Round Four - Week 24 Waiver Wire Pickups – Bonus Edition

Analyzing the best streaming options, schedule advantages, and advanced metrics in Week 24 of the Fantasy Hockey season.

By Jeff Stacks · April 4, 2026 · Updated October 11, 2026

FANTASY ROUNDUP HOCKEY DASHBOARD

Before I begin, I want to ask my readers a question: Do you want to play hard? Or do you want to play smart?

If your answer was both, you’d be correct. That’s usually the best way to win. But if you’re sick of having to set an alarm to get a player before your fellow Fantasy Hockey Managers do, try the Fantasy Roundup Automated Waiver Tool.

It allows you to add every player mentioned in this article on a schedule, so you can forget about having to set an alarm when you want to make a claim.

All you have to do is sign in to your Fantasy Roundup account — or sign up if you haven’t already — and sync your league. There’s a button here to login and see which player is available. There will also be a button before every player’s write-up to select them in the Fantasy Roundup Automated Waiver Tool and get to those players before everyone else.

In addition to the Automated Waiver Tool, the Fantasy Roundup development team has incorporated it into an all-encompassing Hockey Dashboard where you can edit your rosters, add and drop players, plan your schedule, view your matchups, and more!

On top of all that, we’ve also launched the Fantasy Roundup Trade Analyzer. This analyzer will take a look at your trades, incorporate sustainability factors, and ultimately tell you whether or not your trade is positive, negative, or even neutral, based on a variety of advanced metrics. Go check it out after signing in!

INTRODUCTION

Happy Easter, to those who celebrate. To those who don’t, enjoy your long weekend.

We are now at the FINAL fantasy hockey waiver article of the 2025-2026 season. I wanted to first say THANK YOU to all my readers who have progressively stayed with me since I started writing for Fantasy Roundup in Week 10.

Next season, we have plans for a TON of new content to make sure you are making the best fantasy hockey pickups and ultimately win your league.

For those of you who are in the Finals in Week 23, best of luck. I was booted from one of my league’s Semi-Finals by Jack Hughes’ empty net goal in the dying seconds of the New Jersey Devils’ game against the Chicago Blackhawks on March 29, 2026.

I’m still alive in my other league, and in the last two days of the Finals. Currently down 6-5 in categories, anything can happen this weekend, so I’ll either be ecstatic or completely down on Monday. That’s the ups and downs of Fantasy Hockey for you, folks.

Week 24 is definitely a weird one. Keep an eye out for teams in a playoff position start benching their star players more often, and to see backup goalies get more starts than usual. I’ll get into more detail later in the article.

In the meantime, let’s take a look at how my picks did in Week 23.

WEEK 23 ROUNDUP

Outside my clear WORST pickup in Jimmy Snuggerud, and a pretty bland Deeper Darling grab in Kindel, I think I did pretty well with the targets last week.

Look out everyone, Jake DeBrusk is coming to town! Holy moly, what a performance. With a pick I was criticized for last week for not going with Mikael Granlund, I think DeBrusk was the best pickup last week.

Besides DeBrusk, Dmitry Orlov and Jakub Dobes were stellar in their own right. I’ll be highlighting Orlov again in this article, as the San Jose Sharks’ schedule is by far the best in the NHL in Week 24.

Noah Cates was another standout, notching one goal and two assists in five games, but also being a monster on the faceoff dot. I’m regretting not picking him over Snuggerud in my league that counts FWs.

Jakub Dobes has thrown the Montreal Canadiens on his back and has not dropped them. He should be rostered on your team as your #1 goaltender right now.

Devon Toews was alright in Week 23, but should be a prime target moving forward since Cale Makar went down with an injury in the Avalanche’s game against the Calgary Flames on March 30, 2026. Toews is a lock for top pair, top powerplay deployment for at least the next two games against the Dallas Stars and the St Louis Blues. Go grab him if you need a D.

Hofer was more average than I expected, especially after the St Louis Blues let the Sharks run over them in a 5-4 loss on March 30, 2026. He redeemed himself with a really solid win on April 3, 2026, and I expect him to also get the start in the Blues’ game against the Colorado Avalanche. As a Hofer owner, I’m scared, but I’m gonna play him.

Emil Heineman and Connor Clifton were both really good banger pickups, and each got a point to boost your tertiary scoring in Week 23.

WEEK 24 PREVIEW

With Week 24 encompassing one full Mon-Sun schedule, and then another four days of games until the final NHL regular season games on April 16, 2026, you need to preserve your adds as much as possible.

I know its difficult to do that sometimes, but in a week like this where you are playing over an 11 day span, having extra adds if one of your superstar players is rested will be crucial to secure a W.

The San Jose Sharks have objectively the best schedule in the league next week with seven games and four Light Nights. Trailing right behind them is the Seattle Kraken with seven games and three Light Nights. The Buffalo Sabres are a dark horse team with only five games, but with three Light Nights there are some players that are sure to make your roster if you have lots of Heavy Night players.

Seven other teams have six games and two Light Nights each, and I’ll be looking into a few different options from them. They include the Nashville Predators, the Utah Mammoth, the Tampa Bay Lightning, the Los Angeles Kings, the Winnipeg Jets, the Calgary Flames and the Vancouver Canucks.

Without further adieu, let’s get into the final week of the 2025-2026 Fantasy Hockey playoffs!

SECTION INTRODUCTION

Included at the end of this article is a legend which has definitions for several advanced statistics I’ll be using to evaluate players, and any other fantasy hockey-specific terms or jargon I may use.

Most Yahoo leagues allow four player adds per week. The players you can pick up with these adds are generally called “streamers”. In this article I’ll be outlining my five favourite streamer players for Week 24. TWO forwards, TWO defencemen, TWO goalies, TWO bangers, and TWO deeper league targets.

The first section is headlined “SUPER SCHEDULES”, where I’m going to list all the NHL teams with a preferable schedule.

In the second section called “WAIVER WHIPLASH”, I’ll list my favourite Forward, Defenceman, and Goalie under 40% rostered in the standard Yahoo Head-to-Head (HTH) format.

The third section I’ve labeled “BANGER BEASTS”. This will highlight my favourite player overall for those managers in banger formats, which have additional stats: Blocks (BLK), and Penalties in Minutes (PIM), combined with Hits (HIT) mentioned previously.

The final section is entitled “DEEPER DARLINGS”, where I’ll identify an underrated player rostered under 10%, for managers in leagues with 12 teams or more (also called deep leagues).

Advanced stats are provided courtesy of Natural Stattrick and Money Puck.

Heavy Nights have more than eight games. Light Nights have less than eight NHL games. Borderline Nights are right in the middle. There are five Light Nights in Week 24.

Light Nights are highlighted in green. Borderline Nights are highlighted in yellow. Heavy Nights are highlighted in red.

Light Nights are key this week, meaning your primary targets should come from the St Louis Blues and the Anaheim Ducks. If your league counts peripherals, you should aim for players from the Pittsburgh to maximize their game volume.

The worst schedules of the week go to the Boston Bruins, the New York Islanders, and the Pittsburgh. You NEED to drop most of the players from these teams – even if they’re on PP1 - and replace them with either the Light Night targets and/or the volume targets. Mathew Barzal, Alexis Lafreniere and Morgan Geekie come to mind.

Stay flexible with your streaming slots and track ownership trends to grab these adds. This approach should help you maximize categories and production throughout the week without major roster headaches.

WAIVER WHIPLASH

Jack Quinn

Jack Quinn of the Buffalo Sabres has been on a heater as of late, and you need to take advantage of it. He's playing on the second line and top powerplay unit consistently, and with three Light Nights in Week 24, he shouldn't take up expensive room on your roster.

In his past five games, Quinn has one goal and three assists, with a fantastic four powerplay points. His shot and hit volume are great, and his underlying metrics back it up.

In On-Ice stats, he ranked 1st in SCF%, 16th in CF%, 36th in SF%, 39th and in xGF%. Individually he ranks 38th in iSCF and 43rd in iCF. Between him and Jason Zucker who also has great advanced stats recently, you can't go wrong. I'd grab them both if you can without losing too many total games played.

At just 10% rostered, he should be widely available and you need to grab him, especially for his Mon/Wed/Thu schedule to start Week 24. You can safely drop him after the Thursday game, but get him as soon as you can.

Tyler Toffoli

Tyler Toffoli of the San Jose Sharks is my favourite volume waiver add at Forward for Week 24. The Sharks have seven games and an immensely valuable four Light Nights, so he needs to be taken a look at.

The Sharks rotate their lines often, so Toffoli does get the occasional minutes with Macklin Celebrini at even-strength, but you're picking up Toffoli for the powerplay exposure.

In his last five games, Toffoli has three assist, two of which were on the powerplay. When that Sharks powerplay starts cooking, stacking their top players with Celebrini is one of the best things you can do for your fantasy squad. Alternatively, they should be effective if you're facing a team with Celebrini on it to offset his powerplay production and keep the stats as close as possible.

On-Ice, Toffoli ranked 29th in SF%, 31st in xGF% and 59th in CF%. These numbers likely reflect his time with Celebrini and was he brings to the table every time he's on the ice. Not a play with super great upside in any Banger formats, but if your league rewards powerplay points, Toffoli is your guy in Week 24.

Dmitry Orlov

For the second week in a row, I'm highlighting Dmitry Orlov as the best volume option on Defence in Week 24. And dammit, was I ever right.

Racking up four assists in his last five games, two of them being powerplay points, Orlov is THE option on the Sharks' top pair and powerplay units. At the beginning of the season he was in more of a powerplay timeshare with John Klingberg, but Orlov has been the obvious pick of Head Coach Ryan Warsofsky since the Olympic break.

Go grab Orlov today if you can. He has a really solid Mon/Wed/Thu slate to start the week, and you won't have to burn an add next week.

Zayne Parekh

I've been wanting to talk about Zayne Parekh of the Calgary Flames for a while. Since his outstanding World Junior Tournament's performance, he's been like a hungry dog caged up ready to be let loose on a steak.

Calgary sent him to the AHL earlier in the season, and decided to bring him up fulltime after the Olympic break. Since the departure of both Rasmus Andersson and Mackenzie Weegar from the Flames' blueline, Parekh has been handed the reigns.

Playing on the second pair and top powerplay unit, Parekh has had the chance recently to show why the Flames 9th overall in 2024.

In his last five games, Parekh has two goals and one assist, two of those points being on the powerplay. His shot volume is great at about 2 per game, and he's even started blocking shots with six under his belt in that span.

His On-Ice metrics don't stand-out considering the majority of the team could be AHL players right now, but his Individual metrics are very good. Ranking 37th in ixG and 28th in iSCF, he is doing all the things he needs to succeed and that should translate to your fantasy points.

Parekh is more of a second-half target in Week 24. The Flames play all heavy nights to start, but if you can pick him up for the Sat/Sun back-to-back, he will be with you for the remainder of the week's lighter nights.

The NHL goalie is quite possibly the most unpredictable position in all of sports. While there are some studs in the NHL, all goalies are fallible. Goalies are voodoo, as they say. Considering this, I am not here to recommend a goalie for any particular reason other than they could have a good schedule, they could be on a good team, or I just like the way they play and think they have potential to produce good numbers. Take anything I say about goalies with a grain of salt, but know I have done research into them and I am recommending in good faith.

Yaroslav Askarov

I'll start by saying this… Yaroslav Askarov of the San Jose Sharks does not have great goalie advanced stats over the past 10 games. In fact, he hasn't really been that good all season.

But the past does not matter in Fantasy Hockey. We are trying to predict the future. My guess is Askarov will perform well in Week 24.

I treat goalies on my teams like I'm trading stocks. The more opportunity and volume your goalie gets, the more chance they have of fixing any bad stats they may have given you. Almost like dollar-cost averaging.

With this in mind, Askarov has seven potential starts for the Sharks. Obviously he won't get them all, but I expect him to get the majority. Askarov's tandem goaltender Alex Nedeljkovic has been particularly bad recently, and the Sharks are trying to make the playoffs.

My guess is they go with Askarov as the starter down the stretch trying to make that final push, and you should grab him to take advantage of that ride.

Justus Annunen

This is a weirder one, because I'm not sure how much Justus Annunen will actually play in Week 24, but I know he'll get at least one game to start the week.

The Nashville Predators have a Mon/Tue back-to-back on April 6th and 7th, and then an additional four games in Week 24. With the Predators tied with the San Jose Sharks and the Los Angeles Kings in a Wild Card spot, they need wins badly.

That's why, unless they want to run Saros in six games over 11 days while pushing for the playoffs I expect they'll play Annunen more than they have been.

Annunen's advanced stats over the past 10 games put him among the leagues best goaltenders, ranking around 4th overall in every metric. This doesn't mean he'll be successful, but if the Predators expect to make the playoffs, they'll need Saros as rested as he can be.

Take advantage of this and grab Annunen for whichever game he starts between the Kings and the Ducks. My guess is he's facing the Ducks as the Predators need to beat the Kings.

BANGER BEASTS

Jacob Melanson

For Week 24, you need banger volume, and lots of it. The two guys listed should bring you exactly that, as long as they are in their respective teams' lineups.

Jacob Melanson and Beck Malenstyn rank 3rd and 27th in Hits/60 respectively. Looking at that you may think it's a no-brainer to pick Melanson, but hold your horses.

Melanson has been a healthy scratch in four out of the Seattle Kraken's last five games. When he's in the lineup, he bangs better than most. In the last five games he's played, he has 20 hits. If he's playing, you must play him to get an advantage in your Banger leagues.

Beck Malenstyn

If Melanson's not playing, Beck Malenstyn is your guy. He's in the Buffalo Sabres' lineup consistently and plays on the second Penalty Kill unit. He's a roster mainstay, and with three Light Nights, he should give you around 13 bangs from Buffalo's five game schedule.

DEEPER DARLINGS

Michael Misa

Michael Misa of the San Jose Sharks has quite had an offensive outburst in the NHL yet, but his numbers indicate he could get hot in Week 24.

His Individual metrics are not great, but his On-Ice metrics lead me to believe he could pop-off at any time.

Ranking 49th in SCF% and 283rd OISH% does not compute. Having that little luck while also shooting and contributing indicates impending turnaround.

He's a risk for sure, but with seven games and four Light Nights to take advantage of, add as many Sharks as you can. Misa is by far the best available at under 10% rostered.

Corey Perry

We go from one of the youngest players in the league in Michael Misa, to one of the oldest in the league in Corey Perry.

The newest repeat resident of Tampa Bay, Florida, Corey Perry is really making a name for himself as a guy who signs with one team to start the season and ends in another. Imagine having that much sway over the NHL, that you could essentially start the season wherever you want, and you're all but guaranteed to be on a Stanley Cup contender by April?

That is to say, Corey Perry wastes no opportunity. Given pretty sparkling deployment on the Los Angeles Kings all season, he was ultimately moved to the Tampa Bay Lightning at the NHL Trade Deadline where he has taken more of a bottom-six role.

But that doesn't matter for Perry. Wherever he slots into a lineup, he generally produces. He didn't perform too well with the Kings, but under Lightning Head Coach John Cooper, Perry has thrived.

In his past five games, Perry has two goals and an assist, along with pretty decent shot volume. His underlying metrics back up this hot streak as likely to be sustainable as well.

Ranking an amazing 23rd in both CF% and SCF%, and 44th in xGF%, I would chalk this up to mostly being exposed to a much better team and much better system than what he had in LA.

He doesn't hit or block any more so he's not really viable in Bangers, but definitely a tertiary scoring option in Week 24.

SEASON WRAP-UP

As mentioned at the beginning, all these players listed can be scheduled with the Fantasy Roundup Automated Waiver Tool when you sign in to your account, sync your league, and work with the Hockey Dashboard. Do your sleep a favor; work smarter, not harder, and get that edge over your league mates.

The new Fantasy Roundup Hockey Dashboard allows you to view your team, make adjustments to your roster positions, view your matchup, make adds and drops natively, without ever having to go to the Yahoo platform. There’s now also a Mobile version of the site.

Before the Olympic break, we added a trade analyzer to the Hockey Dashboard. Frankly, it is the most robust trade analyzer I’ve ever used. Running a few mock trades, and the Fantasy Roundup Trade Analyzer will provide the trade recommendation, but also break down why a trade could be positive or negative to your team, explaining sustainability, strength of schedule, line assignments, powerplay deployment and more. We will be fine-tuning this system and get it working really well for next season.

Big reminder to go to the comment section and tell me how your picks did this week. We would love to hear feedback from our readers and how we can make ourselves better.

Good luck, and stay stacking!