We are running through all 32 teams, three fantasy players at a time, two new teams every weekday until all 32 are done. Today it is the New York Islanders and Buffalo.
Both of them come down to a photo finish. The Islanders' top two are separated by 4.3 fantasy points and Buffalo's by 4.6, so on each side there is a real argument about who you take first and no obvious answer. One of the four is coming off a Calder-winning season.
Fantasy points below are Yahoo-style scoring from our 2026-27 projections. The band after each is that player's floor and ceiling, not a guarantee.
Matthew Schaefer, NY Islanders
Schaefer won the Calder and is now being asked to build on it, which is a different job from winning it. We have him 37th overall on 59 points and 222 shots from the back end. He is also the only player in this article who played all 82 games last year, which is why our projection carries him at 100% availability.
Our projection pushes him to 69 points with 227 shots, 114 blocks and 21 power play points, which is four strong projections from a second-year defenceman. He is on an entry-level deal at $990,000 through 2028, so in a keeper league he is the most valuable contract in this article.
Then there is the band: 599 to 873, a 274-point spread, and the widest on either roster. The ceiling would rank 8th overall. The floor would still rank 89th. There is not enough behind him yet to separate those, and the distance between them is the whole case for and against drafting him.
Ilya Sorokin, NY Islanders
Sorokin is one of the top five fantasy goalies in the league, 38th overall on our board, and the case for him is not the save percentage. That has fallen four seasons running: .925, .924, .909, .907 and .906.
The case is volume first. We project him to face 1,819 shots, more than any goalie in the league, because the Islanders give up more than most and he starts 62 games. Every save is worth points in this scoring, so the busiest crease is also the most valuable one, and that is most of why he sits where he does.
Quality backs it up rather than driving it. He is second of the 72 goalies we carry a goals-saved-above-expected figure for, at 28.4, behind only Logan Thompson at 30.9. That figure already accounts for how hard the shots were, so it measures him rather than the team in front of him. A save percentage can fall while a goalie is still stopping more than what he faced was worth, and that is what his has been doing.
We project 33 wins and .910 with a band of 651 to 743. He is signed at $8.25M through 2032 with a no-movement clause, so nothing about his situation is going to change.
Bo Horvat, NY Islanders
Horvat is the safest of the three and the least exciting. His band runs 599 to 697, 98 points wide and tighter than four out of five skaters on our board, and his last three seasons produced 68, 57 and 57 points.
We project 32 goals and 66 points on 264 shots, and he runs 68.8% of the Islanders' power play at 92.4% availability. There is nothing here that will win you a week and nothing that will lose you one either.
The one thing to watch is his shooting percentage, which has gone 13.3%, 11.5% and 13.7% and sits at 12.1% in our projection. He scores his goals at a steady rate on steady volume, and at 31 that is more likely to hold than to jump.
Tage Thompson, Buffalo
Thompson is 25th overall and the highest-ranked skater in this article, coming off 81 points in 81 games. What makes him hard to price is his shooting percentage, which has gone 15.0%, 15.9%, 11.8%, 18.2% and 14.7% over five seasons while his shot volume stayed between 242 and 295.
Our projection has him at 43 goals on 275 shots, a 15.6% rate that sits in the middle of that range rather than at either end. Given the swing, the middle is the right place to be, and his band of 692 to 803 is tighter than two thirds of the skaters on our board, which is not what you would guess from a player whose goal total has bounced between 29 and 47.
He is on $7.14M through 2031, wears an A, and takes 70.3% of Buffalo's power play at 93.7% availability. Everything about the usage is settled. The two numbers that will move his season are his shooting percentage and his shot count.
Rasmus Dahlin, Buffalo
Dahlin is 4.6 fantasy points behind Thompson and a completely different asset. We project 84 points, 32 power play points and 94 blocks. The 32 is the most of anyone in this article, and Buffalo have just cleared the road in front of it: Bowen Byram took 32% of their power play time last season and now plays in Chicago, and the next defenceman on their depth chart projects for five power play points.
His last five seasons read 53, 73, 59, 68 and 74 points, so the trend is up without being a straight line, and he has done it while shooting between 7.4% and 9.8%. The median for a defenceman last season was 6.3%. He has finished above his position every year of that run without once spiking to a rate he would have to give back.
At 26, on $11.00M through 2032 with a no-movement clause and the C, he is the closest thing in this article to a settled question. His band of 681 to 805 is narrower than the typical skater on our board, which is what five seasons in the same range buys you. What the top of it still asks for is 84 points from a defenceman, a big number even when the man has already scored 74.
Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, Buffalo
Luukkonen has alternated. His last four seasons read .892, .910, .887 and .910, bad and good in strict rotation, and he is coming off one of the good ones.
We project 34 wins, which only two goalies on our board are projected to beat, on a .904 save percentage that ranks 9th among the 30 goalies we have making 40 or more starts. He is also ranked 11th out of 72 in goals saved above expected at 12.8. That combination is why he lands 116th overall despite two seasons under .895 in his last four.
The reason to be careful is that 34 wins would be seven more than he has ever won in a season. His best is 27, and he played 35 games last season against 55 the year before, so the projection is buying both the rebound and the starts. On $4.75M through 2029 he is cheap enough that Buffalo can keep handing him the net.
What we would actually do
Thompson first on the Buffalo side and Dahlin immediately after, because the gap is under five fantasy points and the real question is what your roster counts. If it counts power play points, Dahlin's 32 lead everyone in this article and he goes first. If it counts blocks, note that Schaefer's 114 lead the page and Dahlin's 94 are second, so that category points across the two rosters rather than settling this one. On the Islanders side we would take Sorokin ahead of Schaefer in a one-year league and Schaefer ahead of everyone in a keeper, since a 19-year-old on a $990,000 entry-level deal with a ceiling of 873 is the kind of asset you build around. Horvat is the pick if you need floor and nothing else. Worth noting what three slots per team does to a list like this: Mathew Barzal is 77th overall and does not make the Islanders' three, while Buffalo's third man is 116th and does. The format is even. The rosters are not.
