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Sean Allen, Special to ESPN.comSep 12, 2024, 05:18 PM ET
CloseSean Allen is a fantasy analyst for ESPN.com. He was the 2008 and 2009 Fantasy Sports Writers Association Hockey Writer of the Year. You can tweet him @seanard.
What is our target this time? Glad you asked!
We want a defender who is 24 years and 105 days old with about 132 NHL games to their name.
If you haven’t already read the breakout forwards piece, the introduction there will go into more detail about how we are defining and finding players for a potential fantasy breakout. The process for defense is much the same, with a few tweaks based on the statistics. If you want to see our methodology, keep reading on, but if you want to jump ahead to see our top picks, click here.
What makes a breakout candidate
The slope for fantasy production by age among defenders is gentler than it is for forwards. That is to say, they typically take a little longer to reach their fantasy prime and get to spend a little more time there.
Sure enough, when we take the top 60 defensemen in fantasy points from each of the past 15 NHL seasons, the average age is 28 years and 122 days old, which is half a year older than the forwards.
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Using the same exercise as the forwards, if we take all defensemen who debuted in or after the 2009-10 season, are at least 25.7 years old (added a year compared to forwards) and have at least 100 games of NHL experience, we will find the average age and experience for when these players broke onto the fantasy scene.
Same as the forwards, we are using a 30-game rolling average of at least 1.7 fantasy points per game (FPPG) to determine a “breakout” occurred.
The range in this case is broader than it was with the forwards. As with the forwards, there are those players who “broke out” instantly, like Charlie McAvoy, Cale Makar and Zach Werenski. But the other end of the spectrum…
Source link : https://www.espn.com/fantasy/hockey/story/_/id/41167378/fantasy-hockey-breakout-picks-draft-defensemen-espn-nhl
Author : Sean Allen
Publish date : 2024-09-12 22:18:23
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