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 Boston and Nashville.
These two are built in opposite ways. Boston's best player is 228 fantasy points clear of their second, while Nashville's whole top four fits inside 130. One of these teams is worth a high pick or nothing much, and the other has nothing worth reaching for and three players you can use.
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.
David Pastrnak, Boston
Pastrnak is 6th overall on our board, the highest-ranked player in this article by 36 places, and his floor of 858 sits 141 points above the ceiling of the next best player on his own team. His point totals look like the steadiest thing in hockey at 113, 110, 106 and 100 over four seasons, but the shape underneath them is not steady at all: his goals went 61, 47, 43 and then 29 last season, and the points held only because his assists climbed to a career-high 71.
Read the shots before deciding what that means. He has gone from 4.96 shots a game to 3.39 in four years, a drop of a third, and his shooting fell from 15.0% to 11.1% over the same window. Our projection has him at 48 goals on 306 shots, a 15.7% finishing rate he has not reached in any of these five seasons, and that is the biggest call in this article. What makes him safe anyway is the band, 858 to 943 and 85 points wide, which of the top 25 skaters on our board only Matthew Tkachuk and Quinn Hughes beat.
Jeremy Swayman, Boston
Swayman is the second-best fantasy goalie on our board and third of the 72 goalies we carry a goals-saved-above-expected figure for, at 28.2, which is the number that matters because it measures him rather than the team in front of him.
The worry people will raise is 2024-25, when he posted .892 across 58 games, and it is already answered: he went .908 with 31 wins last season and his five-year line reads .914, .920, .916, .892, .908. One bad year in the middle of four good ones is a bad year, not a decline. We project 34 wins and .908 with a band of 627 to 717, and the wins are the only soft part of that, the same risk every good goalie on a middling team carries.
Charlie McAvoy, Boston
McAvoy lost most of 2024-25, playing 50 games for 23 points, and that is why his band runs 495 to 719 on a player whose rate has never been in question. What he did next is the part worth reading: he came back for 61 points in 69 games, the best season of his career, on 11 goals and 50 assists.
We project 65 points and 146 blocks, the most of anyone in this article, but availability is the whole argument, and part of it is already settled. The six- game suspension he picked up in game 6 against Buffalo carries into this season, so he misses Boston's first six before the injury question even starts. We have him at 82.4% availability, and he has reached 74 games twice in five years. The blocks and assists are worth a lot in a category league if you get them, and the floor exists because sometimes you do not.
Filip Forsberg, Nashville
Forsberg is Nashville's best fantasy player at 42nd overall, and at 32 he is doing something unusual: his goals went up last season, 31 to 40, on fewer shots than the year before. In his 48-goal season he took 347 shots, and last season he took 246 and scored 40.
Our projection splits the difference at 35 goals and 74 points on 270 shots, which is the sensible read of a player whose volume is falling while his finishing carries more of the load each year. His 121 projected hits are the most in this article, so he is worth more in a league that counts hits than his point total suggests, and at 89% availability he has three straight 82-game seasons behind him.
Roman Josi, Nashville
Josi is 36 years old and we still have him 67th overall with 61 points and 122 blocks, which is the projection people will argue with. He put up 96 points four years ago and has gone 59, 85, 38 and 55 since, but the 38 came in 53 games and the 55 in 68, so two of those are shortened seasons rather than collapsed ones.
His band of 540 to 726 is wide enough to hold both the 38-point season and something close to his old level. He is on $9.06M through 2028, wears the C, and still runs 68.5% of his team's power play at 85.4% availability. It is a reasonable bet on a 36-year-old defenceman. It is not a safe one.
Juuse Saros, Nashville
Saros is 7th among goalies on our board at 612.6 fantasy points, and that ranking is the job more than the goalie. Only 13 goalies in our projection draw a full starter's load of 62 or more starts, and the top seven of that group are the top seven goalies overall, so being a settled number one is most of what separates them. Saros is 7th of the 13 on fantasy points and 10th of the 13 on goals saved above expected, at 1.9. Across all 72 goalies we carry the figure for he is 32nd, where Swayman in this same article is third at 28.2.
The starts are not his edge, because every clear number one in our projection gets the same 62. Swayman is on the identical workload and we have him five wins ahead at 34. What Saros has is certainty of playing, on a save percentage that has gone .919, .906, .896 and .894 over the last four seasons and settles at .904 in our projection. Shesterkin last week was the opposite shape, elite by the metric he controls and held back by the team in front of him. In a save percentage league we would let someone else take Saros.
What we would actually do
Pastrnak first and it is not close, because his floor beats every other ceiling on his team and the only real question is whether you believe the 48 goals. Swayman next, since third of 72 in goals saved above expected is a genuine edge and the .892 season is already answered, and McAvoy is the one to check your roster for because 146 blocks matter in a category league and mean nothing in points-only. On the Nashville side Forsberg is the pick, Josi is the gamble, and we would take Saros later than his ranking suggests. One name did not make either list: Steven Stamkos is 126th overall and we project him 31 goals, almost twice Josi's 16, and he is still only Nashville's fourth-best fantasy asset while projecting higher than Boston's fourth-best. That is these two teams in one line.
Floor, ceiling and availability on all 406 skaters and 80 goalies, sortable.
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