Ramblings: The fallout from suspensions, key injuries, Hughes signs and more (Mar 11)

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Now available for pre-sale – the 13^th annual Interactive Playoff Draft List. Pre-order it here. It will be released the Friday before the season ends. If you bought the Ultimate Fantasy Pack in the summer, this will be included in that purchase. It is not included in the Keeper Fantasy Pack.

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When Troy Terry picked up three points on Friday he became the first Anaheim rookie to do it in back-to-back games. He was shut out on Sunday but now is the time to go all in on the youngster, who has transitioned to the pro game very quickly and I think will have a productive campaign next season. Even Sam Steel is one to look at as well.

As an aside, I was looking at Steel’s Frozen Pool page and then I went to search on Google for his DobberProspects’ page when I remembered – Frozen Pool now automatically links the two. So I went to Info/Analysis on Steel and sure enough, there was the link. Research made easier. Steel has 34 points in 41 AHL games while Terry has 41 in 41. The Ducks are in transition now, whether they admit it or not.

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Invasion of the Finns: never before has the NHL seen four Finns tally 30 goals in the same season. The last time three did it was 2005-06 with Teemu Selanne, Olli Jokinen and Jere Lehtinen. Right now Sebastian Aho and Mikko Rantanen are there, with Patrik Laine and Aleksander Barkov knocking on the door with 29. The next international tournament (be it the World Cup or the Olympics) will be interesting, with this country really making strikes over the last decade.

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Quinn Hughes has signed with Vancouver! If what I understand is correct, he can’t play 10 games or he will become eligible for Seattle expansion. However, I would put money on him playing nine games and burning the first year of his three-year entry deal. I wouldn’t be surprised if he made an impact quickly. The Canucks are desperate for a puck-moving defenseman. I posted my Top 200 Fantasy Prospect Forwards rankings Sunday and will have the Top 50 Fantasy Prospect Defensemen up for Tuesday. Hughes is No.2 on that list (there’s a sneak peek for you).

Now over to you, Dante Fabbro.

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Vladimir Tarasenko missed Saturday’s game with a UBI and now word has come out that he will be “re-evaluated” in 10 days. That pretty much says to me that he’s gone for at least three weeks and this could be something even more serious. Line combinations on Saturday, his first game out, looked like this:

As for Jake Allen, he came off a shutout on March 7 and was put right back in there the very next game. I thought he played great Saturday, despite the OT loss – the Sharks dominated in the third and Allen was the reason it even went to overtime. Back-to-back Quality Stars for Allen and four out of his last five. The Blues really want to settle in on a goalie heading into the postseason, so Jordan Binnington (Winnington) will get the next start I’m sure – but he’ll be on a short leash. We’re closing in on the final 10 games and I feel like that will be the cutoff and one goalie will start eight of those 10.

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Jakub Voracek has been suspended for two games for this hit:

I’ve never seen a player get suspended for straightening up his back like that before and I have mixed thoughts on it. Yes, he saw him coming, but could that be explained away as trying to prevent getting pushed from behind? Did his elbow swing back and catch him? Could he have gotten out of the way? Just such a gray area. I guess if it was intentional and brutal it would have been five or more. Josh Bailey returned to the game.

Voracek played with Sean Couturier and Oskar Lindblom last game. Claude Giroux had been playing with JVR and Nolan Patrick. The line shuffling now will likely take Nolan Patrick off the Claude Giroux line and perhaps reunite Giroux with Couturier and Travis Konecny. But that’s purely a guess.

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The news is crazy these last few days in terms of key guys missing time. Jack Eichel has also been suspended for two games for this hit to the head:

The initial Zadorov hit, while his shoulder missed the head – I think he planted his helmet on Eichel’s on purpose and he should have been suspended. Eichel’s suspension is cut and dried (unlike Voracek’s).

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Samuel Montembeault, a goalie I have been a fan of for quite some time, now boasts a 2-0-1 record for the Panthers after starting two straight for them on the weekend. The team is playing well in front of him and he hasn’t been truly tested yet. But right now he is Florida’s best option in the pipeline and since this is a young team on the rise (yeah, I’ve said this for two years now but it’s gonna happen), this could end up being the perfect storm. Montembeault isn’t great, but he’s the team’s best at what could be the right time. The Cory Crawford, the Chris Osgood, or the Jordan Winnington.

Trading away Gustav Nyquist didn’t help Michael Rasmussen any. The rookie is still seeing nine minutes per game. They could be ruining him. I don’t like prospects who get stuck at nine minutes per game for an entire season. Rarely works out for them.

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Jacob Trouba, a subject of the Top 10 list later Monday, saw 6:42 of PP time for the Jets on Sunday and came up empty. With Josh Morrissey and Dustin Byfuglien out, this is his time to show us a glimpse of what he can do.

While Trouba saw 6:42 on the power play alone, Jack Roslovic saw 6:45 of ice time, period. Roslovic, who is also a subject of the Top 10, had an assist in the contest.

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After 19 consecutive games with a point, the mighty Bruins were stopped by the Penguins 4-2. Brad Marchand was minus-3.

Danton Heinen, who subbed in for David Pastrnak on the Marchand line, picked up two assists. He has 14 points in his last 16 games. He had 14 points in 39 games before that. Pastrnak is still out for another week.

With two points Sunday, Jake Guentzel has 53 in his last 51 games.

Jared McCann also had two points Sunday and he has eight in his last seven games. I remember poolies jumped on him really quickly when he surprisingly made the Canucks as a 19-year-old in 2015. He was rushed. The Stratford native (as am I) is now in his fourth NHL season, though he was mostly in the minors for one of them, so I consider this his third. He’s clicking with Sidney Crosby and Jake Guentzel. We’ve learned from Conor Sheary (and going further back – Colby Armstrong) that there is no guarantee with this plum placement when an entire summer disrupts the chemistry, I do have more confidence in McCann’s upside and pedigree than I had with Sheary. And ten times out of ten I would roll the dice on just the ‘chance’ that it continues on into next season.

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The 3M line was at it big time for the Flames Sunday. Mikael Backlund, Matt Tkachuk and Michal Frolik combined for 11 points. For Frolik, the biggest beneficiary of this arrangement, he tallied four assists after having gone six games without a point.

After starting off with a bang, tallying 13 points in 11 games, Brandon Pirri has just three in his last 16 including a goal on Sunday against the Flames.

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Goals in back-to-back games for Carl Grundstrom in his NHL debut for Los Angeles. The Kings picked up Grundstrom from the Leafs in the Jake Muzzin trade. He also dished out three Hits, though it seemed like more. He’s already drawing comparisons stylistically to Dustin Brown, and I suspect he can put up similar numbers at his peak (55-plus points, 250-plus hits). He didn’t look out of place and I think there is a spot waiting for him on the big club in the fall.

Read Grundstrom’s fantasy scouting profile and PNHLe graph here.

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It’s as if signing the big contract has helped Jakob Silfverberg turn the corner. He now has points in five straight games, seven in that span. And that’s on a team that is really just not scoring. We know this song and dance already, though. Every year, without fail, in either the first or the second half he produces like a 70-point player but in the other half of that season he produces like a 20-point player. If only we could get an advanced heads up on which half will be which. With the GM coaching the team right now, I feel pretty comfortable with Silf continuing for the duration. Bob Murray needs to make his latest big signing look like a good one, and you can see it in Jakob’s minutes – both at ES and on the PP.

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Frozen Tools update: A new stat has been added, as well as two new reports. The stat is PPPts/60 which, obviously, is a player’s power-play points rate if broken up into 60 minutes of PP time (to match the regular pts/60 stat). It gives us a great look at how effective players have been on the power play and in my case at least it helps me evaluate how a young offensive player is trending/developing.

Also, goalie home/away splits are in now. Just go to the Report Generator, select goalies, and one of the buttons is cleverly entitled “Goalie Home/Away”.

DobberProspects update: Each scouting profile not only has our upside and certainty ranking at the top, scouting observations in the middle and the Elite Prospects career stats at the bottom…but now it has Mason Black’s fun pNHLe chart at the bottom. It takes a player’s stats in a given league at a given age and averages it out against history, spitting out his NHL potential upside. This didn’t get up and perfected until middle of last week (though I had posted it in last Monday’s Ramblings).

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See you next Monday.