Here we are back for another deep dive into the Frozen Tools. You may have noticed on the player profile page that there is a streak indicator just under the player's 2019-20 stats at the top of the page. It will list for you the number of points a player has in their recent string of games and indicate whether that player is on a hot or cold streak. What you may not have realized is that you can run a report in Frozen Tools to get all of the players who are on hot and cold streaks.

It is organized by a player's point-per-game number and if run the report (as of Thursday) here is what we get.

You can also use it to sort by team, which right now is very fun for Nashville.

Not a great time to own Nashville skaters, I suppose.

The full team list highlights a few surprising players that are worth digging into at this point.

Claude Giroux

Giroux leads the list at the moment because he sits highest with 1.83 points per game over his last six games. The big question has to be is any of this for real? He is currently on a 63-point pace, which is his lowest pace in the last three seasons. Owners certainly were hoping for more when they drafted him. It is pretty clear that over the last six games he has scored more points than he should have. He has shot at 33% when his average over the last two seasons has been nine and some change. His IPP is up at 91.5%, when he has typically been at 65-70%. He has also put up four points on the power-play in these six games. All of this indicates that he won't sustain the 1.83 point-per-game pace.

But honestly, we weren't expecting him to. The question is, does this run indicate that anything has changed for him that might lead to Giroux sustaining a higher level of production? The answer there is definitely maybe. Prior to this six-game span Giroux was spending most of his even-strength time with Travis Konecny and James van Riemsdyk, he was seeing about 18 minutes of total ice time and just over three minutes of power-play time. In these last six games, Giroux has been playing over 19 minutes of total time, and over 3.5 minutes on the power-play.

He has also had a change in his linemates, seeing time with Sean Couturier and Jakub Voracek (if we remember that line has done some serious damage in the recent past). Conclusion? Well he may not be a point-a-half-per-game player, but if this increase in time and change in deployment sticks, we could definitely see an uptick in production from Giroux. His team five-on-five shooting percentage, and is IPP are a bit low on the season as well, which could definitely imply he and his linemates are due for a bit of shooting luck.

Brent Burns

Burns' story is very similar to Giroux. He has been a huge disappointment so far in 2019-20. He is currently on a 57-point pace. It is his lowest pace since 2013-14 and a 25-point drop from his point total from 2018-19. With eight points in his last six games, we might not expect it to continue, and while is IPP is definitely high, it isn't like the rest of his numbers are alarming. His shooting percentage over the time period is around eight percent, which mirrors his shooting percentage for the seven games prior, but is a little higher than his 6.6 from 2018-19.

The big change for Burns (like with Giroux) is his time on ice. He has been getting about a minute and a half more of power-play time over these last six games than his previous seven and seeing almost three additional minutes of time on ice. Some of this tracks back to before Erik Karlsson was injured, but with Karlsson missing time, Burns is once again the go-to defensemen in San Jose and has a shot at making a run here.

Kailer Yamamoto

Yamamoto has 15 points in his last 14 games and 18 points in 19 games over the course of his season. He plays on Edmonton so we have to assume that he has been getting some serious exposure to Connor McDavid to get those kinds of numbers and that he has been in trouble since McDavid went down…right? In this case, his most common linemates are Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Leon Draisaitl. Ok, but he must be getting all of his points on the power-play with McDavid right? Only two of his 15 points are on the power-play over this stretch. Ok so his IPP must be through the roof right? It's a surprisingly reasonable 71.4%.

What is going on here? It turns out that Yamamoto is getting to play more than 17 minutes a night with a streaking Nugent-Hopkins (eight points in six games), and Draisaitl (44 points in 30 games), and is seeing over 75% of the power-play time in four of his last five games. Unfortunately, the good news sort of stops there though. His personal shooting percentage is through the roof (almost 27% over this time period), and his team five-on-five shooting percentage is very high (topping 11%).  That definitely means it is likely he and his linemates will not continue this torrid scoring pace, and it is this scoring pace that is keeping Yamamoto afloat. He is getting great deployment, with great linemates, which should continue (at least until McDavid comes back and likely bumps him off the top power-play), but a 60-point pace would be much more reasonable with just regression to his shooting percentage alone.

Mikael Backlund

Backlund was always a favorite streaming recommendation when I wrote the Wild West column because it seemed like he was always available and always had the potential to bust out. The most recent recommendation for an add came when he suddenly found himself with Johnny Hockey himself on the top line. That is where he was before his recent hot stretch, on a line with Johnny Gaudreau and Sean Monahan seeing about 16.5 minutes a night, less than a minute of power-play time, and producing fantasy irrelevant scoring numbers.

Flash forward and he has nine points in his last seven games. What changed? Well, he has about a minute more time on ice, which appears to all be power-play time, and he is lining up with Andrew Mangiapane, and Matthew Tkachuk. So the increased time on ice is good, but the downgrade in linemates is not. It does help when those linemates go on scoring sprees, though. Mangiapane's hat trick only gives him three goals over his last seven games, but a shooting percentage of 25%. Tkachuk is doing mostly Tkachuk things, but maybe a little better than usual over this time period. Backlund himself is also shooting at about double his usual rate. Knock his and Mangiapane's goal totals back to normal and we are still looking at a 55-point player at best (which honestly is better than he has been so far this season).

Until next week, thanks for reading.

Want more tool talk? Check out these recent Frozen Tool Forensics Posts.

Frozen Tools Forensics: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly on Goalies

Frozen Tools Forensics: Consistency and the Streaky Player

Frozen Tools Forensics: Malkin and the Giant IPPeach