Maple Leafs center Auston Matthews has won the NHL’s Maurice “Rocket” Richard Trophy the last two seasons as the leading goal-scorer in the league and he’ll be hungry for more fresh off a career-high 60 goals despite missing nine games in 2021-22. The Maple Leafs will open their season against the Canadiens on Oct. 12 and Fantasy hockey players will need to own a top-five pick to score Matthews’ services. However, season-long Fantasy hockey success is often defined by the depth you can build in the draft.
So what should your 2022 Fantasy hockey draft strategy look like as the North American opener approaches on Oct. 11? A reliable set of 2022 Fantasy hockey rankings can help you identify potential 2022 Fantasy hockey sleepers, breakouts and busts to ensure you get maximum value out of every pick. 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 center Cole Perfetti is one of the model’s top Fantasy hockey breakouts. The 20-year-old was the No. 10 overall pick in the 2020 NHL Draft and after a season and change with the AHL’s Manitoba Moose, Perfetti finally earned an NHL call-up last season, playing 17 games and scoring two goals while handing out five assists.
However, Perfetti would miss the final 34 games of the season with an upper-body injury. He’s healthy now and in line for a top-six role with Winnipeg and should be a contributor on their power-play unit. And after producing 41 points in 49 career AHL games, there’s reason for optimism that he could be a 50-point producer. Perfetti is going undrafted on average according to current 2022 Fantasy hockey ADP data but the model ranks him as a top-200 player overall.
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.