Sunday thoughts on Kucherov, Lindholm, Gibbons, Ekblad, and Reimer.

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24 teams were in action on Saturday, and it was a relatively entertaining night of hockey. Let’s start in Toronto where the Maple Leafs impressed by hanging with the Chicago Blackhawks through 40 minutes of action. In the third, the Leafs were completely stomped by Chicago (by a shots on goal margin of 26 to seven – yikes!), but that’s to be expected considering that Chicago is way, way better top-to-bottom, and were the more rested side.

I don’t really see the negatives here for the Maple Leafs, though I understand why jaded fans of the team are pointing to the shot clock and crying “havoc” even when the results are positive. It’s a habit but this isn’t very complicated: the lopsided third period resulted from a dash of score effects, a pinch of playing one of the best puck possession clubs in hockey, and a smattering of “fading late in the second leg of back-to-back games”. Not a big cause for concern in my view.

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Niklas Hjalmarsson is an absolute beast, and should probably be known as one of the best shot blockers in hockey. He’s surely the most fearless. 

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James Reimer’s save percentage is up to .928 on the season and he should probably start getting a bigger workload. Obviously he’s not Randy Carlyle’s guy like Jonathan Bernier is, but Reimer is impressive when he’s on. He was on Saturday.

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Daniel Winnik played 20 minutes on Saturday, led all Maple Leafs skaters in short-handed time on ice and contributed a primary assist. Amusingly he was dead last among Maple Leafs skaters in Corsi For percentage at even-strength, but he’s been full value for $1.3 million so far.

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In Boston, Erik Karlsson had a bit of a nightmare game. As Jack Edwards hounded him all night on the NESN broadcast for stealing a Norris Trophy win from Zdeno Chara, Karlsson failed to impress. The league’s premiere offensive defenseman was a -4 in the game, didn’t manage a hit, and only recorded one shot on goal.

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Carl Soderberg is pretty, pretty good. He assisted on both of Matt Fraser’s goals on Saturday night, and should really be owned in most leagues at this point. Fraser bears watching too. He’s proven that he can ripple the mesh at the AHL-level, and I’d imagine that will translate if he gets consistent burn in Beantown. In the short term he’s only going to get it if David Krejci’s injury is more than just a short-term thing.

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Krejci was a surprise “not healthy” scratch on Saturday, so fantasy owners should monitor that situation closely. Seems like he could miss a bunch of games over the next week, but he’ll be day-to-day throughout and ineligible to go on your IR – so he pretty much has the worst type of fantasy hockey injury. 

Hopefully he’s back soon.

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Tampa Bay Lightning winger Nikita Kucherov is on absolute fire, as he’s managed five goals, four assists, and 17 shots on goal in his past five games alone. The Lightning are shooting over 13 percent when he’s on the ice at even-strength, so this isn’t going to last, but it’s still impressive – particularly because his spike in production has been accompanied by a spike in shot volume.

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Mea culpa: I once criticized Steve Yzerman for trading Cory Conacher in exchange for Ben Bishop… That’s super embarrassing in retrospect.

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2014 No. 1 overall pick Aaron Ekblad scored his first NHL goal on Steve Mason Saturday night, and is generally off to an enormously impressive start to his NHL career. Here’s a funny micro-split by the way: Ekblad has played almost all of his minutes with Brian Campbell this season, and together the two are controlling even-strength shot attempts to the tune of a 57 percent rate. In the 13 or so minutes Ekblad has spent apart from Campbell, the Panthers are controlling 28 percent of shot attempts. That’s almost surely just small sample noise, but curious nonetheless.

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The Blue Jackets are in big trouble with all of their injuries, but there could be an intriguing opportunity for fantasy owners to pick up Brian Gibbons and ride a short-term wave of decent production. Gibbons had a pair of assists on Saturday night, playing mostly on a line with Nick Foligno and red hot Jack Skille. Gibbons played three minutes on the power-play on Saturday, so if you need some assists or power-play points next week in a deep head-to-head league – Gibbons could make some sense.

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Adam Larsson scored the game-winning goal for the Devils on Saturday, which should keep Eric Gelinas out of the lineup for a game or two longer. At some point the Devils will take Bryce Salvador out of the lineup and roll with all of their good young guys… Not actually though. They’ll only ever do that in my dreams. Damn.

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Hot fantasy tip: Ondrej Pavelec will not sustain the level of play he’s managed so far, over the course of a full season.

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