What's your steal of the draft?

[loppantorkel]

Half way through the season and time to gloat, or wallow in misery.

My pick: Michael Rasmussen (round 25 pick 395). Could be a waiver player again, but I think there's a decent chance he could rise 200 ranks by the end of the season.

So far, this is, in contrast to my other longshots (Zadina and Balcers...), one who almost has met my high expectations - overall rank is currently 243 in my league. Not amazing but a good pick.

[Fighting_Emu]

We do an entry draft and then conduct a series of waiver claims in the pre-season to fill out our rosters of were short players.

I had first overall in this process and took kuzmenko! I believe the only guy in contention was lehkonen and im happy with my choice so far although he might be a move candidate down the line.

We also have a steal round and I was second in that. Our league is very biased towards d and g so passing on samsonov, l Thompson and sergachev may come back to haunt me but I took fiala whose been as good as you could hope and I think is actually due for a famously big second half lol!! Tarasenko and point are exampled of guys I passed on and in a sog heavy league I was surprised fiala was exposed over to Miller!!

A little different but I was glad I held on tight to bunting through his slow start. I traded him but I got very good value and I did after his slump had ended (got krebs).

My worst draft/waiver/whatever decision was I dropped tippet but it was sort of an accident which probably doesn't make much sense lol! The crazy thing is I'm still high on him and when I was offered tippett and that la guy- the young sniper getting pp time now? Starts with a k? For fiala I had to.consider it. I rejected because I had already traded gaudrwau to the exact same owner for hoktz and tippett last year early haha! What a mess...

[Fighting_Emu]

Ugh during the draft I flipped Jeff skinner for Josh anderson- and that looks bad. In our format I KNEW he had a safe floor as a prolific shooter and not had a lot to go right for him to have a very good season but I just though he was chained to l3 deployment and I thought a healthy Anderson might have the chance to be a core piece.

I sold spectacularly low and debated aimed low even still on a "hunch" play. Not a team wrecker but he's a top 10 winger in our format and I could of got a nice haul at the deadline for his figure skating butt!!

[loppantorkel]

Season finished.

Obvious steals in retrospect, at least in my league:
Jamie Benn - rank 19 - drafted in 7th round, nr 105
Mikael Backlund - 27 - 23 rd, nr 355
Scott Laughton - 40 - undrafted
Brandon Hagel - 60 - rn 25, nr 400

Adam Larsson, Charlie Coyle, Adam Lowry provided excellent value for where they went too.

I missed out on all of the above. Michael Rasmussen turned out to be a great pick, but he got injured half way through. Still kept him on IR for the season and will consider keeping him.
Other good picks for me were Cozens and F Gustavsson (56 - 24, 374).

[Axeman33]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Frank Vatrano yet. He's probably going to get top six minutes and PP2 in Anaheim this year. Contributes to a lot of cats too.

Brandon Hagel is another one to watch this year.

I'd say both of these guys turned into steals for a lot of people.

I don't do a lot of one year/ limited keepers, I primarily stick to dynasty leagues but the PQMC, there's 12 teams who keep 11 players so the draft starts at round 12. Lookong back now, my biggest steals in that draft were Hischier in round 16 and Dawson Mercer in round 23.

[Pengwin7]

My list was all over the place:


Total Misses:
Mario Ferraro absolutely stunk after his first two games in Europe. The guy did nothing. It was the Karlsson show.
Ferraro didn't even run the PP2

Alex Newhook. Colorado gave him a shot at the C2 - but it's still too big a role for Newhook. Instead, JT Compher stepped in, raked FOW, and joined the PP1 (with Lando and others out)

Pavel Francouz. Nope. Not the #1. Georgiev was the guy.

Ville Husso and Detroit did not *pop*. Not a good goalie on a team still a year out from being a real every-game-threat.


Moderate Hits:
Barrett Hayton is Arizona's top face-off guy and pointed a lot down the stretch. He finished with 43pts (not quite 50), but he paced for 50+ in 2nd half of year.

Calen Addison did put up points for MIN and did play PP1. But his real-game defense is a bit Cholowski-ish (i.e. Not Good at NHL level) and he ended up getting healthy scratched. Still good to own (then drop) in points-centric leagues.

Solid Hit:
Vitek Vanecek and New Jersey were awesome. Though, they were winning games with Akira Schmid in net too.

Enormous Hit:
Anybody that stashed Stuart Skinner, held him, and owned him for H2H playoffs - that was some league winning stuff down the stretch.
I own a Bedard pick because of him. Cashed in on my own advice, yes... sir.

[ericdaoust]

12 team, multi-cat pts league

Hits:
Clayton Keller (9th round)
Mikhail Sergachev (10th round)
Logan Thompson (17th round)
Mike Matheson (19th round)

Misses:
Johnny Gaudreau (3rd round)
Evan Bouchard (8th round - bad production until after the trade deadline)
Cam Talbot (13th round)
Ryan Hartman (15th round)

[kovalchuk17]

All brought significant surplus value on their ADPs in my multi-cat roto league.

Erik Karlsson
Linus Ullmark
Vitek Vanecek
Jamie Benn
Ilya Samsonov
Antti Raanta

For a large majority of the season, I played EK in the util slot for shot blocks. This came at the sacrifice of playing a centre for faceoff wins though. Worked out in the end.

[BloodSport]

Tage Thompson!

Reading this over, I’d like to mention this from page 1

[PoolPartyPuljeejarvi]

Pretty happy with mine:

Our waivers didn't open til the first week of games had closed and I had to choose between kuzmenko and lehkonen. Happy to report i picked kuzy there lol! Lehkonen a good player but happy with my guy.

Was also able to waiver add Valimaki (in a league where D are scarce!), Hayton, and Schmid!

In the last week I was able to grab Rasmussen and zac jones for next year- not too shabby!

I had access to chytil and zacha at different points and passed though- so there's that

[loppantorkel]

Reading this over, I’d like to mention this from page 1

Tage Thompson is a good draft pick, but he also had a Yahoo preseason ranking of 28. ..and in my league, he landed on rank 28 when the season was over.