Kevin Bieksa

33

6

1.88

21:30

12 (-6)

Seth Jones

34

8

1.21

17:24

17 (-9)

Kevin Bieksa – With the departure of Jason Garrison, Kevin Bieksa had the opportunity to pickup some significant power play time. However, his power play time has stagnated right around the two minutes per game level as he has never been able to make the jump to a legitimate offensive defenseman. This year Dan Hamhuis is getting as much time on the power play as Bieksa, which is never a good sign. Bieksa does not even have the percentages on his side as his personal shooting percentage is around his career average and his on-ice shooting percentage is at 9%, which is right around the league average. Furthermore, of Vancouver's top four defensemen Bieksa gets the best zone starts against the weakest competition. If you have not done so already it is time to give up on Bieksa as a fantasy relevant defenseman unless your league counts hits, blocks and penalty minutes. 

Seth Jones – Jones gets the fifth most minutes on the Predators defense but he gets the second most power play minutes and he starts close to 60% of his shifts in the offensive zone against some pretty low level competition. The story for Jones is that Roman Josi asserted himself as Shea Weber's partner and does not appear to going anywhere anytime soon. The duo of Mattias Ekholm and Ryan Ellis has also had a lot of success this year as a strong second pairing. Basically Nashville is back to having a loaded back-end and Seth Jones' numbers are lagging as a result. Even though Jones has made almost everyone he has played with better this year he will have to wait a year or two until he has a clearer path. When he finds that paths the possession numbers for Jones suggest he will produce as everyone expects.

Goalie

Mike Smith – Mike Smith has been abjectly horrible this year. His season has been chopped up like a dumb teenager in a horror movie. Freddy Krueger could not have done a better job even though Mike Smith surely hopes this is all a nightmare. Smith's numbers on the penalty kill are basically in line with his career numbers so this is not the same as what Corey Schneider was going through early in the season when he was getting torn asunder by everyone's power play.  The real area where Smith has suffered is his save percentage on high percentage shots. The problem for Smith is that he is allowing almost an extra goal every game on shots from high shooting percentage areas despite seeing almost two fewer shots per game from those areas. That will kill any goalie's season. Cue the slasher music, enter Devan Dubnyk to save the day.

Dishonourable Mention

Mikael Granlund – The Olympics and the playoffs were supposed to be Mikael Granlund's announcement that he was ready to fulfill his potential. He was not supposed to follow that up by starting the season with 10 points in his first 32 games. After an off-season of rumours that Granlund was working on his shot, he is shooting less now than ever before despite scoring on 11.4% of his shots. He is basically costing himself a goal every five games by not shooting. One of the issues is that with the addition of Vanek Granlund is caught in between the first and second power play units for the Wild.

Ales Hemsky – There are rumours that Hemsky is having trouble adapting to the fast paced Dallas style. This is disappointing given the expectations that he would flourish in Dallas, especially given his late season chemistry with Spezza last year in Ottawa. 10 points in 31 games just is not going to cut it. One of the issues for Hemsky is that unlike in Edmonton Hemsky is not an automatic in the Dallas top six. With his struggles has come increasingly more time playing with the likes of Vern Fiddler and Patrick Eaves. That should provide a huge clue as to why Hemsky's not bumping the slump.

Dustin Brown and Mike Richards – These two are symbolic of the Kings' struggles this year. Both were expected to have a point every two games and are closer to a point every three games. Over 36 games that puts these two King veterans seven and six points off the pace respectively. As the Kings' play improves these two will be dragged along with the rest of the crew, however the improvement likely will not be huge. Richards finding himself on a line with Dwight King and Kyle Clifford will not do him any favours.

Groupon

Colorado top 6 forwards– The whole lump of coal stars team could really just have been Colorado's top six forwards. With the exception of Alex Tanguay Colorado's top six are all well off their respective expected paces. For MacKinnon and Landeskog this can partially be traced to their low individual shooting percentages. However after a slow start the on-ice shooting percentages for each of the top six have returned to league average rates. For the bulk of the Colorado forwards the difference between last year and this year is their on-ice shooting percentages are two points lower this year. On top of that the Avs are taking less shots each game and their power play has fallen from 19.8% to 14.7%. The combination of significantly less 'luck' and a suffering power play means that Colorado's top six forwards are suffering.

Chart courtesy of War-on-Ice.com