Fantasy Hockey Sleepers: Atlantic Division – Red Wings and Panthers

With the calendars flipping to September and training camp just a few weeks away, fantasy hockey leagues have started to schedule their drafts. Hopefully, you have been keeping up with the off-season moves, rookies added and players looking to take a step forward, while in other cases, some may be regressing. As a way to help you plan, this series of columns will focus on fantasy hockey sleepers, one per team in each division.

Fantasy hockey sleepers mean different things to each person. For some, it’s the hot rookie. Others it’s those who will take a step forward. Some view them as prior year players or acquisitions in new situations enabling that individual to exceed projections or their initial role. For purposes of this series of columns, the focus will mainly be on the latter – those who have a chance to surpass expectations or prior production. I welcome feedback, criticism, thoughts, etc., as one man’s meat is another man’s poison and your view may differ vastly from mine.

We kicked off this series looking at the Atlantic Division, which will be followed by the Central, Metro and Pacific. As noted, in each column, two teams will be covered. To make it easy, we are going alphabetically by first team name rather than by nickname. In this column, the Detroit Red Wings and Florida Panthers are discussed. In our initial foray, the Boston Bruins and Buffalo Sabres were covered.

Detroit Red Wings:

The Red Wings were spoiled in 2021-22 by Moritz Seider and Lucas Raymond. Seider won the Calder Trophy while Raymond burst on the scene as a 19-year-old with 23 goals and 34 assists in 82 games. He took a step back last season, slipping from 23 goals to 17 and 57 points to 45. Not all was negative, as Raymond closed the season on a mild hot streak while also improving his plus-minus significantly. In addition, his shooting percentage was relatively static year over year with part of the output drop impacted by a decline in shot-per-game volume.

Detroit is still in rebuild mode but they have improved the roster, especially up front, with the addition of Alex DeBrincat. The “downside” of that move for Raymond is that he may end up on the second line opposite J.T. Compher as opposed to skating next to Dylan Larkin, who might be joined by David Perron. But Raymond will still line up on the top power-play unit and the expectation is he should at a minimum return to rookie form, making him someone to target in your leagues.

One other possible “sleeper” is Shayne Gostisbehere, solely for his power-play production. The flip side here is that his PP TOI could come at the expense of Seider, possibly adversely affecting his production. Keep an eye out for how Ghost is deployed.

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Florida Panthers:

Anton Lundell was the 12th overall pick in the 2020 draft. After a solid rookie campaign in 2021-22 (18 goals and 26 assists in 65 games), Lundell’s production dropped precipitously as he only posted 12 markers and 21 apples in 73 contests last season. Injuries impacted Lundell’s campaign and the sophomore jinx might have bitten him as well. Regardless of the reason, his second season was a far cry from that of his initial year.

With Aleksander Barkov locked in as Florida’s top-line center and Sam Bennett filling the role as the #2, Lundell is “relegated” to a certain extent to the third trio. With Lundell, it’s the longer-term play. For those in single-team leagues, the rise in production will likely be incremental. Lundell’s main value is in keeper leagues, as the hope and expectation is that his output will increase little by little annually, at least initially. That makes him a borderline play in many narrower redraft leagues but a possible stash candidate in case the light fully turns on in his third season.