This is the last one. We have run through all 32 teams, three fantasy players at a time, two new teams every weekday, and the two that are left are Colorado and Carolina.
Colorado has the best fantasy player on our board and the best defenceman on our board. Carolina has nobody inside our top 30, and the player who leads them there, Seth Jarvis at 35th, is out to start the season, so the Hurricane you actually draft first is Sebastian Aho at 43rd.
Fantasy points below are Yahoo-style scoring from our 2026-27 projections: 6 for a goal, 4 for an assist, 2 for a plus-minus unit, 2 for a power play point, 0.9 for a shot and 1 for a blocked shot. The band after each is that player's floor and ceiling, not a guarantee.
Sebastian Aho, Carolina
Aho is 43rd overall and Carolina's most dependable fantasy player. We project 36 goals, 46 assists and 82 points on 214 shots, with 25 power play points on a 65.0% share.
He is the steadiest player in this article and it is not close. His last five seasons are 81, 67, 89, 74 and 80 points, played in 79, 75, 78, 79 and 79 games. His availability is 95.1% and his band is 628 to 727, a range of 99 points, where Jarvis's is 262 and Svechnikov's is 116.
Our goal number asks nothing new of him. Thirty-six on 214 shots is 16.8%, and he has finished at 16.7%, 16.5%, 16.7%, 14.0% and 13.8%. He has scored between 27 and 37 goals in each of those five seasons.
He is 29, an alternate captain, and signed at $9.75M through 2032 with a no-movement clause.
Andrei Svechnikov, Carolina
Svechnikov is 62nd overall. We project 32 goals, 45 assists and 77 points on 213 shots, with 26 power play points on a 61.2% share, the lowest of the six players here.
His scoring fell for three straight seasons and then came back: 69 points, 55, 52, 48, then 70 last year. The recovery was a shooting year. He scored 31 goals on 203 shots last season, 15.3%, after four seasons at 12.0%, 11.2%, 13.2% and 11.1%. Our 32 goals on 213 shots is 15.0%, which keeps last season's rate rather than pulling it back to the four before it.
The number to hold against his 77 points is his availability, 85.9%, the lowest in this article. He has played 78, 64, 59, 72 and 79 games in his last five seasons. At 85.9% of 84 games his 77 points is nearer 66.
He is 26 and signed at $7.75M through 2028.
Seth Jarvis, Carolina
Injured to start the season. Jarvis had shoulder surgery in late June and is not expected back before late October. The projection below is a full season, like every number on our board.
Jarvis is 35th overall and the highest ranked Carolina player on our board. We project 37 goals, 44 assists and 81 points on 250 shots, with 21 power play points on a 63.6% share.
The shot volume is the part that has moved. His last five seasons run 1.62, 2.28, 2.17, 2.79 and 3.15 shots per game while his points have gone 40, 39, 67, 67 and 66: the scoring stopped climbing three years ago and the shooting did not. That is why our number sits above his recent output. At 0.9 a shot, 250 of them is 225 fantasy points before a goal is counted.
We project 37 goals, which would be a career high against his 33 in 2023-24. Thirty-seven on 250 shots is 14.8%, inside his own range of 15.5%, 7.5%, 18.8%, 15.7% and 14.3%, so the goals come from the volume rather than a better shooting year.
His band is 610 to 872, 262 points wide, the widest in this article. He is 24 and signed at $7.42M through 2032.
Nathan MacKinnon, Colorado
MacKinnon is 1st on our board at 1,058.6 fantasy points, with Connor McDavid at 1,032.7 the only other player above 1,000. His floor of 1,000 is higher than every other projection on the board except McDavid's.
He is not our highest scoring player. We project 126 points, third behind McDavid's 136 and Nikita Kucherov's 128. What puts him first is 354 shots, the most of any skater on our board, 25 clear of Brady Tkachuk in second. At 0.9 a shot that is 318.6 fantasy points from shooting alone.
The McDavid comparison is worth working through in full. We project both at 46 goals. McDavid has 90 assists to MacKinnon's 80 and 47 power play points to 39, which is 56 fantasy points in McDavid's favour. MacKinnon takes 354 shots to McDavid's 283, which is 63.9 back the other way. In a points-only league McDavid is first and this is not close.
Last season he scored 53 goals on 350 shots, 15.1%, after four years at 10.7%, 11.5%, 12.6% and 10.0%. We project 46 goals on 354 shots, 13.0%, so the shots stay and the shooting percentage comes down.
He is 31, an alternate captain, and signed at $12.60M through 2031 with a no-movement clause.
Cale Makar, Colorado
Makar is 12th overall and the highest ranked defenceman on our board at 836.9, ahead of Evan Bouchard at 804.6 and Quinn Hughes at 802.6.
He is third among defencemen in projected points. We have Hughes at 97, Bouchard at 92 and Makar at 88. He finishes first anyway on 128 blocked shots and 241 shots on goal, which are worth 128 and 216.9 fantasy points, a combined 344.9 before his goals and assists are counted. Hughes blocks 103 and shoots 224 times.
His last five seasons are 86, 66, 90, 92 and 79 points, in 77, 60, 77, 80 and 75 games. We project 24 goals and 64 assists, and his band of 789 to 884 is 95 points wide.
He is 27, an alternate captain, and carries a $9.00M cap hit this season. Colorado's contract record notes an eight-year extension that begins in 2027-28.
Martin Necas, Colorado
Necas is 28th overall and Colorado's third best fantasy player. He is also 28.6 fantasy points ahead of Jarvis, Carolina's best on a full season. He played 208 games for Carolina across his last three seasons there before the trade that sent him west.
We project 35 goals, 57 assists and 92 points on 214 shots, with 27 power play points on a 74.8% share. His availability is 96.1%, the highest of the six players in this article.
Last season was the best of his career by a distance: 100 points in 78 games, 38 goals on 206 shots, an 18.4% shooting percentage against 11.7%, 10.4% and 13.9% in the three years before it. Our 35 goals on 214 shots is 16.4%, between last season and everything before it rather than picking one.
His band runs 607 to 862, 255 fantasy points wide, second only to Jarvis in this article. He is 27 and signed at $11.50M through 2034 with a no-movement clause.
What we would do
Colorado is the cleanest draft position in this article: the first name on our board, the first defenceman on our board, and Necas at 28th, who would be the best fantasy player on 16 teams. If you have the first pick in a league that counts shots, there is nothing to think about.
Carolina is the warning about reading a fantasy board as a team ranking. Their three sit between 35th and 62nd, the one at 35th injured to start the season, and Nikolaj Ehlers 95th behind them. Their highest projected scorer is Aho at 82 points. Colorado's is MacKinnon at 126.
The power play says the same thing. Carolina's top three took 63.6%, 65.0% and 61.2% of their team's man advantage last season, so roughly a third of it went to somebody else. Colorado's took 78.8%, 75.2% and 74.8%. That is a good hockey team and a difficult fantasy team, and the two are the same fact. Carolina spreads the ice time and finishes with nobody worth a first-round pick. Colorado puts the puck on MacKinnon's stick 354 times, more than any skater on our board, and that is the shape that wins your league.
Floor, ceiling and availability on all 406 skaters and 80 goalies, sortable.
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