Why the Capitals are a must-watch team for fantasy hockey players in 2026-27
With the NHL season quickly approaching, so too are the countless NHL Fantasy league drafts around the globe. While players will no doubt flock to the superstars as they do every year, the sleeper picks could be the difference in each league.
And the Washington Capitals find themselves in a peculiar position. Despite missing the Stanley Cup playoffs last season, their offseason additions and the ongoing presence of Alex Ovechkin make them one of the must-watch teams, in terms of fantasy, in 2026-27.
On a recent episode of Daily Faceoff Live, co-hosts Tyler Yaremchuk and Carter Hutton sat down with DFO Fantasy expert Brock Seguin to break down the Capitals, and why their depth could be a magical factor to winning a fantasy league this season.
Tyler Yaremchuk: The Washington Capitals were very busy this season, and you have a lot of popular names- names that guys are going to recognize- and just a bunch of guys with 20-goal potential, like Alex Tuch, Pierre-Luc Dubois, Jordan Kyrou, Tom Wilson, Boone Jenner, Dylan Strome, Alex Ovechkin, Aliaksei Protas, Anthony Beauvillier and Ryan Leonard. I just went off on a bunch of guys who could very easily score 20 goals next season, but… there’s only one puck that can go in the net in Washington.
How do you handle a team like this when it comes to fantasy? They’re all good players, but they’re not all gonna have great years. There’s only one puck, of course, and there are only four forwards on the power play.
Brock Seguin: Yeah, there’s a lot of mouths to feed there for sure, and obviously you’ve got Ovechkin out there soaking up like four and a half minutes a night on the power play. Their lineup is, obviously, to me the hardest to project coming into the season, since there are so many new faces and so much depth. You’ve got the Protas brothers both really starting to come into their own, and then you’ve got really just a lot of right wingers too.
It’s going to be interesting to see what they do with how they fit all those pieces, and even Ovechkin- I think he’s probably more of a third-liner now and just going to be a power-play specialist.
It’s interesting you asked me about the Capitals because this works out perfectly for me. I did a huge schedule analysis yesterday, and it’ll be released on Daily Faceoff and on the DFO YouTube channel in the coming days, but the Capitals have one of the best fantasy schedules in the NHL this year. They have the most light-night games in the league at 40, which basically means half. You’ll easily be able to fit the Capitals into your lineup, and then they have the best fantasy hockey playoff schedule as well.
So they are a team that I like taking late, filling some of my bench spots with these guys, so that you can maximize your roster throughout the season. I’m probably still going to shy away from some of the guys being drafted a little bit earlier, like Ovechkin, like Alex Tuch, because, as you mentioned, there’s a lot of mouths to feed, and I don’t know if they’re all going to reach their potential. Yet, Jordan Kyrou and Dylan Strome are two guys that are going super late in drafts. Kyro is seemingly being completely forgotten, and he is still a very good player and a very good goal scorer. So he’s one of my favorite late-round targets, and Dylan Strome is fine as well.
Those guys, they’re going to sit on your bench, butou’re going to be able to play them super easily, and then come playoff time, I think Kyrou especially could be a guy that ends up being one of the biggest fantasy hockey steals this year.
You can catch the full episode and Brock’s full NHL fantasy breakdown right here, with more coverage to follow throughout the season.