Defense is where your league's scoring changes the board the most. In a points league the position is 7 players and then a long flat middle. In a league that counts blocks, the leaders are mostly players a points league never looks at, and only 3 defensemen make both lists. This post covers both, from the 2026-09-08 run (249 defensemen projected), full 84-game totals throughout. The boards are live and re-rank on every rebuild.
The top 25 by points
The top is five players within 7 points of each other: Makar 89, Hughes 88, Bouchard 87, Hutson 85, Werenski 82. The model cannot separate them, and neither should you. Dahlin (78) and Fox (73) are a half-step behind, and then the board drops 7 points to Sanderson and goes flat: from 66 at eighth to 52 at 25th is 14 points over seventeen players. That is roughly one model-error-bar of difference across the whole middle of the board.
Hutson at 85 is the projection's most aggressive call on this board: 78 points last season at 21, plus the age curve for a 22-year-old (+12% on goals) and 0.90 more minutes. Schaefer gets the same treatment one tier down — 59 points as an 18-year-old rookie becomes 66 at 19, with 257 projected shots, 2nd among defensemen.
How fast it falls off
Projected points by rank among defensemen, first to sixtieth.
The gap between the 12th defenseman and the 30th is 13 points over a full season. Compare the forwards, where the 12th center to the 30th is 20. Once the first seven are gone, waiting on defense costs very little in a points league, and the 12th-ranked defenseman (60) projects below 48 wingers.
Blocks
Three of the top 15 blockers are also top-25 scorers. Here they are, because a defenseman who fills two columns is worth more than the points board says:
The rest of the blocks board is players like Alexander Romanov — 191 projected blocks, 1st in the league, and 22 points. Whether he is a starter depends entirely on whether your league counts blocks.
Power play
The power-play board mostly tracks the points board at the top — Hughes 38, Makar 35, Bouchard 33 — with Fox (30 PPP, 7th in points), Sanderson (29 PPP, 8th in points), Seider (29 PPP, 17th in points) the ones who rank higher here than there. One warning on this board specifically: the PPP projection is a regressed rate from the player's own history. It does not know who is on the first unit this camp. When the line sync happens, this board moves more than any other.
What this board does not know
Ice time and power-play units are last season's until camp lines are synced. Blocks and hits are box-score counts that vary by rink scorer; the projection regresses them but does not correct for that. There is no plus/minus board because the backtest shows the model cannot project it. Rookies with no NHL games are not on the board. Full-season totals throughout; the fantasy page's "expected" mode applies injury-adjusted games.