There was a video conference with Montreal coach Claude Julien. Early on, John Lu from TSN tweeted that Julien had lost weight and started some lifestyle changes following his cardiac event a couple months ago. That is great news and best wishes to Julien.

The second salient point, which is important for fantasy hockey, is that Alexander Romanov is not only in the mix for the lineup, but he's a contender to play the right side (one of their LHD will have to play RHD this year):

#Habs Julien mentioning Romanov in the mix to play the right side among other LHS D like Mete, Edmundson and possibly Kulak is a very strong endorsement of the rookie. In French, CJ said he’d be surprised if Romanov didn’t start the season with the big club.

— John Lu (@JohnLuTSNMtl) October 22, 2020

At the least, Julien expects him to start the year on with the big club. Whether he lasts all season, well, we'll see. But that he's so highly thought of already is a good sign.

He also intimated later that the top line of Tatar-Danault-Gallagher will stay together. That isn't a huge surprise but that also probably pushes Jesperi Kotkaniemi to the third line. Montreal got deeper at the wing but third-line minutes isn't good for anyone's fantasy value.

*

The Sens signed Connor Brown for three years with an AAV of $3.6M. It will be interesting to see how they use Brown, because if he's on the top line, it pushes Evgenii Dadonov down to the second line, and playing with unproven players. How Brown figures into the lineup goes a long way in projecting what Dadonov can and will do.

*

Jake Virtanen signed a two-year deal with the Canucks, averaging just under $2.6M a season. With Tyler Toffoli out of the mix, there is a spot in the top-6 forward group for Virtanen. It is his for the taking. He just needs to take it. He'll be worth a roster spot in 12-team banger league should he be able to stay top-6.

*

Denis Gurianov signed an identical deal to Virtanen's, only with Dallas, obviously. That knocks one of their RFAs off the list with Roope Hintz left to go.

*

Dominik Simon signed with Calgary. Coincidentally enough, I wrote about him in yesterday's Ramblings. The fantasy impact of his signing can be found here.

*

Yesterday's Ramblings discussed primary shot assists as tracked and collected by Corey Sznajder. The importance of shot assists is contained in that Ramblings so there is not much need to go over everything again. We will continue that conversation today, but only moving things to the blue line. We are using a 200-minute cut-off for the 2019-20 season, which gives us 161 d-men in our sample.

Remember that these are primary shot assists – passes leading directly to a shot – and is all at 5-on-5. Good? Great. Grand. Wonderful. No yelling in the comments.

Roman Josi

Josi is first on the list and it's not even close. The gap between Josi's rate of shot assists (13.84 per 60 minutes) is at the top, and Keith Yandle at 10.94 is second. Remember, that's a rate stat, so it has nothing to do with total ice time. The gap between Josi and Yandle (2.9 shot assists per 60 minutes) is about the gap between Yandle and 11^th-place Jake Muzzin. When it comes to finding teammates, it's Roman Josi, and then we can start a discussion with everyone else.

One thing did cross my mind: was Josi's superlative season a driving force behind the bad year for others who rely on playmaking, like Johansen and Duchene, points-wise? A question for the philosophers.

Quinn Hughes and Chris Tanev

Hughes came in third on our list, as a rookie. That is beyond outstanding for a rookie and quantifies just how good he is at moving the puck and getting teammates in a spot for a scoring chance. What was perhaps more surprising was Tanev coming in fifth on our list. In the three years from 2016-19, he was around the 70^th percentile for shot assist rate. That's good, but it's not elite. The 2019-20 season? Ninety-ninth percentile.

📢 advertisement:

Look, weird things happen in single seasons, and even weirder when we cut even more minutes from the sample. I do not expect Tanev to maintain this level in Calgary… but. But if he can be anywhere close to this and add this dimension to his game, it'll help soften the blow as his defensive prowess declines. I am not convinced it's a new leaf, but it's at least some hope.

Adam Fox

Sixth on our list was yet another rookie defenceman, and neither have been the guy who won Rookie of the Year. (He shows up later, but this is a point I want to make: shot assists don't rank defence value in fantasy. It is just one piece of the puzzle.)

Fox put up 42 points in a shortened season as a rookie defenceman *not* on the top power-play unit skating under 19 minutes a game. The sky is truly the limit here. Norris-calibre seasons are coming in a few years. Get in on the ground floor now.

Rasmus Dahlin

Rounding out our top-10 isn't a rookie defenceman, but a kid who finished his second teenage season in the league. That season saw him post his second 40-point season, this one being done in 59 games on a team that finished 21^st in goals per 60 minutes at all strengths.

Now that the Sabres have two scoring lines for the first time since Lockout 2, what does this mean for Dahlin? Surely, they won't run two defencemen on the top power-play unit now, right? Also, Rasmus Ristolainen will be stapled to the second unit, right? Assuming both those things, and knowing that Dahlin averaged 48 points/82 games over his first two seasons on presumably worse offensive teams, what does 2020-21 look like for him? Outlook: promising.

Erik Karlsson

It was a bad year for Karlsson and the Sharks, but it's worth noting Karlsson was on nearly a 60-point pace for the 2019-20 season. Him posting 40 points in 56 games despite the team being bad and him having a down year should tell us how much upside there still is. He finished just outside the top-10 in our sample for primary shot assists in 2019-20, sandwiched between Hedman and Makar. If he keeps himself in that company, the assists should keep coming.

Erik Johnson

A third Colorado defenceman snuck into our top-20 after Girard (top-5, and he's quietly turning into a top-pair defenceman) and Makar (14^th). Finding Johnson ranked here surprised me, but it has been a slow climb for him. Back in 2016-17 and 2017-18, according to CJ Turtoro's viz, Johnson wasn't great at shot assists:

Things have changed drastically for Johnson over the last couple years as he's climbed from mid-pack in shot assist rate to the 77^th percentile over the last two seasons. My guess is this is influenced by coaching and not natural progression, but that doesn't matter for us. All that matters is the Avs – with Devon Toews in the mix via trade – now have four defencemen on the roster who finished top-20 in shot-assist rate last year in our sample of over 160 defencemen. They still have Ryan Graves on the roster with Bowen Byram and Conor Timmins waiting in the wings. An embarrassment of riches.

Josh Morrissey

This is very concerning. Morrissey finished near the bottom of the league in primary shot assist rate last year. He quite literally finished with a lower rate than names like Jay Bouwmeester, Robert Hagg, and Kris Russell. This is a year after he finished inside the 70^th percentile.

There are weird things going on with Morrissey. We have four seasons of data to work with, and here are his percentiles for shot-assist rate, starting with 2016-17: 28^th, 45^th, 71^st, 35^th. Maybe there is a good reason he hasn't been able to lock down the top power-play unit.

With Neal Pionk running the top power-play unit and Ville Heinola on the way, the hope for Morrissey to run the top PP unit is probably gone. Add in Morrissey's ongoing playmaking issues and his hit rate cratering – honestly, has anyone noticed Morrissey dropped from 1.77 hits per game three years ago to 0.93 in 2018-19 and 0.52 last year? Dropping from 145 hits to 65 hits is cataclysmic for his fantasy value, given how limited his profile is elsewhere.