2025/26 Fantasy Hockey Pt I

The Dog Days of Summer

Here along the Lake Warm sunny weather can be a nice distraction from the hectic snowy hockey days ahead, but now is the time to invest some thought and energy in preparedness for the 2025-26 ESPN FHL season.

To begin successfully it all starts with the draft, you can opt out and let the ESPN FHL draft server select for you and it will select the top players available each round, but I would advise against that.

My supposition is that if you are interested in becoming a successful ESPN FHL team manager, then you are already a solid hockey fan which affords you valuable insight into making your own draft selections.

Each year I create just one team and win or lose I manage my team the best that I can all the way through the season, and I hold up my team for scrutiny as an example throughout to highlight what I find to be useful tips and information.

PREPARING FOR THE ESPN FHL DRAFT

Step One: Create your first player list in this fashion; write down the top two statistical leaders (forwards and defensemen) from each of the 32 NHL teams.

You now have in your hands a list of 64 players you want on your team, naturally half of them will be selected by the other team managers in your league’s draft.

In the Pacific Division these are the players I might draft if available:

Anaheim Ducks RW Troy Terry & C Mason McTavish

Calgary Flames C Nazim Kadri & LW Jonathan Huberdeau

Edmonton Oilers C Leon Draisaitl & C Connor McDavid

Los Angeles Kings RW Adrian Kempe & C Anze Kopitar

San Jose Sharks C Macklin Celebrini & LW William Eklund

Seattle Kraken LW Jared McCann & C Chandler Stephenson

Vancouver Canucks D Quinn Hughes & RW Brock Boeser

Nevada Knights C Jack Eichel & RW Mark Stone

Enter the NHL website and select each team’s roster/stats link to determine last season’s point leaders for each team, following my example you can go through each division methodically to compile your list of 64 players.

Additionally, I would like to suggest utilizing “paper” and not just your “device” while participating in the draft, reason being that unless you have plenty of RAM to have multiple tabs running with a large, wide screen and are able to quickly manage them, hard copies in plain sight will assist you greatly.

Now, depending on what position you are selecting from your ability to quickly scan your lists and make a strong decision on who to select in the 90 seconds allotted to you each round factors in.

There are more tasks involved with lists that we will address after collecting all the lists that we will create, tomorrow we will create our defenseman list and why they are considered some of the most important players you can draft in the early rounds.