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Yahoo · Hockey

Lerg Winter Classic

A Yahoo keeper league of twelve teams — fourteen from 2023 to 2025 and sixteen from 2019 to 2022 — with a $200 auction budget, a nineteen-player roster limit and $1 held back for every empty slot. A keeper costs last season's salary plus $5, or $5 for a player without one, and no team has kept more than two players in a season. 2026 is the league's 17th season; keeper history here runs from 2019 to 2026.

Source: reviewed keeper workbook, with Yahoo's 2026 draft results for that season's keepers. The workbook records no championship results; champions come separately from Yahoo, and only verified titles are shown. Its 2018 sheet records no keeper selections, so keeper history starts in 2019.

Explore league history →

Budget and keepers by season

Keeper counts and spend by season, showing the Budget Overview total beside the total of the season's keeper list, and where each of those two records came from.
SeasonTeamsOverview keepersOverview spendListed keepersListed spendRecordsOverview fromKeepers from
20261223$38323$383AgreeSheet tableYahoo draft
20251423$50325$561DisagreeYahoo screenshotSheet marks
20241425$57025$570AgreeYahoo screenshotSheet marks
20231428$61328$613AgreeSheet tableSheet marks
20221627$49627$496AgreeSheet tableSheet marks
20211627$51227$513DisagreeSheet tableSheet marks
20201624$33826$374DisagreeSheet tableSheet marks
20191623$30623$306AgreeSheet tableSheet marks

Bargain Board

Keepers whose Yahoo average cost most exceeded what they were kept for. The 2025 and 2026 sheets note that Yahoo's averages come from standard ten-team drafts, and this league is larger.

  1. Nathan MacKinnon2019$11 kept · $54.0 avg · +$43
  2. Nathan MacKinnon2020$16 kept · $58.0 avg · +$42
  3. Nathan MacKinnon2021$21 kept · $61.0 avg · +$40
  4. Elias Pettersson2020$11 kept · $46.0 avg · +$35
  5. Mikko Rantanen2021$20 kept · $54.0 avg · +$34
  6. Kirill Kaprizov2022$15 kept · $47.0 avg · +$32
  7. Ben Bishop2019$14 kept · $45.0 avg · +$31
  8. Mikko Rantanen2020$15 kept · $46.0 avg · +$31
  9. Johnny Gaudreau2019$10 kept · $40.0 avg · +$30
  10. Mikko Rantanen2019$10 kept · $40.0 avg · +$30
  11. Andrei Vasilevskiy2020$24 kept · $53.0 avg · +$29
  12. David Pastrnak2024$20 kept · $48.0 avg · +$28

Keeper cost against Yahoo average — 2026

The 14 highest Yahoo averages among 23 corroborated 2026 keepers.

  • Keeper cost
  • Yahoo average cost
  1. Nathan MacKinnon$46 kept · $55.0 avg · +$9
  2. David Pastrnak$30 kept · $46.0 avg · +$16
  3. Kirill Kaprizov$35 kept · $46.0 avg · +$11
  4. Nick Suzuki$18 kept · $40.0 avg · +$22
  5. Quinn Hughes$26 kept · $40.0 avg · +$14
  6. Zach Werenski$13 kept · $38.0 avg · +$25
  7. Martin Necas$18 kept · $32.0 avg · +$14
  8. Evan Bouchard$31 kept · $28.0 avg · -$3
  9. Cole Caufield$23 kept · $26.0 avg · +$3
  10. Cutter Gauthier$7 kept · $18.0 avg · +$11
  11. Brandon Hagel$22 kept · $17.0 avg · -$5
  12. Leo Carlsson$6 kept · $15.0 avg · +$9
  13. Alex DeBrincat$18 kept · $13.0 avg · -$5
  14. Matthew Schaefer$8 kept · $13.0 avg · +$5

Keeper streaks

Players kept in three or more consecutive seasons, matched across seasons by Yahoo player id rather than by name.

  1. Nathan MacKinnon2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026 · $228 total cost · +$185 across 7 of 8 seasons
  2. Mikko Rantanen2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 · $175 total cost · +$128 across 6 of 7 seasons
  3. Auston Matthews2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 · $252 total cost · +$78 across 6 of 7 seasons
  4. Kirill Kaprizov2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026 · $135 total cost · +$81 across 5 of 6 seasons
  5. Leon Draisaitl2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 · $249 total cost · +$71 across 5 of 6 seasons
  6. Cale Makar2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 · $120 total cost · +$77 across 4 of 5 seasons
  7. Andrei Vasilevskiy2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 · $106 total cost · +$90 total value
  8. David Pastrnak2023, 2024, 2025, 2026 · $108 total cost · +$65 across 3 of 4 seasons
  9. Jake Oettinger2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 · $58 total cost · +$10 across 3 of 4 seasons
  10. Jonathan Marchessault2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 · $90 total cost · -$59 across 3 of 4 seasons
  11. Igor Shesterkin2020, 2021, 2022 · $30 total cost · +$53 total value
  12. Quinn Hughes2024, 2025, 2026 · $64 total cost · +$48 total value
  13. Mark Stone2019, 2020, 2021 · $33 total cost · +$41 total value
  14. Adam Fox2021, 2022, 2023 · $63 total cost · +$18 across 2 of 3 seasons
  15. Brady Tkachuk2021, 2022, 2023 · $66 total cost · +$14 across 2 of 3 seasons
  16. Jason Robertson2021, 2022, 2023 · $30 total cost · -$1 across 2 of 3 seasons
  17. Carter Verhaeghe2021, 2022, 2023 · $30 total cost · -$15 across 2 of 3 seasons

Fun facts

  • Kept every season

    Nathan MacKinnon was kept in all 8 seasons on record, 2019–2026.

    Source: Corroborated player rows, joined by Yahoo player id

  • Nathan MacKinnon 2019

    Kept for $11 against a $54.0 Yahoo average — +$43 of value, the biggest bargain on record.

    Source: 2019 keeper marks

  • Connor McDavid 2025

    The most expensive keeper on record at $70, against a $60.0 average (-$10).

    Source: 2025 keeper marks

  • 2023 was the priciest year

    $613 committed across 28 keepers — the highest confirmed annual keeper spend.

    Source: 2023 Budget Overview

Where the records disagree

Two independent records exist for each season: the Budget Overview, and the keeper list itself — the players marked as keepers on the sheet, or for 2026 the keeper picks in Yahoo's draft results. Where they disagree, both are shown and neither is chosen. Player rows in the identified disputed keeper blocks are withheld from the charts above. No Overview-to-block team join is asserted, except in 2026, where Yahoo's draft results carry the same team names as the Overview and the blocks.

Source workbook SHA-256: 87244c226c53070eeabe51cb96bd01f3cae61966d2713568d3e57397d4a7d60f

2020
Overview records 24 keepers, $338; player marks give 26 keepers, $374. The Rollingthe Blackwood block marks Teuvo Teravainen ($22) and Evander Kane ($14), while the Overview row labelled Rollingthe Blackwood records 0 keepers and $0. Every other block's keeper count and cost appears in the Overview.
2021
Overview records 27 keepers, $512; player marks give 27 keepers, $513. The Night Queen block marks Jake Guentzel ($18) and Brad Marchand ($46), $64 in all. The Overview has no Night Queen row, and the only Overview figure the blocks do not account for is Haunted Ghost Pepper's 2 keepers at $63. The 2022 sheet records Marchand's prior salary as $45, which with Guentzel's $18 would make $63, while the 2021 sheet's keeper-cost formula gives $46. Neither figure is chosen here.
2025
Overview records 23 keepers, $503; player marks give 25 keepers, $561. The Haunted Ghost Pepper block, whose manager name is blank, marks Nikita Kucherov ($52) and Matthew Knies ($6). The Overview screenshot has no Haunted Ghost Pepper row and no row at 2 keepers and $58; it lists two teams with no keepers.
2026 keepers
The keeper list comes from Yahoo's 2026 draft results, supplied by Lerg: its 23 keeper picks (206–228) match the Budget Overview team by team. The sheet itself leaves three of them unmarked — Ivan Demidov (Take A HinTz), and Mackenzie Blackwood and Nick Suzuki (Playing with my wood) — and marks Jesper Wallstedt only "Yes?"; Punch You In The Knies drafted him at pick 57. The sheet also still carries blocks for the two teams removed before the season.
2023 averages
The 2023 sheet's Average Cost column reads 0.0 on every player row, so 2023 keepers are left out of every value comparison. Their keeper costs and both season totals still count.
Screenshot overviews
The 2025 and 2024 Budget Overviews exist only as Yahoo screenshots embedded in the workbook, and are transcribed row by row.
2018
Unpublished. The sheet lists rosters and keeper costs but has no keeper column and no Budget Overview, so it records no keeper selections.