December 28, 2014

Thomas Drance

2014-12-28

The NHL returns from a Christmas break that seemed longer than a Gustav Nyquist overtime cycle goal.

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New: Brendan Ross brings you a sleigh-full of World Junior prospect info here. Austin Wallace will have his own up tomorrow, with more soon to follow.

The NHL’s three day Christmas break came to an end on Saturday night, with a busy slate of games. 26 teams were in action and there were a handful of strange results. That’s par for the course on the first day back from Christmas vacation – a night of NHL hockey that’s often filled with blowouts, surprises, and upsets for completely intuitive and understandable reasons.

Perhaps the oddest result of the night was the Buffalo Sabres erasing a 3-0 deficit against the New York Islanders and winning (again) in a shootout.

It’s kind of amazing that the Sabres continue to rack up points despite being brutally outmanned, outgunned and outshot in every game they play. Mostly it’s a credit to the hockey gods and Jhonas Enroth and Michal Neuvirth – who have been out of their respective minds for the past six weeks, but it’s partly a result of All-Star vote leader Zemgus Girgenson’sand Nikita Zadorov’s accelerated development paths.

Zadorov played over 26 minutes on Saturday night, and while he was underwater by a wide margin by shot attempt differential it’s still commendable that he can hang (for the most part) as a teenage first pairing defender at this level. The 19-year-old Russian-born defender has now played over 20 minutes in four of his past seven games, and has played over 18 minutes in all of those contests.

As for Girgensons, he continues to log insanely difficult minutes for a 20-year-old forward, and is coming out roughly even relative to the awful quality of his team by shot attempt differential. He’s also drawing a tonne of penalties, which is generally a good indicator that a player is putting the opposition on their heels and winning battles at a decent rate.

Though Zadorov and Girgensons have been bright lights for a Sabres team that, I still contend, is historically bad – make no mistake: their recent streak of wins is more about goaltending and luck then anything else. With players like Zadorov and Girgensons stepping up in huge minutes at a young age though you can begin to see the outline of a core that could be intriguing in a few years time.

John Tavares scored twice and managed six shots on goal for the Islanders, but it’s also worth noting that Josh Bailey was back on New York’s top-line with Tavares and Kyle Okposo. Playing in that first-line left wing spot is one of the best jobs in hockey these days, and though the Islanders haven’t found a long-term fit there yet this season (and they’ve audtioned any number of pieces), Bailey will have fantasy value so long as he’s in that spot. Just beware: it might a short-term thing.

Nyquist scored perhaps the goal of the year in overtime on Saturday night. In typical fashion for Nyquist this season, the goal didn’t occur at five-on-five.

A massive chunk of Nyquist’s production has come on the power-play (or at four-on-four) this season, which seems notable. Actually, by five-on-five scoring rate this season Nyquist has been far from spectacular. Among the 350 or so NHL forwards who’ve logged at least 200 minutes at five-on-five this season the heir apparent in Detroit ranks 290th in points rate – behind the likes of Sam Gagner, Mark Arcobello and even Simon Gagne.

Some of that is bad luck, and the bounces appear to have dried up on Nyquist at even-strength in a major way. Still his shot rate at five-on-five is pretty anemic for a player who has scored at the rate Nyquist has over the past 12 or so months.

To be clear: we’re still talking about a ridiculously skilled forward, and his five-on-four play still gives him a good deal of fantasy value. Just an interesting anamoly worth being aware of. Also I’d probably value Tomas Tatar more highly at this point if you’re in a keeper league.

Ben Bishop returned from injury on Saturday, and was solid stopping 24 of the 23 shots he faced in a 2-1 Tampa Bay Lightning victory over the Carolina Hurricanes. Steven Stamkos managed six shots for Tampa Bay but was held off the score sheet while Alex Killorn managed a goal, four penalties-in-minutes and five shots on goal for a decently well rounded fantasy line.

Andrej Sekera scored his second goal of the season, and seems unlikely to replicate the 40 point year he managed last campaign. He’s still probably the best defenseman avaialble on the trade market though, and could be a game changing deadline piece if he moves to the right team (like, say, the Los Angeles Kings).

This New Jersey Devils coaching situation stinks.

First of all, Pete De Boer is a solid coach and will go on to be successful elsewhere in the NHL. De Boer did some stuff that baffled me – particularly with his usage of players like Eric Gelinas, but his teams generally crushed by the possession metrics. The Devils appeared to be executing his system with less discipline this season, which is a huge problem because his 2-1-2 and aggressive neutral zone forecheck (something that the Nashville Predators have copied to great effect this season by the way) requires an enormous amount of discipline and precision.

So, yeah, perhaps it was time for him to be relieved of his duties in Newark, but I’m convinced that he’s a better NHL bench boss than either of the men brought in as his replacements.

Adam Oates is a tactical whiz on the power-play, but I despised the way his Capitals played hockey – particularly how he neutered his more able puck-moving defenseman. Scott Stevens seems like a smart guy, but this seems like a brutal situation for him too – what with Lou Lamoriello, and a recent NHL head coach on the bench and authority oddly defined.

So yeah. What a mess. And it could get messier still, what with the latest reports being that the NHL may look into the legality of the Devils’ hiring of Oates further…

Surprise, surprise – the Devils lost their first game under the Hydra coaching staff they’ve installed falling 3-1 to one of the best coached teams in hcokey – the New York Rangers – on Saturday night.

Derek Stepan managed a hat-trick for the Rangers, and did so without scoring a single five-on-five goal. He managed a shorty (4-on-5), a power-play marker (5-on-4) and an empty net tally (5-on-6). So he was a five-on-five goal away from the Mario Lemieux hattrick…

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In terms of changes to New Jersey’s player usage, nothing stands out to me right off the bat except for Peter Harrold playing well over 20 minutes (wha??). So, yeah, tough start for the new Devils coaching staff.

Milan Lucic and Dalton Prout threw down in the most heavily hyped fight of the season. It was decently entertaining, but Lucic needs to beef with bigger fish than a third-pairing defenseman on the Columbus Blue Jackets. His heavy-weight agitator game has fallen off more this season than his offensive game does without David Krejci.

The Minnesota Wild are one of the most improved teams in hockey this season, but you’d never know it because of brutal goaltending. Darcy Kuemper and Niklas Backstrom have been awful, which gives the Wild limited margin for error going forward. It doesn’t help that both Mikael Granlund and Jonas Brodin left Saturday night’s game with injuries either…

It sure looks like this club is in serious danger of being an outlier top puck-possession team that misses the postseason. If it happens, it’ll be their goalies (and the super tough Conference III) that’s to blame.

Jets center Mathieu Perreault saw his eight game point streak come to an end on Saturday, but he also played nearly 18 minutes (2nd most among Jets centermen) and the Jets controlled better than 60 percent of shot attempts when he was on the ice at five-on-five. At some point we’re going to have to discuss whether or not Perreault was the single best free agent signing this summer (and, man, did the Anaheim Ducks ever mess up by not qualifying him or what?).

The Pittsburgh Penguins fell 3-0 to the Washington Capitals on Saturday night, but bigger than the loss itself was the potential loss of Patric Hornqvist and Kris Letang – both of whom left the game with injuries.

The Penguins are already massively short-handed, and have leaned heavily on their power-play in building their stellar record through the 2014 leg of the season. If Letang and Hornqvist are out for any significant length of time, well, I hope you like watching Jayson Megna play on Sidney Crosby’s wing!

The St. Louis Blues fell to the hard charging Dallas Stars on Saturday night, largely as a result of Jake Allen’s continued mediocrity. Allen has been sneaky bad this season. Among the 29 NHL goaltenders who have logged at least 750 even-strength minutes this season, Allen is 24th in five-on-five save percentage – ahead of only the likes of Cam Ward, Ryan Miller, Ben Scrivens, Mike Smith and Kuemper. That’s a murderers row of awful, and surely not what Blues brass expected from their highly regarded young netminder this season.

The Nashville Predators gave the Philadelphia Flyers a taste of their own medicine, scoring three power-play goals on their way to a convincing 4-1 victory. Filip Forsberg had two power-play points in the contest, while taking seven shots on goal. Johnny Gaudreau is coming hard, and Aaron Ekblad might be the best 18-year-old defenseman in NHL history, but you have to think Forsberg has this nearly locked up.

Devan Dubnyk and the Arizona Coyotes managed to defeat the Ducks 2-1 in a shootout. Has Dubnyk been annointed Arizona’s starting goaltender yet or…?

The Colorado Avalanche can’t hang with the Chicago Blackhawks, which is a surprise to exactly nobody. Erik Johnson scored again though and now has 10 goals on the season, which is pretty incredible for this point in the year. That’s first overall pick quality production from the backend!

For a second straight game the Edmonton Oilers’ starting goaltender lasted less than 10 minutes. That’s really all you need to know about this current iteration of the Oilers.

UPCOMING GAMES

Nov 21 - 19:11	WSH	vs	COL
Nov 21 - 19:11	CBJ	vs	T.B
Nov 21 - 19:11	OTT	vs	VGK
Nov 21 - 19:11	DET	vs	NYI
Nov 21 - 19:11	BOS	vs	UTA
Nov 21 - 19:11	N.J	vs	CAR
Nov 21 - 20:11	STL	vs	S.J
Nov 21 - 20:11	CHI	vs	FLA
Nov 21 - 21:11	CGY	vs	NYR
Nov 21 - 21:11	EDM	vs	MIN