Your draft is tonight. Or tomorrow. Or, if you're me, in about 40 minutes while you're still scrolling rankings with one hand and eating cereal with the other. It's fine. Rotowire just dropped a last-minute strategy guide for the 2026-27 season and it nails the three things that actually wreck drafts: scarce positions, goalie runs, and late-round value.

First, the scarce positions. You know this from every other sport but hockey makes it hurt more. There are maybe a handful of elite centers and a small pile of defensemen who actually move the needle, and once they're gone, they're gone. Rotowire's point is simple: don't sit on your hands waiting for a forward you like while the entire top tier of blue-line scorers walks out the door. You can find wingers later. You cannot find a point-per-game defenseman in round nine.

Then the goalie runs, my favorite chaos moment in any fantasy draft. Someone panics in round four, grabs a starter early, and suddenly three more goalies come off the board in the next six picks and half your league is sweating. Rotowire says don't get swept up in it and I co-sign that with my whole chest. I've said it before and I'll say it again: late-round goalie fliers are the best value in all of fantasy sports. Every year some kid splits time in October, steals the crease by Thanksgiving, and wins someone a category. Bet on the upside story, not the safe floor.

The late-round value section is where drafts are actually won, though, and Rotowire knows it. That's where you take the rookie with the camp buzz (hi Gavin McKenna truthers, I see you), the veteran bouncing back, the power-play guy on a bad team who still touches the puck every 40 seconds. Those picks don't make your team on draft night. They make it in January, when your second-round pick is hurt and your round-12 lottery ticket is carrying you.

I'd add one thing the guide can't: the best late picks are people, not projections. When I'm stuck between two names in round 11 I take the guy whose story I believe. The reliever-turned-starter. The comeback year. The kid who got traded and finally gets a real shot. Sometimes it busts! But when it hits you get to say you saw it coming and I mean, straight up, that feeling beats half a point of projected value anyway.

So. Scarce positions early. Don't chase the goalie run. Swing late. And if you end up with a goalie room full of lottery tickets, good, that was the plan. Tell me who your last-round flier is. I'm collecting names.