Montreal avoided arbitration with Alex Galchenyuk by signing the restricted free agent to a three-year deal with an average annual value of $4.9 million. That’s a good value, however it seems to me not long ago they had another young player unfairly maligned sign a bridge deal and… well that didn’t exactly work out.

One important note about that contract:

Alex Galchenyuk does not have an nmc/ntc…

— Eric Engels (@EricEngels) July 5, 2017

This seemingly leaves the door open for him to still be traded this summer, or sometime over the next 12 months.

What the immediate future holds for Galchenyuk is a bit uncertain. The team seems committed to not having him as a centre, which means he could be buried on the depth chart as a left winger. He’ll definitely be behind Max Pacioretty, and he could play behind Jonathan Drouin depending where they elect to slot their recently-acquired forward. Drouin could realistically play any of the three forward positions, and there are rumours he may get a shot at centre. All I’m saying is that it’s not impossible that Galchenyuk spends time on the third line this year.

For all the heat that Galchenyuk takes, one would think he’s been a disappointment, when over the last three years (the most recent of which it seemed he was playing injured for nearly half of it) he has produced points at a similar rate to Jeff Skinner, James van Riemsdyk, and Joe Pavelski. The criticisms of his defensive game are fair, though a team that struggled severely to score at times last year, one would think his offence would be coveted rather than maligned, but I digress.

It’s fair to say that Galchenyuk will not be that true number-one centre every team covets in the vein of Kopitar or Patrice Bergeron, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be a very good and very useful offensive talent. I’ll be curious to see where his ADP ends up, because if he’s put in a position to succeed this year, getting back to the 55-point plateau is within his reach.

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The Edmonton Oilers locked up their saviour for eight more years following the end of his entry-level contract as Connor McDavid signed an eight-year deal with an average annual value of $12.5 million.

I wrote last week about the impending deal and how owners in cap leagues should start preparations now. There is no need to re-hash that here.

What I want to know is this: if you’re in a cap league, would you be looking to trade for McDavid now that we know the terms of his contract, or is his cap hit too steep to consider acquiring him? Let me know in the comments.

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Colorado continued doing whatever it is that franchise is doing and signed Nail Yakupov to a one-year contract on Tuesday. A one-year deal for under $1 million from one of the worst teams of the last decade would seem to indicate this is his last chance to prove he can stick in the NHL.

This is a low-risk signing by a team that desperately needs to hit on some lottery tickets if they hope to be relevant over the next couple of seasons. At the least, he’ll get an opportunity right of the gate to contribute:

Igor Larionov, Yakupov's agent, also said Sakic sees Yak as a top-6 winger

— Igor Eronko (@IgorEronko) July 4, 2017

Whether he can contribute in a meaningful manner seems like a longshot at this point. A player who, over a three-year span, had a lower points per 60 minute rate than names like Dwight King, John Mitchell, and Nick Spaling doesn’t bode well for the future. Had he not been a first overall pick five years ago, he’d probably be on his way out of the NHL.

All this isn’t to say he can’t be a useful player. He is not a top-six player (though he’ll be given a chance to be that it appears), but he could play a minimal role on the third or fourth lines, particularly on a roster as barren as Colorado’s. There isn’t any fantasy relevance here, but if you’re hanging onto him in a dynasty league, maybe you can recoup something in a trade based on the fact that he could play with Nathan MacKinnon or Matt Duchene (supposing he’s not traded). His value is low now, but he’ll probably have none in 365 days. Take whatever you can get.

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Throughout the summer, I’m going team by team to review the important fantasy performances of certain players, and what that could mean for next year. Next on the list is Los Angeles.

Jeff Carter

Considering he’s been one of the most consistent goal scorers of the last decade, it’s hard to believe that Carter’s 32-goal season was the first time he cracked 30 since he left Philadelphia. His 32-goal, 34-assist season did, however, put him on an exclusive list of players with at least 80 goals, 100 assists, and 700 shots on goal over the last three seasons:

Despite the goals and shots, Carter’s biggest contribution for fantasy owners was power-play points, where he managed 22 in 2016-17. That was the first time he managed at least 20 in a season since 2009-10.

The only real deviation from Carter’s prior performance compared to last year was on the power play. After shooting 8.1 percent at five-on-four in 2015-16 (a five-year low at the time by a very wide margin), he rebounded to 19.6 percent (he shot 19.5 percent at five-on-four from 2011-15). A full 82 games with a normal shooting percentage on the man advantage was what produced his season last year, not a lucky shooting percentage or high secondary assist rate.

How the team responds to a new coaching staff is impossible to predict right now, but Carter’s track record speaks for itself. Expect 25 goals, 35 assists, and about three shots on goal per game. Just don’t pay a premium at the draft table if others are expecting him to push for 35 goals again.

Anze Kopitar

Hopefully, a healthy-ish roster with the addition of a healthy-ish Mike Cammalleri will help Kopitar turn his production around, because it took a disastrous nosedive in 2016-17.

With just 12 goals, Kopitar posted his lowest goal total in an 82-game season of his career (he had 16 in 2014-15). He even managed his lowest assist total in an 82-game season of his career with 40, his previous low being 41 in his rookie year, and duplicated in 2013-14.

The assist total isn’t a huge concern – he still managed 40 assists despite the following:

Anze Kopitar's four most-common line mates at 5v5 in 2016-17:
Dustin Brown
Trevor Lewis
Marian Gaborik
Dwight King https://t.co/Zjpun6t6tC

— Michael Clifford (@SlimCliffy) July 4, 2017

What is a concern is his goal scoring. The 2016-17 season was the second time in three years he managed fewer than two shots on goal per game, and three of his four lowest shot-per-game seasons have come in the last three years. This all means he’s turned himself into a distributor and defensive player, but I wonder if it’s really his choice. Being saddled with fourth liners for an entire year will likely force any player to change their style.

It’s important to note that his individual shot attempts per minute last year were basically identical to the previous two seasons. His shooting percentage under a new coaching staff with new line mates should rebound as well. Perhaps he doesn’t return to the perennial 70-point player he was, but 20 goals and 40 assists seems doable.

More than anything, Kopitar should serve as a cautionary tale. The reason fantasy owners should like volume shooters is that even in bad seasons with an abnormally-low shooting percentage should still produce reasonable goal totals. Teammate Jeff Carter in 2015-16 is an example of this, same with Max Pacioretty in that same campaign. A player that doesn’t shoot much, however, will suffer greatly when their shooting percentage takes a dive. Consider shot volume an insurance policy against losing significant fantasy value. Just something to keep in mind when making projections or ranking players for fantasy purposes.

Tyler Toffoli

Just about anything that could go wrong, did go wrong for the now-25-year old winger. From 2012-2016, in over 2700 five-on-five minutes, the Kings scored 3.1 goals per 60 minutes with Toffoli on the ice, and that plummeted to 2.12 in 2016-17. From 2012-2016, he shot an even 10 percent at five-on-five, and that plummeted to 6.56 percent last year. He shot 12.2 percent at all strengths from 2012-2016, and under 10 percent last year. He managed a point on 68.8 percent of goals scored with him on the ice from 2012-2016, and that fell to a four-year low of 60.7 percent last year. All this fails to mention the 19 games he missed due to injury. Indeed, it was a season to forget.

Did anything significantly change from where he was taking his shots between 2015-16 and 2016-17? Not really (via HockeyViz.com):

It’s been discussed by myself in previous Ramblings, and by others in the hockey community, that the Kings had a lot of trouble generating quality scoring chances. That translated to Toffoli as well, as his on-ice scoring chance rate dropped about 10 percent from one season to the next. Hopefully that can turn itself around with the new coaching staff. The interesting thing is Jeff Carter’s rates dropped in a similar fashion, but his production was just fine. That drop in scoring chance rate doesn’t quite explain Toffoli’s production falling off a cliff, which makes me think it’s just a bout of bad luck.

Following a 31-goal breakout season in 2015-16, it was inevitable that Toffoli would be saddled with high expectations in the fantasy community. On the aggregation site Fantasy Pros, he averaged a top-60 ranking in roto formats before the season. Those are lofty expectations; James van Riemsdyk and Patrik Laine finished just inside the top-60 players in standard ESPN roto leagues, for reference. It isn’t to say the Los Angeles right winger couldn’t have lived up to that ranking, but it’s important to identify when a player is starting to be valued so highly that the value is taken out of his draft position. That happened with Toffoli, and that’s the main thing to take away from his season on the macro level. He should come at a better value for the 2017-18 fantasy season.