Are the Sedins on the decline? Mark Stone is sneaky-good, Letang’s brutal injury and more…

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The Midseason Guide was released nine days ago. Still very relevant and can help you re-assess for the second half. Get it here.

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Mark Stone has points in six consecutive games and points in 14 of his last 18. Staying healthy has given him the consistent ice time he needs to really get comfortable in the NHL and now we’re seeing what he can do. His high-end offense has translated well at every level. After being drafted 179th overall in 2010, Stone tallied 229 points in 137 WHL games, 10 points in six WJC games, 79 points in 91 AHL games. And while he doesn’t strike you as the type of player to lead the Senators in scoring, especially given the hype and contract status and draft position of a Ryan or Turris or Karlsson. But he definitely has the potential to do that one day if he has truly beaten the injury bug for good. One thing you can’t deny is that he is always underrated.

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Everything Ryan McDonagh touched last season turned to gold. When he entered the league I had him as a defensive stud with modest offensive upside. And then last year he shocked the hell out of me with 43 points, but even more – he looked good doing it. Especially in the postseason when he had his 17 points in the last 15 games. And now this year he’s back to being the defensive guy without the offense. Even with the PP time that he’s getting, which is usually more than half the available PP time.

Here is his game log:

 This snippet of his game log you can find in his profile (here) and what I like about it that you don’t find in other game logs you see out there is the %PP column. At a glance I know how much of the available PP time the player is getting. I wish I knew why the sudden drop in performance. This season his %PP is 46.9 while last year it was 54.0. Sure, it’s a drop. But not a huge one. Looking at the line combos on that page – he’s paired with Girardi. Has been all year. I check last year and it was the same thing.

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I really enjoyed this article by Sean Avery. You read that right – Avery. And he’s not being arrogant, he’s actually showing humility and it’s a really good read.

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The Capitals were winning by two goals with less than five minutes left. The Oilers tied it and won in a shootout. It was so sudden that SB Nation forgot to change their recap article headline that said the Caps broke their losing streak. Hey, I feel their pain. There have been many occasions over the years where I’m waiting on a game to finish so that what I said about a guy can be factually accurate.

Nail Yakupov picked up just his 12th point of the season. I took a look at how he’s been doing lately and I noticed that he hasn’t had points in back-to-back games since November 6 and 7. I think that, as far as 2016-17 is concerned, he’s a ‘buy low’ for rebuilding keeper league teams. I generally don’t give up on 21-year-olds, and he’s no different.

Teddy Purcell, on the other hand, I’d give up on if you haven’t already. At 29 he’s apparently past his prime. Last season’s pitiful 42 points followed by this year’s pace that’s well short of that, puts the writing on the wall. He scored last night, but it was just his sixth goal and he’s still going to fall short of 100 shots this year. Steve Yzerman really knew what he was doing last summer…

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Andre Burakovsky is back on the Ovechkin and Backstrom line and he picked up two more points. I suspect that we’re in for a little bit of a hot run for the rookie over the next couple of weeks, not unlike what we saw in the first 10 games or so.

Braden Holtby, as you saw from my Goalie Rankings, is moving up the keeper league charts and I’ll tell you this – everything I hinted at in the summer and in my Guide was that he could well become another Rinne with Barry Trotz at the helm. I’ve seen enough – I think you have your perennial 35-game winner here. A top five goalie to own for the next five years, barring injury. Poor Philip Grubauer…he’s the next ‘victim’ of the numbers game. The one that held Cory Schneider and Jonathan Bernier back for so many years and will hold John Gibson back as well.

Now that I think about it, you can add Andrei Vasilevskiy to the list of future goalies who will have to wait longer due to a proven quality starter in the way…