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 St. Louis and the New York Rangers.
Neither of them has a number one. St. Louis's top two are separated by half a fantasy point. The Rangers fit three players and a fourth inside eighteen. If you are looking for the pick that anchors a roster, it is not on either of these teams, and that changes how you draft them.
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.
Robert Thomas, St. Louis
Thomas is an assist machine. He has put up 57, 47, 60, 60 and 39 assists over five seasons, and our projection has him at 58 more, inside 81 points. The games column reads 72, 73, 82, 70 and 64, which is 88% availability, almost exactly the league median. Only last season is a real dip.
What dipped was the rate, not the games. His assists per game fell from 0.86 to 0.61 in one season, and his scoring only held at a point a game because the goals went the other way, 21 up to 25. Our projection puts the assists back near 0.80, and that is the biggest call in this article. His band is 576 to 651, only 75 fantasy points wide and the tightest of any skater here, so you know almost exactly what Thomas gives you per game. You have to decide which of the last two seasons you are buying.
Dylan Holloway, St. Louis
Holloway is half a fantasy point behind Thomas, 613.0 to 613.5, and the two could not be less alike. His record has two players in it. In Edmonton he scored 9 points in 51 games, then 9 in 38. In St. Louis he scored 63, then 51 in 59 games.
Those two records produce the widest band in this article by some distance: 462 to 871, a spread of 409 fantasy points. The floor is a fourth liner and the ceiling is a top-30 forward. We project 30 goals, 210 shots and 159 hits, so the categories are there in a way they are not for Thomas. The availability is not: we have him at 68.6%, the lowest of anyone here.
Same expected value, opposite bets. Take Thomas if your roster needs a floor and Holloway if it needs a swing.
Jimmy Snuggerud, St. Louis
Snuggerud played 70 games as a 21-year-old last season and scored 51 points on 169 shots. Our projection pushes him to 67 points and 195 shots, a 16-point jump on a player with one full NHL season behind him.
He is 22 and earning $950,000 through 2028, and he is still waivers exempt. His band of 500 to 715 is wide for a reason, and the reason is that one season is not much to go on. But of the three Blues here he is the only one whose next three years are likely better than his last one.
Adam Fox, NY Rangers
Fox leads this article in both power play points and blocks, and is the most heavily used player in it. He was on the ice for 79.3% of the Rangers' power play last season, the highest share of anyone covered here, and averaged 23:38 a night. Our projection has him at 76 points, 31 power play points and 114 blocks, which is four categories from one roster spot.
The 55 games last season are the only thing anyone will raise, and they are worth less than they look. There is a second 55 in his record, in 2020-21, that means the opposite thing: the whole league played 56 games that year, so he missed one. And when he did play last season he scored at 0.96 points per game, the second-best rate of his five years. He was not diminished, he was absent. His band is 602 to 687, and the floor is the number to look at: 602 would still put him around 88th overall. The bad version of Adam Fox is a top-100 fantasy player.
Pavel Dorofeyev, NY Rangers
Dorofeyev has scored 0, 9, 24, 52 and 64 points in five seasons. That is not a breakout, it is a staircase, and our projection adds another step: 40 goals on 248 shots, which would be the most goals of anyone in this article.
Every one of those seasons was in Vegas, where he was on for 76.7% of the power play, and the usual warning about a new city does not really apply. Vegas ran the 6th-best power play in the league last season at 24.6%, and the Rangers ran the 5th at 24.7%. He is moving between two of the best units in hockey.
What he is moving into is a queue. Fox was on for 79.3% of New York's power play, Zibanejad 76.2% and Miller 71.2%, and a first unit has five slots. At $11.00M through 2033 he will be on one of them. Whether it is the first, and who is standing beside him, is what the 40 goals rest on.
Igor Shesterkin, NY Rangers
Shesterkin's save percentage has gone .935, .916, .913, .905 and .912. Our projection settles him at .909 with 26 wins over 62 starts, and that is not the number that makes him worth drafting. This is: we have him at 18.0 goals saved above expected, fifth among the 72 goalies we carry that figure for.
He is 5th among goalies overall on our board at 632 fantasy points. The wins are the risk, because they belong to the team in front of him and the Rangers project 23rd. In a save-percentage or goals-saved league he is a top-five pick at the position. In a wins league he is not.
What we would actually do
Fox first, and without much hesitation. 31 power play points and 114 blocks out of one slot is rare, he scored at the second-best rate of his career last season, and even his floor lands around 88th overall. Shesterkin next in any format that scores saves rather than wins. Dorofeyev we would watch through camp, where the question is which unit he lands on, not whether the power play is any good. On the St. Louis side Thomas and Holloway are a genuine coin flip at 613.5 and 613.0, and the tiebreaker is your roster rather than either player, while Snuggerud at 22 is the keeper-league pick. One warning for New York. Mika Zibanejad scored 78 points last season, more than anyone in this article, and still did not make the list. The Rangers pay their six highest-paid skaters $51.5M and not one of them is inside our top 55. Four inside eighteen fantasy points is not depth, it is a team without a first pick.
Floor, ceiling and availability on all 406 skaters and 80 goalies, sortable.
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