The Dobber Hockey Offseason Fantasy Grades series began over the weekend. Yours Truly got to kick things off with the Anaheim Ducks, looking at the changes to their forward depth, the John Gibson trade, and why their power play is the real hurdle to fantasy success for their top options. Be sure to check back daily as we go through all 32 teams over the next month.
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Every summer, Dobber Hockey’s columnists and editors go through Bubble Keeper Week, which is exactly what it sounds like: This is the week to get in questions about those end-of-roster keeper decisions that need to be made. We are talking about the final one or two roster spots that have several possible options, or an either/or at the end of a list that is difficult to choose between. Brennan kicked things off in his Ramblings yesterday and I’m going to keep the ball rolling today.
Our first question comes from Jake Blumes who left a comment in a Ramblings on August 7th:
Let’s provide three answers here.
First, the most recent skater keeper rankings here at Dobber Hockey have Wyatt Johnston 47th overall and Dylan Holloway 59th overall. Holloway has seen a huge, huge rise over the last 10 months as he was 282nd at the start of the 2024-25 season and is now inside the top-60. Johnston, meanwhile, has been consistently inside the top-75 for over a year now. While the current keeper rankings are close, Johnston still has the edge, and has had the edge for a while.
The second answer is going to use the 2025-26 Dobber Hockey Fantasy Guide. In the guide, Dobber has Johnston projected for 72 points and Holloway for 73, which would give a slight edge to Holloway. Johnston is projected for 32 goals compared to Holloway’s 28, so that might tip the scales back the other way, but for just raw point output, Holloway has a slim edge in projections.
The third answer is my own, and I will say Wyatt Johnston is the player to keep. Over the last two seasons, his 2.37 even strength points per 60 minutes leads all forwards under the age of 23 and with at least 1500 minutes played. While Holloway had a great 2024-25 season, Johnston has had two years that were just as impressive, and that should make us feel better about his true talent level.
To go with that production is the ice time levels. Johnston has been Dallas’s most-used centre as a share of even strength time over the last two seasons. While that share of even strength time was similar to Holloway’s in 2024-25, the power play time differed. Johnston was a regular on Dallas’ top PP unit while Holloway floated between the first and second units.
The last reason to go with Johnston over Holloway is the team around them. Over the last three years, Dallas has been the third-highest scoring team in the league. Over the last two years, they are again third by goals-for rate. And, in a shocking twist, Dallas was third by goal scoring in 2024-25 alone. Meanwhile, St. Louis hasn’t been a top-10 team since 2021-22. I have no problem believing St. Louis will improve with young skaters like Holloway, Jimmy Snuggerud, and Philip Broberg improving, but Dallas already is what St. Louis hopes to be. On top of that, Dallas’ core of Johnston, Mikko Rantanen, Roope Hintz, Jason Robertson, Miro Heiskanen, and Thomas Harley are all under 30 years old. Even with some aging players like Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin, there is plenty of young talent to carry them for a few more years at least.
It sucks to throw Holloway back in the pool because he does have a bright future, but Johnston already has two seasons of better production than Holloway’s breakout year despite being two years younger than Holloway, will get more ice time, and has the better offensive environment around him.
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For the next Bubble Keeper question, we take it to Twitter:
@SlimCliffy @DobberHockey
Guys, in a keeper league would you draft Rantanen or B.Tkachuk with the points scoring being
Goal 3
Assist 2
SOGS 0.20
Blocks 0.20
Hits 0.15
PIMs 0.25
— Beerbot 🍻 (@Go22rd) August 1, 2025
To be quick about this, it’s Brady Tkachuk. The peripheral advantage he has more than makes up for Rantanen’s far superior assist production. Here are the per-game point projections in this system using the numbers from the 2025-26 Dobber Hockey Fantasy Guide:
A follow-up question was sent in, and it was the same format but choosing between Martin Necas and Jake Guentzel. Using the projections from the Fantasy Guide, it is very close, but the lean is to Jake Guentzel for the 2025-26 season:
Off the hop, the Fantasy Guide says Guentzel for this year, but the Keeper Rankings say Nečas. The big reason there is Nečas is five years younger – he was born in 1999 whereas Guentzel was born in 1994. With Guentzel turning 31 years old in October, it ‘s fair to wonder if he has more then 2-3 great production seasons left.
Here is the crux of the whole thing: Nečas is a free agent after the 2025-26 season. Colorado has about $78-million committed to the 2026-27 season, and the cap is expected to rise again with the latest projection being around $104-million. That would leave Colorado with about $25-million in cap space to work with and aside from Nečas and Sam Malinski, there are no big-ticket extensions to make. So, if Colorado wants to keep Nečas beyond the 2025-26 season, and Nečas wants to stay, there is enough cap space to make it happen.
As we saw last season, none of this is guaranteed. This time last year, no one expected Colorado to trade Rantanen, few people expected Carolina to trade Nečas, no one expected them to be traded for each other, and for Rantanen to be traded again. Things change fast, and while I would expect Nečas to remain with the Avs, there is a lot of elite talent set to become free agents next summer: Connor McDavid, Kirill Kaprizov, Jack Eichel, Adrian Kempe, Kyle Connor, Artemi Panarin, and Alex Tuch, to name a few. There is no guarantee all, or even most, make it all the way to free agency, but teams are going to keep cap space open just in case. If four or five of those names sign extensions before Christmas, then Colorado will be more inclined to do the same with Nečas, but that is not the case right now.
Between Nečas and Guentzel, my lean is to Nečas, but there is risk here. If Colorado decides not to extend him, then his fantasy future becomes a lot more muddled. So, I’ll say this: If you want to risk more long-term upside rather than take some short-term security, I would keep Nečas. If you want to take the more sure-fire 30-goal, 70-point season for this year and probably next, I would keep Guentzel.
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The last question for today comes from BlueSky:
There are two key aspects to this question:
A three-year keeper limit means that there are very young players on the potential keeper list that if they were kept, they wouldn’t reach their true production peak before having to throw them back.
The six players being kept are all forwards, and this is an 18-team league, so there won’t be much for defencemen to draft if no defencemen are kept.
In short, the answer here is probably Alexis Lafrenière and Marco Rossi. Both players will be 24 years old for this season and with the three-year keeper window, they are starting their peak production years. One reason I hesitate though is that, as mentioned in the earlier section, both Panarin and Kaprizov are free agents after 2025-26. It is conceivable that both Lafrenière and Rossi lose their team’s most productive player 11 months from now, and that would be brutal for their fantasy value. However, given the time limit parameters and what they’ve both done to this point, they make the most sense.
I do think there is a case for keeping Perfetti over Rossi. With Nikolaj Ehlers signing in Carolina, the Winnipeg Jets have an open spot on the team’s top PP unit and Perfetti is primed to take that Ehlers role. There is no guarantee he gets it, and no guarantee he keeps it, but the same is true for both Lafrenière and Rossi, and Rossi’s future in Minnesota is a lot more uncertain. Perfetti also turns 24 years old in January and has 222 regular season games played, so he’s in a prime spot for a breakout if he can get those top PP minutes.
Then there is the consideration of keeping a defenceman. I have no interest in Mason Lohrei, so it would be between Zayne Parekh and Brandt Clarke for me. I would lean Clarke just because he turns 23 years old in February so his potential prime age, combined with the three-year term limit, is much closer than Parekh, who turns 20 years old in February. If someone wanted to say that Parekh has more upside over the next 10 years than Clarke does, I wouldn’t argue, but for just the next three years, it is a lot to ask of Parekh to be a high-value keeper at the age of 19, 20, and 21. Both are stuck behind some veteran defencemen, so it isn’t as if either has a clear path to top pair/top PP minutes.
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Anyone wanting to submit a keeper question, leave a comment below, or reach out to me on Twitter or BlueSky.