This article will enumerate, in no particular order, the players who have most disappointed their fantasy hockey owners so far this year.
Defining an underperforming fantasy hockey player inevitably comes with subjectivity, but the general exercise is to identify the players who have provided the worst value given their average draft position. While injuries certainly play a factor in determining this ranking, statistical underperformance is the salient variable. Injured players can at least be stashed on the IR and replaced by a serviceable waiver wire pick up, but players who have badly underperformed are the ones that are especially costly to fantasy hockey owners.
Note: ADP, which stands for Average Draft Position, was taken from Fantasy Pros, a rankings which takes the average ADP for ESPN, Yahoo! Sports, and CBS Sports users in fantasy hockey drafts. See the full list here.
Elias Petterson, Center
ADP Overall: 21
ADP for Centers: 8
Current Position Rank: 35
Petterson’s dip in production is unexpected given that he is still just 26 years old. He has 11 goals, 22 assists, and 33 points in 46 games this season to go along with a -5 rating. He had 102 points just two seasons ago and 89 points last year. As a result, he was targeted as a top-30 player by many fantasy hockey owners. He is too good of a player to drop to the waiver wire, meaning that countless fantasy owners have simply had to live with a disappointing season from one of their top draft picks. The glimmer of hope is that Petterson will be a renewed fantasy asset given the departure of J.T. Miller, but if his performance does not turn around soon, fantasy hockey owners may just have to accept that Petterson will not be the consistent 90-100 point scorer that many projected him to be.
Juuse Saros, Goalie
ADP: 29
ADP for Goalies: 4
Current Position Rank: 33
Goalies tend to be hit or miss in fantasy, but coming into the season it appeared that Saros was one of just a handful of goalies who could be relied upon to produce consistent results. He led the league in games started for each of the last three seasons and produced 38, 33, and 35 wins in those years to go along with solid numbers. This season, he has just 11 wins in 38 games to go along with a .899 SV %. The Predators have been perhaps the most disappointing team in the NHL, and Saros has been a cause of that in addition to feeling the effects of a struggling team in front of him. Regardless, fantasy hockey owners who drafted Saros expecting consistent production from a position frequently bereft of consistency have been severely underwhelmed.
Steven Stamkos, Center
ADP: 36
ADP for Centers: 12
Current Position Rank: 44
It is not a mistake that two Nashville players are on this list, as the Predators have been perhaps the NHL’s most disappointing team this season. After a few injury-plagued campaigns, Stamkos had been extremely productive for Tampa Bay over the last several years, capped by a 40-goal, 81-point outburst last season. Unfortunately for fantasy hockey owners, this year he has dipped to just 17 goals, 16 assists and 33 points in 51 games along with a -14 rating, making him borderline droppable in many fantasy leagues. Perhaps most concerning is that his shot totals have dropped significantly. Last season, he averaged 3.32 shots per game, and this year he has averaged just 2.14. It is a worrying statistic that indicates that it is not simply luck causing his drop in performance.
Alexander Georgiev, Goalie
ADP: 38
ADP for Goalies: 7
Current Position Rank: 88
Georgiev is a player that would have made this list last season in addition to this one. However, his decline this year has been even more drastic. In 2022-23, he was one of the league’s most valuable fantasy hockey goalies, posting 40 wins and a .918 SV%. In 2023-24, he dropped considerably to a .897 SV %, but the saving grace for fantasy hockey owners was that he continued to start games consistently for a strong Avalanche team. As a result, he finished with 38 wins that year.
This season, his paltry .874 SV% for the Avalanche made him completely unplayable, and he picked up just 8 wins in 17 starts. He then got traded to the Sharks and is currently in a timeshare with Yaraslov Askarov for one of the NHL’s worst teams, leaving him utterly useless as a fantasy hockey asset. In standard ESPN leagues, he has -18.0 points on the year, which accounts for his horrific 88th place ranking among all goalies.
Mika Zibanejad, Center
ADP: 45
ADP for Centers: 16
Current Position Rank: 47
Through 52 games with the Rangers, Zibanejad sits at 10 goals, 23 assists, and 33 points with a -25 rating. Fantasy hockey owners likely expected the 31-year-old to produce more in line with his 26 goal, 72 point totals the season before, but he has severely underperformed throughout this season. His advanced statistics tell a worrying story that a good chunk of his precipitous statistical decline is not just due to random chance but to him playing worse than he did last year.
He has averaged just 1.6 fantasy points per game in standard ESPN leagues, making him worse than most of the top players on fantasy owner’s waiver wire. What has been so frustrating about Zibanejad is that he has enough of a track record to justify holding on to him, but his sample size of play this year is also large enough to recognize that Zibanejad is not nearly the player fantasy owners expected when they drafted him in the top 50.
Jeremy Swayman, Goalie
ADP: 47
ADP for Goalies: 8
Current Position Rank: 30
Swayman’s contract holdup and then eventual signing to a massive 8-year, $66 million contract with an $8.25 AAV put large expectations on him from the Bruins and their fanbase. Fantasy hockey owners had similarly high expectations given his impressive statistical profile over his four years in the NHL, albeit the fact that his career high in games played for a season was 44. His lowest career SV % in a season was .914% and his lowest Goals Saved Above Expected was 7.3. This season, he has a .895 SV % and a -7.2 Goals Saved Above Expected. It has been his worst season in the NHL by far, and fantasy owners who drafted him high on their lists have been punished for it.
Chris Kreider, Left Wing
ADP: 48
ADP for Left Wingers: 9
Current Position Rank: 53
While Kreider has never been a big assist generator, his three total assists in 44 games is stunningly low, and his 15 goals and -8 rating does not nearly offset this eyesore. He plays 17:18 per game and has been on the first power play most of the year. One would expect someone with this type of role to have 15-20 assists simply by random chance, but the bounces have not gone Kreider’s way this season. At age 33 and showing some serious signs of decline in his game this season, Kreider is a diminishing asset for fantasy hockey owners on a Rangers team that has severely underperformed this year.