Ramblings: Comparing Scorers on Good/Bad Offenses, Power-Play ...

Since I couldn't think of what to write about today, I reached out to you on X for topics or questions. Thank you to all who replied. I didn't write responses to everyone due to lack of time and the amount of research on my part. I'm still finishing my portion of the Fantasy Guide (purchase here), which will be available on July 29.

Anyway, I'll take a stab at a few of these.

I'll start by hand-picking an obviously great offensive team (Edmonton, 4th with 294 GF) and with an obviously poor offensive team (San Jose, 31st with 181 GF). In this particular example, you'd take the third or fourth-best forward on the great offensive team. Zach Hyman and his 54 goals or even Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and his 67 points should easily be drafted over Mikael Granlund and his 12 goals and 60 points.

The example Steve provided is a little closer than that. All of these forwards were within the 70-80-point range with the exception of Robert Thomas, who (perhaps quietly) broke through with an 86-point campaign. Thomas could be more closely ranked to the other three players in multicategory leagues than in pure points leagues because he scored fewer goals than all of Kevin Fiala, Brock Boeser, and Chris Kreider. I actually have Thomas ranked lower in the Roto Rankings than the other three, so this could be a call to move him up.

Player Compare: Boeser/Fiala/Kreider/Thomas

I wouldn't consider St. Louis and Los Angeles to have extremely terrible offenses. Especially not LA, who finished in the middle of the pack in offense in 2023-24. The Blues did finish in the bottom 10 in offense, while the Canucks and Rangers finished in the top 10 in offense.

Ironically, an example the other way would be Colorado (1st with 304 GF) and Chicago (32nd with 179 GF). For the Avalanche, remove Valeri Nichushkin, who will be in the NHLPA Player Assistance Program until November, and their third-highest projected forward would be Artturi Lehkonen with 0.76 PTS/GP. For the Blackhawks, Connor Bedard had 0.9 PTS/GP in his rookie season and only stands to get better. I know which player I'm picking in single-season leagues.

The Colorado/Chicago comparison might indicate a trend where the Avs fall from being the top offense and the Hawks improve from being the worst offense. Don't forget that the Blackhawks have also picked up Teuvo Teravainen and Tyler Bertuzzi, who were the third- and fourth-highest scorers among current Blackhawks last season.

I'm not sure there's a quick and easy answer to this question. It could certainly depend on the magnitude of "how good/how bad" the offenses are. I honestly hadn't thought of ranking forwards that way before, but that might be a benchmark I start to consider when drafting a forward. In other words, before drafting the top scorer from a bottom-10 offense, have the top two forwards of a top-10 offense been drafted? You could run through a lot of scenarios with top-10 and bottom-10 offenses. Some teams might be extremely reliant on 1-2 forwards, while other teams might have more spread-out scoring, which would affect the results.

The one team that jumped to mind here was Nashville, so I'll try to project their power play. Their most frequent top power play in 2023-24 was Roman Josi, Filip Forsberg, Ryan O'Reilly, Gustav Nyquist, and Colton Sissons. Based on last season's production regardless of team, I'd expect Steven Stamkos to replace Sissons. That shouldn't come as a huge surprise. I would have thought Jonathan Marchessault would be in the top power play as well, but he finished with 17 power-play points compared to Nyquist's 24 power-play points. So I'll project the power play with only Stamkos in for Sissons.

Stamkos registered 19 power-play goals compared to just 3 PPP for Sissons. Add 16 power-play goals to Nashville's 2023-24 total and they go from 58 power-play goals to 74 power-play goals. That would place them at the top of the league! It’s not a perfect projection, as Stamkos could be negatively affected by moving to a new power play and having to learn a new system.

Coincidentally, Tampa Bay scored the most power-play goals in the league in 2023-24, and they would be losing Stamkos' 19 power-play goals. The Lightning are replacing Stamkos with Jake Guentzel, who scored just five power-play goals in 2023-24. Everything else remaining equal, they would fall from 71 PPG to 57 PPG, which is about where Nashville was (tied for 9th). I would assume that Guentzel will score more than five power-play goals in 2024-25.

Again, there's more to it than what I've listed. But if we're strictly discussing power plays and not 5-on-5, it's worth mentioning here that only Sam Reinhart and Leon Draisaitl had more power-play goals than Stamkos. As a result, Nashville's top power play could be one of the best in the league with the acquisition of Stamkos, if you consider the replacement-level production of their forwards in that spot last season.

I mentioned the Blackhawks earlier, and their power play stands to improve from being in the bottom 5 in terms of both power-play goals (39) and power-play percentage (16.6%). Adding Teravainen and Bertuzzi will help, and don't forget that Taylor Hall also missed nearly all of last season with a knee injury. However, replacing these three players with the top power-play options last year seems to only result in marginal gains, and you could even argue that not all of these players should be on the top power play with Bedard (Fantasy Take: Teravainen & Bertuzzi Bound for Blackhawks).

I was going to tell you to watch where Daniel Sprong signs, but he just signed in Vancouver on Saturday. I won't repeat the entire Fantasy Take here, but I'll just say that he fits the bill of what you might be looking for. Sprong finished with 43 points while averaging 12 minutes on the dot in 2023-24.

I can't help but wonder if Sprong's former Red Wings teammate Robby Fabbri can to some degree replicate Frank Vatrano in Anaheim. This might be a crazy reach, given Fabbri's injury history and the fact that he has never reached 40 points. But keep in mind that Fabbri is two years younger and had a very decent 2.2 PTS/60 in 2023-24. Anaheim isn't stockpiled with experienced forwards, so Fabbri should easily slot into a middle-six role there.

Cole Perfetti jumps to mind as a longer-term play than Sprong or Fabbri. Perfetti could benefit from the offseason losses of Tyler Toffoli and Sean Monahan, as it's possible that he leaps all the way from healthy scratch to top power play (assuming the Nikolaj Ehlers power-play frustration lives on). Only four Jets forwards finished with a better points-per-60 than Perfetti (2.4 PTS/60). For more on Perfetti, read what Mike Clifford wrote about him in the Ramblings recently. Or what Puneet Sharma wrote in The Journey.

If Perfetti isn't available in your keeper league, then perhaps Pavel Dorofeyev is. Dorofeyev scored 2.3 PTS/60 while logging just over 13 minutes in 2023-24. Vegas lost a bunch of forwards this offseason, which could allow Dorofeyev to move up the lineup. Cliffy also wrote about Dorofeyev in another recent Ramblings. 

One more: Jack Drury might move up the Hurricanes lineup now that Evgeny Kuznetsov won't be returning to Carolina. That all depends on how the cards fall with the line combinations in Carolina.

I could spit out more names, but I'll fill you in on the strategy so that you might be able to unearth some more on your own. Look for teams that seemed to lose more prominent forwards than they gained this offseason. Could that team have an existing player that could move up in the lineup as a result? The last three players listed (Perfetti, Dorofeyev, Drury) are from teams that had some notable losses from their top-6 this offseason (Winnipeg, Vegas, Carolina).

–

Follow me on X @Ian_Gooding and Threads.