February 3, 2015

steve laidlaw

2015-02-03

Post-All-Star woes for Marty St. Louis, Luongo and the Jets, plus a Shattenkirk update and more…

Gary Bettman saw his shadow yesterday so I think that means we get 10 more weeks of regular season hockey.

Kick the tires on Martin St. Louis. He hasn't scored since the All-Star break, which means four scoreless games in a row. That in itself isn't a big deal but combined with the break it's been two weeks since his owner has seen St. Louis score a point. That can be a long time in this on-demand world we live in.

On the other hand, Rick Nash had himself a night scoring a pair, to keep pace with Alexander Ovechkin in the Rocket Richard race. He's just the second guy to hit 30 goals this season. He also tied Tyler Toffoli for the league lead in shorthanded goals with four.

What's interesting about that stat is that Nash has as many goals while his team is down a man as he does while they are up a man.

Goals in back-to-back games for Dan Boyle. He's showing a pulse but I remain very skeptical even while he leads the Rangers in power play ice time per game operating as the lone defenseman on the top unit. I just think that Boyle is on his last legs and that no matter how favourable the ice time he receives is he just doesn't have it in him to produce. Still a pretty darn good shooter though, just doesn't have the same mobility.

He is cutting into Ryan McDonagh's opportunities though. Boyle on PP1 means McDonagh on PP2. The results have McDonagh on pace for just 32 points after last season's breakout. Working for McDonagh is the Rangers moving closer to a Bruins/Blues type of setup where both power play units play evenly. Indeed he notched a power play assist last night skating nearly as many minutes on the power play as Boyle.

Roberto Luongo is another guy who has had a rough go since the All-Star Game. In four starts Luongo has lost three, getting touched up for a sub-.900 save percentage in each loss. You can trace his woes back to before the break though as Luongo has won just one in the last eight games, helping to drop the Panthers damn near all the way out the playoff race.

I wouldn't necessarily be concerned about Luongo going forward. Every player/team has a rough patch at some point. I would be mildly worried about the Panthers turning into sellers though. Not that their veterans are exactly game changers that would either sewer the team or garner a ton of interest but handing those vet minutes to an unprepared rookie could be the difference between a 3-2 win and a 3-2 loss on some nights. So it might not be drastic but this losing skid could be the start of a series of unfortunate events that slowly undercuts what has been a great fantasy season from Luongo. But again, I'd only be mildly worried about that.

At least Aleksander Barkov still has it going. Give him 11 points in his last 12 games. He has certainly benefitted from skating with Jonathan Huberdeau of late.

Barkov's gain has been Nick Bjugstad's loss. Bjugstad had his worst fantasy game of the season going scoreless, without a shot on-goal and a minus-three rating. He has just eight points in 14 games over the same stretch as Barkov's hot run (Barkov missed a couple of games due to illness.) Bjugstad's still been productive but had been red hot with Huberdeau on his line.

Okay, one more "since the All-Star Game" observation: the Winnipeg Jets have hit a wall.

Michael Hutchinson has lost all three of his starts and got yanked mid-way through the third last night. Ondrej Pavelec wasn't much better in his lone post-All-Star start, though he did stop all four shots he faced in relief last night. In all, Jets starters have ceded at least four goals in each of the past four games. If this is the regression plane finally landing then let's all leave our overhead cargo and get off this jet ASAP.

I don't think it's actually that dire, I just wanted to make airplane references. It is true that Hutchinson was bound to put up some stinkers though. He had been lights out until recently. I trust him way more than Pavelec though.

Rough outing for Evander Kane that doesn't necessarily reflect his performance going minus-three on the night. He's scoreless and minus-seven in his past three games, which is a shame because he had been on a nice run of 12 points in his previous 13 games but such is the streaky nature of Kane's game.

No clue if this will stick or not but Tobias Enstrom was finally back out on the top power play unit last night alongside Dustin Byfuglien. In fact, Enstrom led the Jets with 3:12 on the power play.

No points for Enstrom though, and he has just one point in the last eight games after starting hot returning from injury with four points in three games. That gives him five in 11 since getting back healthy, which ain't bad for a defenseman. Two more points in there and we'd call that a hot streak. The margins really are that thin on defense so I'm taking it as a major positive that he's back on the top unit.

Huge win for the Flames to leap two points up on Vancouver for third in the Pacific (though the Canucks have three games in hand.) They also moved one back of Winnipeg for a wild card spot should they wind up needing to qualify that way.

It's also worth noting that the Flames have the best goal differential in the Pacific division at plus-18. We are starting to reach that point in the season where the goal differential numbers matter more than the possession numbers.

Johnny Gaudreau had a scare where he took a skate to the wrist and had to leave the game. Fortunately he was able to return and notched an assist on the empty-netter.

Kris Russell, the league leader in shot blocks had another killer night blocking nine attempts.

With Mikael Backlund out sick, Sven Baertschi stepped into the lineup for the first time in two months. He notched an assist and skated a season high 13:17. All positives.

Jordan Eberle completely undresses three Sharks on his way to his first of two goals last night:

#mitts

The Oilers took a 3-1 lead into the third period. Of course, they blew it because Oilers but they did force overtime. Rob Klinkhammer eventually won it in like the 50^th round of the skills competition. Yay, Oilers?

Taylor Hall returned to action assisting on that Eberle goal and going plus-two but eventually left the game re-aggravating the injury. But feel free to make up some other nefarious reason if you are into conspiracy theories.

The Oilers also lost Benoit Pouliot in this one to a foot injury. This one is less fantasy relevant, except that the Oilers are basically pooched for left wingers with those two out.

Justin Schultz got a couple of points including his fourth goal of the season. He has been shooting well below his career average of 8.4% this season so we may see a little bump in scoring towards the end of the season. He does have 10 points in the last 20 games, which is totally a reasonable level of production for a fantasy-relevant defenseman.

This was not the best way for the Sharks to end their season long seven-game home stand but they did manage 10 of a possible 14 points with some big wins over the Kings, Ducks and Blackhawks so you can't begrudge them a letdown game against the Oilers.

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The Sharks offense was rolling on this home-stand scoring 24 goals over seven games. I'd wager that most teams show some level of home/road split for scoring but the Sharks' has been pronounced scoring nearly half a goal less per game on the road. This run of home games brought the Sharks to 26 home games versus 25 road games so it'll be an even split going forward. If you bought Sharks expecting some increase in scoring, I hope you enjoyed your boost.

Specifically, Patrick Marleau owners enjoyed this home stand. Marleau had just one point in 14 games before the home stand. He then proceeded to score eight points over those seven games. His splits aren't anywhere near a level where I'd say it was the home games. In fact, this might just be coincidence considering Marleau was due some regression in his favour. Either way, Marleau owners are happy.

Joe Pavelski damn near ended this one in regulation. He finished with two goals and an assist but would have had one heck of a big hat-trick if not for that meddling Viktor Fasth.

Had some pretty decent content for a quiet Monday so I'll keep the Jeff Schultz Memorial Trophy power rankings brief. As always, "the Schultz" is a made-up trophy given to the defenseman with the highest plus/minus who fails to score 30 points to celebrate that one season Jeff Schultz was fantasy-relevant simply because of his massive plus/minus total.