Last year's NHL season saw eight different players reach the 100-point threshold, and three of those players will suit up for new teams this year. Jonathan Huberdeau and Matthew Tkachuk swapped teams while Johnny Gaudreau signed with the Blue Jackets in free agency. These moves created ripple effects within 2022 Fantasy hockey rankings as you can never predict if a player will carry his production with him to a new destination. Considering the years those three players had last season, they won't be on anyone's list of 2022 Fantasy hockey sleepers.
However, not everyone that finds himself in a new place was a 100-point scorer, and many of those old faces in new places are flying under the radar. That presents an opportunity for a savvy Fantasy owner to make the most of his Fantasy hockey drafts 2022 by selecting a proven player who got lost in the shuffle. Before making any 2022 Fantasy hockey picks, check out the Fantasy hockey rankings 2022-23 from the proven computer model at SportsLine.
Last year, the model predicted that Blues wing Vladimir Tarasenko would significantly outperform his 2021-22 Fantasy hockey ADP of 196. The result: Tarasenko went on to score 34 goals and dish out 48 assists for his first ever 80-point season and was a top-75 player in all of Fantasy hockey. It also predicted that Flyers defenseman Ivan Provorov wouldn't live up to his top-30 ADP overall and he finished with just 31 points and a plus/minus of -20 to finish as the No. 81 defenseman in CBS Sports Fantasy hockey leagues.
The model was created by Mike McClure, a predictive data engineer and professional daily Fantasy player with almost $2 million in career winnings. He's used his prediction model to simulate the entire 2022-23 NHL schedule 10,000 times and identify the top Fantasy hockey sleepers, breakouts and busts. Head to SportsLine now to see them.
McClure's model takes factors such as player history, schedule, injuries and matchups into account to create the most unbiased 2022-23 Fantasy hockey rankings possible. Now the model has zeroed in on the 2022-23 NHL season, ranked every player, and found the top sleepers, breakouts and busts. See every pick here.
Top 2022-23 Fantasy hockey picks
One of the 2022-23 Fantasy hockey busts SportsLine has identified: Golden Knights defenseman Alex Pietrangelo. The 10-time All-Star finished with 44 total points last season (13 goals, 31 assists), which was his third-lowest career total out of the nine seasons that he's played at least 70 games. He also had a modest shooting percentage of 5.7% despite firing off the second-most shots of his career (456).
His shots on target percentage dipped to 49.8%, down from his final year in St. Louis during the 2019-20 season, when he put 53.8% of his shots on net. Pietrangelo finished with plus-minus of 7 last year, which was also the fourth-lowest mark in the 10 years he's played at least 70 games. His decline in effectiveness on the ice is one of the reasons the model projects him to have a major disparity between his production versus his 2022 Fantasy hockey ADP just outside of the top 65 overall players.
Another surprise: Jets winger Nikolaj Ehlers is one of the 2022 Fantasy hockey sleepers the model has identified. The 26-year-old got off to a pedestrian start last year until a knee injury sidelined him for a month-and-a-half during midseason. But the time resting apparently did wonders for Ehlers' game as he made a dramatic improvement post-injury. After averaging 0.74 points per game before the All-Star break, he then averaged 1.07 points per game afterwards.
The injury isn't a long-term concern as Ehlers had played in every game of the season three times over his previous five years. A subpar portion of a season will always distort one's overall stats, but if you focus on how Ehlers finished, you'd see that there's value in him in the mid-rounds of 2022 Fantasy hockey drafts. The model sees just that despite him ranking 84th in average draft position. It has Ehlers 49th amongst all players, making him a Fantasy hockey sleeper 2022.
How to find proven 2022-23 Fantasy hockey rankings
The model has also made a surprising call on new Blue Jackets winger Johnny Gaudreau after he led the NHL in points and led all forwards in Fantasy scoring a season ago. It also features a stunner in the top 10 you won't want to miss. You can only see the latest Fantasy hockey rankings 2022-23 here.
So what's the exact value of every NHL player in the 2022-23 Fantasy hockey rankings? And what surprising player cracked the top 10? Visit SportsLine now to get Fantasy hockey rankings, all from a DFS pro who has won almost $2 million in his career and has simulated the entire NHL season 10,000 times, and find out.
