Chara is nearing the end, Nash stays hot, Malkin returns and more…

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Sorry for the late ramblings this morning. We are up and running here again.

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The Bruins caught the Rangers without Lundqvist but couldn't take advantage. They managed only 20 shots in the contest so this was a matter of getting bested by the skaters, not the goalie.

Carl Soderberg is in the midst of a cold streak with just five points in 13 games since the calendar flipped to 2015. I'm not overly concerned. When you are a 50-60-point scorer things will ebb and flow plenty. The problem is that if you let things ebb too much then you end up scoring 50 instead of 60.

Soderberg has slipped to a 51-point pace if you are curious. Could work out that he gets hot in time for the stretch run, which would be great for those of you in head-to-head pools. Unfortunately, it seems to be trending towards a middling 19 or so in the final 31 games, which is borderline droppable in a lot of pools.

Very little about Soderberg's usage has changed all season. He's on one of the three scoring lines and one of the two power play units. Because the Bruins basically shuffle their lines evenly there's little advantage to being on "line one" versus "line three" or being on "power play one" versus "power play two". I'm not even sure the Bruins look at their lineup in this manner.

Of course, Soderberg might benefit from skating with Patrice Bergeron or David Krejci at even strength but that doesn't seem like it is ever going to happen so he settles for Chris Kelly, which isn't ideal but is perfectly fine. The minutes are more important.

Point being, this might all come down to luck. Things will ebb and they'll flow and come the end of the season Soderberg will have around 50 points. 60 is almost certainly out the window now that he'll have to score a point per game to get there. 55 is possible though and unfortunately so is 45 now.

I'd be more concerned with Zdeno Chara. A lot of the diminishing returns this season can be traced back to the knee injury that cost him 19 games and some of what little mobility he had left. Still, he's been slipping for a while but the Bruins have found ways to mask it, at least for fantasy owners.

Shifting Chara to net-front presence instead of point man really helped boost his fantasy profile last season. He was able to score 17 goals, 10 of which came on the power play all while shooting a career-best 10.1%. That was unlikely to keep up. The bottom has dropped out on his shooting, down to just 3.9%.

Whether that collapse is because of a reduced ability to win battles in front because of his knee injury or because of attrition or simply bad luck remains in doubt but what it's exposed is the reality that Chara's assist numbers have dropped precipitously.

There are a combination of reasons why those assists have fallen and they aren't all related to Chara but the reality is that the biggest reason is likely that Chara is simply playing less than ever before.

Even last season Chara was skating damn near 25 minutes a night. He's at 22:48 per game this season. Sure feels like we're nearing the end of his run as a fantasy elite.

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Henrik Lundqvist missed last night's contest with neck soreness after taking a shot to the throat the other night. Cam Talbot filled in just fine securing a 3-2 win. Talbot is still a nice spot start when you can get him in there. He hasn't been as brilliant as he was last season though.

Last season Talbot was almost worth keeping on a roster just for his rare appearances. This season, however, has been rather inconsistent. He's sitting at 5-5 (5-4-1 to be exact but for our purposes there's really no difference between a shootout loss and a regular loss) with five of those wins being shutouts. That's boom or bust right there.

Rick Nash took sole possession of top spot in the Rocket Richard race once again. His goal last night was a beauty too:

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I have a hard time believing Nash hangs on in the Richard race though. Now that Alexander Ovechkin is firmly in the hunt, well it just seems inevitable that he wins it again doesn't it?

By the way, check out four great stats about Ovechkin:

4. His goals per game compared to past greats

As Dangle explains in the video above, Ovechkin averages 0.62 goals per game to this point in his career, with 453 scored in 729 games. That's good enough for sixth all-time. Mike Bossy, Mario Lemieux and Pavel Bure are the only modern players with a GPG rate better than Ovechkin's, and the other two, as Dangle says, "were born in the 1800s." He's bound to slow down from that pace at some point in his career, but if he stays healthy and in North America, it makes Ovechkin a very realistic candidate to reach 700 goals in his career.

He is hands down the best goal scorer of our generation.

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You could see this one coming a mile away. The slumping Penguins get Evgeni Malkin back and take a trip to Edmonton who was without their top two left wingers? Yep, Marc-Andre Fleury gets his league-leading seventh shutout of the season.

That's absolutely wild to think about. Fleury was always the guy who was going to get you the one-goal win or the two-goal win but rarely the shutout. Now he's apparently the best in the business. I think that's a reflection on the coach and the team in front of him as much as it is on Fleury

As mentioned, Malkin was back, which means the Penguins were mostly healthy up front. Here's how the lines shook out courtesy of FrozenPool:

Big win for Mark Arcobello owners if this sticks. Of course, Blake Comeau is still hurt, which muddies things as he had a regular spot on the Malkin line while healthy.

Beau Bennett was also absent from the lineup, his second straight healthy scratch. If the Penguins could stay healthy we might see this more often. Heck, we might even be headed towards a demotion depending on his waiver status. (Damn, the disappearance of CapGeek burns me again!)

David Perron has played well shifting to right wing with Sidney Crosby and Chris Kunitz is back on the top line. Good news for both of those guys.

I could see these lines sticking (with Comeau in for Arcobello) as we move forward.

What's still up in the air is the power play. The Oilers, to their credit, didn't give the Penguins any power play chances last night, which probably saved this from being an even loftier defeat. It seems as though they have six players worthy of top power play consideration but only five spots available. Kris Letang along with Crosby and Malkin are locks. Which two of Perron, Hornqvist and Kunitz get picked will determine a lot of fantasy pools.

It could shift from week to week but I have a feeling that Hornqvist and Kunitz have the inside track because of simple continuity. Wouldn't shock me to see Perron steal a spot from Kunitz though because of his right shot and how well that fits for one-timers on the left side.

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