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 Vancouver, which we project for 66 points, and Chicago, at 78.
Bad teams are not empty, they are uneven, and these two are uneven in opposite ways. Vancouver offers three players in their prime who have missed almost nothing in five years and will finish roughly where we say they will. Chicago offers a genuine star, a goalie who just got his first full starter's workload, and one player with twelve NHL games to his name.
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.
Elias Pettersson, Vancouver
Pettersson is Vancouver's only top-100 asset, and our projection has him gaining 17 points on last season's 51. That is a partial recovery, not a return: he scored 102 in 2022-23 and has gone 89, 45 and 51 since, with 15 goals in each of the last two years. He has played 80, 80, 82, 64 and 74 games across the last five years, a 92.7 percent availability rate, which is the quiet reason he is worth a mid-round pick on a roster with this little around him.
Brock Boeser, Vancouver
Boeser is the power play. His 19 projected power play points are second on the team behind Pettersson, and 174 shots on a team we project 32nd is volume you cannot get many other places in this range. He has cleared 71 games in each of the last five seasons. Vancouver's forward group is young around him, with Rossi centring the top line at 25 and Cootes and Ohgren at 19 and 22 behind him, so some of his ice time could go elsewhere. Our projection still has him at 56 points, which is what makes him worth the pick.
Jake DeBrusk, Vancouver
DeBrusk has the least risk in his projection but does not offer the high end Pettersson does. His floor is 423 and his ceiling 521, a 98 point swing that is tighter than four out of five skaters on our board. He is projected for more shots than either teammate above him at 201, and the 76 hits matter in leagues that count them. Nothing here is exciting, and that is the entire case: he is the most predictable player on the roster.
Connor Bedard, Chicago
Bedard is the only player in this article we would take in the first three rounds, and his 954 ceiling is top-ten-overall production. Our model tags him elite-young and projects 99 points off last season's 75 in 69 games, with 35 power play points, the highest figure here by twelve. One caveat worth pricing before your draft: our projection assumes a full season, and he has played 68, 82 and 69 games in his three years. If he misses time at the start, the 99 comes down and Frondell's 61 goes up, because those minutes go somewhere.
Anton Frondell, Chicago
Say the uncomfortable part first: Frondell played 12 NHL games last season and scored 9 points, and our 61-point projection is that 12-game pace carried over a full year. What the projection is really pricing is opportunity, 252 shots is the most of any player here including Bedard, and every minute Bedard is not on the ice is a minute that goes to him. He also gets to learn the job beside two players who already have it: Chicago's power play is Bedard at 35 projected power play points and Patrick Kane at 21, with Frondell back at 14. Closing that gap is the cleanest path to beating the 61.
Spencer Knight, Chicago
Knight went 19-25 with a .902 save percentage last season, which reads like league-average goaltending and was not. He saved 9.19 goals above expected across 55 starts, the heaviest workload of his career, and our projection has him at plus 8.4 over 62 starts: a small step back from his own result rather than a leap of faith. His career save percentage is .904 across 150 games, so last season was not an outlier either. He lands 10th among goalies on our board, and he gets there with the fewest projected wins in that top ten, 22, while four of the nine ahead of him project a lower GSAx than his plus 8.4. He is the only goalie in this article, and on a team projected 31st the wins are the part that will disappoint. The goaltending is not.
What we would actually do
Bedard is a real pick. Pettersson is a real pick. After that it depends on what your roster already lacks. If you need floor, DeBrusk at 472, with a 40 point swing, is the safest thing either team offers. If you need a goalie, Knight's .902 reads worse than the season behind it: a streamer in deep formats, and a rosterable starter in a 12-team league. If you need a lottery ticket, Frondell is the one, with the twelve games attached.
Floor, ceiling and availability on all 406 skaters and 80 goalies, sortable.
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