Fantasy Hockey Sleepers: Central Division – Coyotes and Blackhawks

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 some may be regressing in other cases. 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. For 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 was completed Monday. Today, we move on to the Central, followed by the Metro and Pacific. As noted, in each column, two teams will be covered. To simplify it, we are going alphabetically by first team name rather than by nickname. The Arizona Coyotes and Chicago Blackhawks are covered in this column, starting the Central Division review.

Arizona Coyotes:

The Coyotes are still sorting out where they will play in the future. This season, they will once again skate at Mullett Arena, located at Arizona State University. While the team is still young, they no longer appear to be a true college-age squad, having imported a few veterans.

One of the young veterans on the squad is Barrett Hayton. Viewed as a reach at five in 2018 based on his production his first few seasons, Hayton took major strides forward last year to eliminate that narrative. Hayton tallied 19 goals and 24 assists while skating in 82 games in 2022-23, exceeding his production from the first 94 contests in his career, which were spread out over three seasons.

Penciled on the first line in the Desert, Hayton should be joined by Clayton Keller and Nick Schmaltz. The 43 points he tallied last season should be bumped by 10-15 this year as he continues to try and prove his draft selection location was warranted. Another possible sleeper is Sean Durzi, who should benefit from his move from LA, while Logan Cooley, selected third overall in 2022, joins the Coyotes from the University of Minnesota and should battle Connor Bedard for the Calder Trophy.

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Chicago Blackhawks:

Connor Bedard would be the easy answer. But by virtue of him going first overall, the rightful publicity he received the last few seasons, and heightened expectation, he most certainly is no longer a sleeper. Chicago added Taylor Hall, Nick Foligno and Corey Perry to “protect” Bedard, who is the new face of the franchise following the departure of Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane.

Slated right now to skate on the second line, Lukas Reichel is someone who should see a bump in production. His overall numbers from last year don’t stand out until you realize that the 15 points he posted came in just 23 games, most of which came at the end of the season, on top of the 51 points he notched for Rockford in the AHL. If Reichel skates with Bedard, 50-60 points is certainly within reach.

Another name to keep in mind, especially in deeper leagues, is Arved Soderblom. Petr Mrazek is the vet between the pipes, but Soderblom has markedly more upside and could end up the starting netminder. Drew Commesso also could end up in the mix, but Soderblom has the upside potential to possibly run the job this season.

Atlantic Division:

Boston Bruins and Buffalo Sabres

Detroit Red Wings and Florida Panthers

Montreal Canadiens and Ottawa Senators

Tampa Bay Lightning and Toronto Maple Leafs