Get The Draft Guide!
Rotoworld’s 2015 Draft Guide is here!
There is all the information in the Guide to help you dominate your drafts including customizable rankings, projections, 600-plus player profiles, team reports, schedule grid, positional tiers including one for enforcers, mock drafts, injury reports and plenty of exclusive columns.
A one-time payment of $19.99 will give you full access to the Draft Guide, or it can be bundled with our NHL Season Pass for only $34.99. The Season Pass will give you our Roundtable discussion, minor league and junior hockey reports and plenty more.
All of the features listed above are exclusive to the Draft Guide, including the profiles, rankings, projections and the outlier columns. Rotoworld’s NHL writers have put together over 20 articles with more to come. Among the columns are:
Sleepers & Busts
Blocked Shots
Power Forwards
Power Defensemen
Top 25 Transactions in the off-season
Top Rookies
Faceoffs
Injury Report
Top 50 Goalies
Shots on Goal
2015 Schedule Analysis
… and lots more!
There will be mock drafts including an auction, a dynasty and a re-draft one during training camp.
Here are excerpts from some of our columns in the Draft Guide. These are only a portion of what is available in the column.
Top Rookies
Connor McDavid (EDM) - McDavid has been referred to as the next Sidney Crosby and even Wayne Gretzky doesn't foresee a problem with the 2015 first overall pick making the jump straight to the NHL from the juniors. Watching McDavid play junior hockey, he certainly seems like he's on another level, but how will he stack up against the world's best player at the age of 18? Well, we wouldn't count on him scoring 102 points as a rookie like Crosby did in 2005-06, in part because the league's scoring has declined since then. However, an 80-point season certainly isn't out of the realm of possibilities, which would make him one of the league's top forwards right out of the gate. Don't for a minute assume that McDavid is immune to the rule that all rookies are risks, but also don't doubt that the ceiling on him is sky high.
Power Forwards
Scott Hartnell - There are certain players who seem like natural rivals in fantasy hockey by virtue of the fact that they bring nearly the same thing to the table and are often close to each other in terms of value by the end of the season. Backes and Hartnell is a prime example of that in my mind. Like Backes, I would anticipate Hartnell getting 50-60 points and 100-120 penalty minutes in 2015-16. The only reason why I'm putting Hartnell a hair below Backes is because I consider the former to be a bit more of a risk to meet those predictions, in part because he's a little older at 33. Hartnell also had a rough time during the lockout shortened campaign, which wasn't the case with Backes. To be clear, those are relatively minor complaints that might add up to nothing, but when you're talking about two players who are this close in value, you're forced to separate them by the smallest of grievances.
Faceoffs
Paul Gaustad - Gaustad surpassed 30 points twice as a member of the Buffalo Sabres, but he hasn't come close to reaching that mark since joining Nashville. He contributed 21 points in 2013-14 and earned a mere total of 14 in 73 matches last season. Gaustad won't be a contributor offensively, but he does excel on faceoffs. He won 56.4 percent of his 1,097 draws to go with 143 hits and 60 penalty minutes. Gaustad didn't take the most puck drops on the Predators, but he was the team's best when it came to victories (619). Still, he should only be an option for fantasy owners seeking faceoff help to go with some hit and PIM contributions.
Top 50 Goalies
Steve Mason- A remarkable career turnaround, but I still worry that he's a quantity-over-quality guy. The difference is that the team around him is to blame this time around.
If you would have told me that Steve Mason would revitalize his career behind a putrid Philadelphia Flyers defense corps after all those years of failure in Columbus when he was traded away, I probably would have blinked a few times and then passed out. Yet here we are: Mason has been one of the best things going for the Flyers not named Claude Giroux, Jakub Voracek and maybe Wayne Simmonds.
To see the rest of these articles and everything else in the NHL Draft Guide, just click here.
