Now that we are approaching the middle of February, it is time for some of you to be thinking about what the playoffs might bring. For those of you who are reasonably confident you have the team you need to make the playoffs paying attention ahead of time can set you up to to have an important advantage. Take a look at your team and if you see a number of players with low games played during your playoffs. Now might be a good time to see what options are out there. Every Friday, DobberHockey provides a weekly article entitled "Looking Ahead" which focuses on the upcoming schedule and is a must-read for those setting weekly lineups. Here, we'll focus on the West (naturally!).

All playoff leagues have different schedules, so I have provided games played for each week of March. Check your league schedule to make sure of your playoff dates.

Notes:

• Arizona, Anaheim, Calgary, Dallas and St. Louis have two weeks with four games and no weeks with two games.
• LA, San Jose have two weeks with four games, but one week with only two.
• Chicago, Colorado, St. Louis and Vancouver have no two game weeks, but only one four game week
• Nashville has no four game weeks, but has a two game week

Potential Streaming Pickups:

Jaden Schwartz: So full caveat on this one. I have wanted to bring up Schwartz for a while. He is a bit more owned (30% in Yahoo) than most of the players featured here. He also only has two points in his last eight games and he isn’t on the top line or top power play. There really isn’t much indicating he is likely to have a better week this week than any of his recent ones. The reason I am putting him in here is that his underlying numbers indicate he should not be performing as poorly as he is. He is due for some positive regression and while it might not happen this week he should be watched and added if you can spare the space.

Josh Leivo: Leivo has seven points in his last eight. That number is inflated due to a three point outing on Feb. 7th. Four points in seven seems like a much more likely pace going forward. But for the week ahead it looks like he is playing with Brock Boeser and Elias Pettersson, getting 16+ minutes of ice time and as many as six minutes recently on the power play. The opportunity is there and he is worth a flyer.

Last article’s recommendation:

Carl Soderberg: The Avs have continued to shift their lines, but Soderberg was still effective this week, managing one goal, two assists, and six shots in his four games.

Jack Roslovic:Roslovic managed to keep up his deployment, but last week was not a productive week for him. He put no points on the board, and only scraped together five shots.

Drop or Not:

Kevin Fiala’s current 44 point pace is certainly not where the optimistic projectors had him going into the 2018-19 season. He was fresh off his most productive season to date and there was a real hope that he could continue his break out. Thus far it has not materialized.

Fiala has seen an overall decrease in his total time on ice, his power play time, his point pace, his power play point pace, and his shot pace. In fact his time on ice numbers are currently decreasing every quarter to just about 14 total minutes on average for the third. His IPP is also the highest of his career – meaning that he is getting in on a higher percentage of points scored he is while on the ice than ever before and is still falling short of last season’s standard. To make matters even worse Fiala spent a significant chunk of the first half getting top deployment when Viktor Arvidsson was injured so it isn’t like we can blame deployment here either.

So the up side? Well he still is getting time with Kyle Turris and Craig Smith, the line that was so productive in 2017-18. He is still getting second power play time, and he still is getting about two shots per game. His shooting percentage is a bit low and could account for a couple of missing points were it to even out.

Overall I am not seeing a player poised to break out. His underlying numbers suggest his pace is about right. Even any small increases from his shooting percentage regressing will likely be canceled out by his IPP regressing. Everything else looks about normal for Fiala. He just isn’t finding ways to get it done in his current deployment or even with top minutes. Barring some new development he looks like a solid bet to keep up the 45 point pace he is on.

Thanks for reading.