10 bold fantasy hockey predictions for 2023-24

Credit: Tim Stutzle (© Marc DesRosiers-USA TODAY Sports)

Welcome to the home stretch of fantasy draft prep season. By now, many of us have picked teams in our main leagues. Some of us will any day now. We’ll put our pride on the line once our seasons begin. Who will be proven right on that early-round reach or late round flier?

It’s time to put my pride on the line – in writing. Here are my 10 bold fantasy hockey predictions for the 2023-24 NHL season.

And remember: these takes are supposed are bold. I’m not going to get each of them right. If I hit on just a few, it’s a win. So don’t come at me with your This Aged Poorly nonsense come April. Got it? Good.

Let’s take some swings.

1. Jack Hughes finishes as a top-three fantasy player.

Hughes made the big jump to 99 points last season as the New Jersey Devils dominated almost wire to wire. He’s just 22 years old, so he probably hasn’t peaked yet. The team around him was already stacked and has gotten even better year over year; Timo Meier came over at the trade deadline, Jack’s brother Luke Hughes turned pro late last year, and the Devils traded for Tyler Toffoli. Hughes ripped the biscuit 336 times last year and scored on a relatively modest 12.8 percent of his shots. If he can hike that finishing rate to 15 percent? I’m envisioning 50 goals, 110 points and 400 shots, establishing himself in his own private tier just behind Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl.

2. Tim Stutzle delivers top-10 overall value and is an easy first-rounder next season.

Hughes and Tage Thompson were among the young players leaping from very good to superstar-grade last season. One could argue Stutzle did too, having compiled 90 points, but I think he’ll level up again in 2023-24. He’s a year younger than Hughes, remember. If we extrapolate the 82-game pace from Stutzle’s torrid second half with the Ottawa Senators, we get 42 goals, 102 points, 262 shots. Once we factor in that he delivers triple-digit hits? He might usurp Matthew Tkachuk as the best first-round combo-meal forward in fantasy.

3. Evan Bouchard finishes as a top-five fantasy defenseman.

The Bouchard hype train has made so much noise this pre-season that you’ve probably memorized some of Bouchard’s cherrypicked stats by now. I certainly have. He put up 36 points in 33 games, playoffs included, after the Edmonton Oilers traded Tyson Barrie and freed up a PP1 spot. Not only did the Oilers boast the best power play in NHL history last season, clipping at a staggering 32.4 percent, but they aren’t even necessarily regression candidates given their power play was great for several seasons before then. With McDavid and Draisaitl out there, you’re going to be unbelievably good, every year. Bouchard has a strong chance to lead all blueliners in power-play points and produce at a point-per-game clip if he holds down his juicy role all season. He should, given Barrie was his only real competition.

4. Thatcher Demko finishes as a top-10 goaltender.

It’s not just that Demko looked reborn after returning from his lower-body injury last winter. The team around him also did a better job limiting high-danger scoring chances once Rick Tocchet took over. Demko posted a .918 save percentage in 18 games after returning. The Canucks have made additional improvements to their team defense this offseason, meaning Demko should be even better positioned to ascend back to the promising No. 1 netminder he was just one season prior. If his health co-operates, he can deliver G1 value even in shallow formats.

5. Connor Bedard scores the most goals by a rookie since Alex Ovechkin in 2005-06.

Ovechkin kicked off The New NHL with a scintillating 52 goals. Eleven years later, Auston Matthews buried four in his first NHL game and became the first freshman since Ovi to score 40. When Matthews did it, the NHL sat at 5.54 goals per game. Last season: 6.36 goals per game, a 29-year high. The scoring environment is much more fertile for Bedard than it was for Matthews. And that’s before we factor in that Bedard is blessed with an electric and deceptive shooting release not unlike Matthews’. Even on a pitiful Chicago Blackhawks team, Bedard is so gifted that he can create offense for himself. I’ve penciled him in to top Matthews by four and deliver a 44-goal rookie campaign.

6. Cale Makar delivers the best fantasy season by a defenseman in more than three decades.

Yes, Erik Karlsson already did that with his 101-point opus last season. But I believe Makar can top it. He has been generationally great across his first four NHL seasons. He is the fastest defensemen ever to reach 200 career points. Think about that. Picture Bobby Orr in the 1970s and Paul Coffey in the 1980s. Makar is more prolific than they were at the same junctures of their careers. His ability to play a full season is starting to come into question, yes, but one of these years he’s going to do something that brings jaws to the floor – the way McDavid did last season when the eclipsed 150 points. What will that look like for Makar? I believe he’s capable of 100 points – and then some. At 24, he’s maturing into his prime. Maybe the signature season will be 2023-24.

7. Jacob Markstrom fends off Dustin Wolf and Dan Vladar to finish as a top-15 fantasy goalie.

Look, I’m as excited about Wolf as the next person. He has been named the top goalie in four straight seasons spanning two different leagues, the WHL and AHL. He won the AHL MVP last year to boot. He’s a tremendous prospect. But, for now, he’s slated to start the season in the AHL, blocked for Calgary’s No. 2 job by Dan Vladar. That’s the way it goes when you’re the only waivers-exempt goalie in a trio. Ask Pyotr Kochetkov how that’s working out for his NHL playing time with the Carolina Hurricanes. Markstrom is coming off a terrible 2023-24 season, but so is almost every other Flame. They have a strong chance to bounce back as a team under new coach Ryan Huska with the Darryl Sutter problem removed. And Markstrom is just a season removed from finishing second in the Vezina Trophy vote. He had posted a .910 SV% or better in six of his previous seven seasons before last year’s debacle. The Flames still devote $6 million in cap space toward him for three more seasons, so they’ll give him every opportunity to re-establish himself as a dominant goaltender. I don’t think it’s inconceivable that we see Markstrom start 55 games, win 30 and provide a .910 SV%. That would make him startable in fantasy again even in shallow leagues. That said, if the Flames trade Vladar and bring up Wolf to push Markstrom, the forecast changes.

8. Wyatt Johnston scores 30 goals and is a consensus top-100 fantasy asset a year from now.

I included Johnston on my ‘League Winners’ list in the summer, so I’ll start by quickly rehashing a few key stats: 90^th percentile in 5-on-5 goals per 60, scored 24 goals as a rookie, played only 15:29 a night. Now imagine Johnston spending a full season as the Dallas Stars’ No. 2 center, a role he’s currently ticketed for, and seeing a couple extra minutes of ice time per game as he earns more trust from coach Pete DeBoer. If Johnston merely maintains last season’s scoring rate but plays 17:00 per game instead, he projects for 26 goals. But what if we factor in natural progression and true No. 2 center deployment? If he ends up at 18:00 and registers 200 shots, we’re looking at one of the cheapest 30-goal guys you can find. Less than a week out from the start of the season, his Yahoo ADP sits at 171.5. Don’t be surprised if he’s a top-100 player this season.

9. Akira Schmid and Joseph Woll become the league-winner goalie adds for the fantasy playoffs.

Two of the most important crease battles for 2023-24 will play out in New Jersey and Toronto. In each case, we have a high-upside backup whose fantasy value could shoot to the moon if he takes over the No. 1 job on a Stanley Cup contender team. So far, it appears Vitek Vanecek and Ilya Samsonov will open their respective seasons in starting gigs. But both were outplayed by their backups in the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs. Schmid and Woll have higher ceilings than their teams’ incumbents. If they wrest the 1A work away in the second-half, the fantasy GMs who stashed them will get massive lifts in their championship pushes.

10. Jake Sanderson outproduces Thomas Chabot and Jakob Chychrun in fantasy value.

A constant refrain from me in my fantasy writing: money talks. When a GM puts his ego on the line and hands out a massive contract, he will do everything in his power to be proven right. Sanderson scored an eight-year extension at an $8.05 million AAV after playing just 77 NHL games. His versatile skill set should make him one of the NHL’s best shutdown defensemen for the next decade, but the Sens aren’t paying him shutdown money. They’re paying him all-around stud money. It’s clear he’ll get significant looks in offensive situations too, including on the power play, where he compiled 17 of his 32 points as a rookie. He might not start the season in the PP1 role, but he’ll be competing with two injury-prone teammates for that job in Chabot and Chychrun. Sanderson already flashed a bigger offensive ceiling than expected as a rookie, he’s a major asset in the blocks category, and he could leapfrog every other Ottawa D-man in fantasy value as a sophomore.

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