Fantasy Hockey Draft Cheat Sheet
My most commonly picked players in 36 mock drafts for the 2024/25 season.
Welcome to my 3rd annual Fantasy Draft Cheat Sheet, the original version of which came in the fall of 2022 after logging daily mock drafts on Yahoo (12 team leagues, standard league scoring with shots and hits) in a spreadsheet and randomly decided to compute which players I had picked the most often and the average pick taken. It was an ADP of my picks. This is a cheat code for potential draft bargains that can slip later than deserved, but be warned, lots of auto-drafting happens in the Yahoo mock draft lobby. Acquiring these players at these picks gets less feasible the tougher the competition. My actual draft rankings are a far better guide, this is just the cheat sheet if you don’t have time for proper homework.
This is the first of five fantasy hockey posts dropping on this blog in the next 7 days. Correction: my scoring projections are going out exclusively to my free subscribers and won’t be available on the blog, but you can access them by paying the $0 fee. Those projections will include shots and hits, but are probably most useful for people in points pools. All my other material places value on shots and hits. Draft Rankings drop next, then the draft bargains, then the busts. Subscribe for free and if this helps you win money, the rate of return on your investment will be infinite (check to make sure that’s true). Okay, if profit divided by zero is infinite, then your losses would also be infinite. Risk reward I suppose…
Those aforementioned Draft Rankings are a much more useful if you are pre-ranking players because everyone is included and reflect my actual stat projections. Many of these drafts were just me “winging it” during my morning coffee routine, but still grew increasingly skilled at waiting on bargains. After completing projections then parlaying those into actual draft rankings, some of my mock decisions/valuations shifted for certain players. This cheat sheet just gives you names to look for in specific ranges and those who might slip to the next round, but be warned, the smarter your league-mates, the less likely that Yahoo’s incorrectly ranked players will slip to the desired range.
A few notable examples: my average Evan Bouchard pick was 30 but he’s 19 in my rankings. Stutzle 57 average, 29 ranked. Tage Thompson 54 average, 37 ranked. Only 36% of these picks have a Cheat Sheet ADP later than their ranking, so the players I like most won’t be subjected to excessive waiting. The one that dropped the most was Luke Hughes, given I stopped drafting him after news broke he’s out 2 months. Just because a name does not appear here, that’s not itself a “do not draft” warning. Auston Matthews isn’t here, but after projections he leapfrogged Leon in my ranks. Most players are worthwhile at the right price, these are just the optimal bargain range. Some players avoided in mocks looked better next to their stat projections.
One of the most important notes (that should be copy-pasted into all my fantasy draft prep posts) is that goalie rankings are relative to your league settings, size, even league-mates. There’s only a handful of reliable #1 goalies who receive big workloads, but where they go in drafts depends on numerous factors. It’s VERY important to always keep an eye on which goalies are still on the board and be ready to pounce when the agreeable options are vanishing. Adaptation is key and goaltending is the only positions where it’s required. Those of you competing in 20-team leagues don’t need reminders to be mindful of potential goalie scarcity.
Draft Rankings are done and should be ready tomorrow! Subscribe for free!
1.0 Connor McDavid EDM C
2.0 Nathan MacKinnon COL C
3.5 Nikita Kucherov TBL RW
5.3 Leon Draisaitl EDM C,LW
6.0 David Pastrňák BOS RW
8.1 Mikko Rantanen COL RW
10.0 Matthew Tkachuk FLA LW,RW
11.7 Jack Hughes NJD C,LW
13.0 Brady Tkachuk OTT C,LW
13.0 Kirill Kaprizov MIN LW
15.5 William Nylander TOR RW
16.0 J.T. Miller VAN C,RW
19.0 Sam Reinhart FLA C,RW
19.3 Zach Hyman EDM LW,RW
19.5 Elias Pettersson VAN C,LW
25.0 Igor Shesterkin NYR G
26.8 Jason Robertson DAL LW
28.0 Brayden Point TBL C
30.0 Evan Bouchard EDM D
31.4 Jake Guentzel TBL LW
32.4 Kyle Connor WPG LW
34.3 Sebastian Aho CAR C
34.8 Mitch Marner TOR RW
35.2 Jeremy Swayman BOS G
35.8 Jake Oettinger DAL G
36.5 Juuse Saros NSH G
39.0 Adam Fox NYR D
42.8 Aleksander Barkov FLA C
43.7 Connor Hellebuyck WPG G
45.0 Victor Hedman TBL D
47.2 Connor Bedard CHI C
50.3 Wyatt Johnston DAL C,RW
51.3 Andrei Vasilevskiy TBL G
53.8 Tage Thompson BUF C,RW
54.5 Sergei Bobrovsky FLA G
56.5 Brad Marchand BOS LW
57.5 Tim Stützle OTT C,LW
60.0 Jesper Bratt NJD LW,RW
60.0 Andrei Svechnikov CAR LW,RW
60.3 Steven Stamkos NSH C,LW
67.3 Stuart Skinner EDM G
69.8 Miro Heiskanen DAL D
70.0 Jacob Markström NJD G
71.3 Ilya Sorokin NYI G
71.6 Dougie Hamilton NJD D
72.8 Kevin Fiala LAK LW
73.0 R. Nugent-Hopkins EDM C,LW
75.5 Clayton Keller SLC LW,RW
77.9 Dylan Larkin DET C
81.0 Noah Dobson NYI D
85.0 Mika Zibanejad NYR C
86.5 Moritz Seider DET D
89.3 Cole Caufield MTL LW,RW
91.2 Morgan Rielly TOR D
93.2 Adin Hill VEG G
99.0 Matt Boldy MIN LW,RW
99.6 Pyotr Kochetkov CAR G
100.0 Devon Toews COL D
101.0 Alex DeBrincat DET LW,RW
105.0 U-Pekka Luukkonen BUF G
105.6 Brock Faber MIN D
105.7 Erik Karlsson PIT D
106.4 Luke Hughes NJD D
113.2 Linus Ullmark OTT G
114.0 Shea Theodore VEG D
115.2 Drew Doughty LAK D
122.3 Seth Jones CHI D
122.3 John Carlson WSH D
123.0 Filip Gustavsson MIN G
123.5 Filip Hronek VAN D
124.0 Roope Hintz DAL C
124.0 Nico Hischier NJD C
124.5 Lucas Raymond DET LW,RW
125.7 Robert Thomas STL C
125.8 Mike Matheson MTL D
127.3 Kris Letang PIT D
130.0 Aaron Ekblad FLA D
131.5 Jake Sanderson OTT D
132.6 Alex Tuch BUF RW
134.0 Timo Meier NJD LW,RW
134.4 Thomas Harley DAL D
141.0 Sean Durzi SLC D
142.3 Patrick Kane DET RW
144.9 Martin Nečas CAR C,RW
145.7 Drake Batherson OTT LW,RW
150.0 Mats Zuccarello MIN RW
153.3 Rasmus Andersson CGY D
153.3 Elias Lindholm BOS C
154.2 Jeff Skinner EDM LW
158.4 Jordan Kyrou STL C,RW
161.0 Quinton Byfield LAK RW
165.8 Pavel Buchnevich STL C,LW
166.0 Jake Neighbours STL LW,RW
168.4 Matt Duchene DAL C,RW
168.9 Jake DeBrusk VAN LW,RW
172.6 Viktor Arvidsson EDM LW
173.0 Andrei Kuzmenko CGY LW,RW
174.5 Patrik Laine MTL LW
177.1 Logan Stankoven DAL C
177.4 Jeremy Lauzon NSH D
178.5 Logan Cooley SLC C
178.8 Evgeni Malkin PIT C
179.5 Vladimir Tarasenko DET LW,RW
181.5 Jonathan Drouin COL LW
182.3 Matthew Beniers SEA C
182.8 Gabriel Vilardi WPG C,RW
188.3 Gustav Nyquist NSH LW
189.5 Troy Terry ANA C,RW