Breakout Candidate: Frank Nazar, C

With so little depth in the middle, Nazar’s the No. 2 center by default. He’s next in line to get big minutes – he averaged close to 16 per game in 53 games – and there is 20-goal, maybe 60-point potential here, with a modest number of hits and perhaps more face-off wins than Bedard.

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The bad news is, the Hawks are still a bad team. Nazar won’t be able to reach his offensive ceiling without his wingers performing, and on a nightly basis he’ll be outmatched against someone bigger, stronger and more experienced than him. It’s also possible Nazar is not one of the four forwards on PP1, which will likely start with Bedard, Teuvo Teravianen, Tyler Bertuzzi and Ryan Donato. That will cap Nazar’s fantasy value.

Buy-Low Candidate: Connor Bedard, C/RW

Fantasy managers are always looking for the next shiny thing, and Bedard is not that thing anymore. If a draft were held right now, I think Lane Hutson and Macklin Celebrini would go ahead of Bedard. But you can’t give up on a potential franchise cornerstone who’s only just 20 years old despite the immense pressure on him and his team to perform. Bedard’s trajectory remains upwards, and while he’s a high-risk, high-upside option in redraft leagues, he retains immense value in dynasty leagues. The question is not if he hits 100 points, but how long it takes for him to get there.

If Bedard keeps his RW eligibility, that could be huge for his fantasy value because his lack of face-off wins hurts his value as a C. Keep in mind, though, that RW is no longer the thin position it once was with Yahoo being quite generous with multi-position eligibility and wingers often having both LW and RW flexibility. It’s a relative new wrinkle in fantasy hockey; in previous seasons, wingers were usually one or the other, and rarely both.

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Riser: Sam Rinzel, D

Rinzel finished the season with a four-game points streak and seems poised to be the PP1 QB. He notched five assists, including three on the power play, 22 shots and 12 hits in nine games. Alex Vlasic and Artyom Levshunov might threaten for PP minutes, but neither are as offensively-inclined as Rinzel. He’s potentially a great value pick in the late rounds.

Faller: Tyler Bertuzzi, LW/RW

Too much disappointment and not enough upside makes Bertuzzi a fantasy afterthought. He’s a 20-goal, 40-point player who depends on his centers to generate points, and he scored just 26 even-strength points last season. I find him a low-event player who was very much a power-play merchant, and late in the season played very infrequently with Bedard. We need to let go of the notion that he is a reliable 60-point, second-line winger.

All stats courtesy of naturalstattrick.com, moneypuck.com, hockeyviz.com, allthreezones.com, hockey-reference.com, eliteprospects.com unless otherwise noted.