Bedard Falls to Round 9 in ESPN Four-Team Fantasy Mock
ESPN's fantasy staff let Connor Bedard sit until the ninth round, and Sean Allen took him anyway, injury and all.
Connor Bedard lasted until the ninth round of ESPN's four-team fantasy hockey mock draft, and the manager who took him knew exactly why he was still there.
"And yes, I drafted Connor Bedard knowing he's out a month-plus," wrote Sean Allen, who selected the Chicago center third in that round. His reasoning: in a head-to-head format where every team qualifies for the playoffs, peaking matters more than steady weekly output.
The mock involved four ESPN fantasy writers, Allen, Pierre Becquey, Sachin Chandan and Victoria Matiash, with rosters deep enough that the top four picks were Nathan MacKinnon, Connor McDavid, Macklin Celebrini and Nikita Kucherov. Goalies were capped at four per team, which pushed Andrei Vasilevskiy off the board in the third round and Logan Thompson in the fourth.
Defense went early too. Zach Werenski was gone in the third, with Cale Makar and Evan Bouchard back-to-back in the fourth. Allen floated the idea of cornering the position outright, pairing Bouchard with Moritz Seider, Matthew Schaefer and Lane Hutson.
The quality of what was left over is the real tell in a league this small. Brandon Hagel, Tom Wilson, Vincent Trocheck, Brayden Point and Victor Hedman all went undrafted, which is why Matiash leaned on streaming and schedule hacking as the deciding skill in compact formats.
