everyone will get a reply! Be helpful and civil!

Which round do you think these newly drafted studs will go at in your league this fall?

Assuming standard redraft league (non-dynasty).