The German junior team announced its prelim roster and though Tim Stuetzle is (obviously) on it, as Chris Peters points out, he may not be ready for the tournament. He suffered a hand injury a few weeks ago and it was a 6- to 8-week timeline from then. That would put him somewhere mid-late December. Along with everything else, there are a lot of moving parts here.

Also, in that note is that Moritz Seider will not be given permission to play in the World Juniors from the Detroit Red Wings.

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The ECHL announced that the North Division, including teams in Ontario, Newfoundland, and New England, will not return for the 2020-21 season. There are going to be staggered starts for pro leagues across North America, and the ECHL is included. It appears that some teams will straight not be returning:

More on the ECHL situation – Expect the entire North Division to cease operations for the season. That’s Adirondack, Brampton, Maine, Newfoundland, Reading and Worcester. Official announcement expected around 2ET.

— Jeff Marek (@JeffMarek) November 18, 2020

This is a reminder that it goes far beyond just the NHL and youth leagues being impacted here. Some people just will not be able to work this winter and that is something that should be lamented, even if the NHL returns sometime in the next few months.

Cam wrote yesterday about the OHL's issues and how one top prospect is heading overseas with no commitment to return. Many leagues are in dire straits beyond the NHL.

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The 2020 Dobber Hockey Fantasy Guide is now available in the Dobber Shop. It has everything fantasy managers need to get a leg up on the competition in 2020-21 and it will be updated right until the start of the season. It makes not only great nighttime reading while we wait for the start of the season, but also a great Christmas present for the hockey nut in the family.

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A couple days ago in these Ramblings, we discussed changing trends in the NHL. The focus was on league-wide trends using three-year samples, first 2014-17 and then 2017-20. The idea here is that we've now had three NHL seasons with increased scoring and that gives us a good idea of what has changed over the prior three years. Symmetry is nice.

Today, we are going to drill down a bit further and look at positions-specific trends. For now, we'll limit ourselves to just defence and forward but it is also a good idea to do this by LW/C/RW/LD/RD as well. A lot of fantasy leagues go by actual position rather than general position so having that data available can help with draft strategy.

Anyway, for a refresher, we found that along with the increase in goals, we saw an increase in shot attempts, shots on goal, and both primary/secondary assists. Hits continued their decline, but two interesting trends emerged:

• More shot attempts were turning into shots on goal (over 54 percent) than before (over 53 percent). While one extra shot attempt out of 100 turning into a shot may not seem like a lot, we're talking over 100 000 shot attempts per season. That ends up being a lot of extra shots on goal, but also reduces blocked shot rates.
• On the flipside, the increase in shot volume means more opportunities for blocked shots. The two described effects basically cancelled each other out and led to no meaningful change in shot blocking trends.

Now that we're all caught up, let's look at the same categories we did on Tuesday but for forwards and defencemen. This is at all strengths, not 5-on-5, and we are looking at two three-year samples: 2014-17 and 2017-20. We are rating per 60 minutes and data are from Natural Stat Trick.

Forwards

There probably isn't much surprising in here. As the league is shooting and scoring more, forwards are shooting and scoring more. It applies not only to shot rates but shot conversion rates as well. The jump in shooting percentage is what is really notable here. Even without the jump in shots, a goalie facing 2000 shots in a season would allow roughly 15 more goals based on the jump in shooting percentage alone. That brings a sterling .920 save percentage to near league average.

It is worth noting how much the increases are. Goal scoring per 60 minutes between the two periods increased by roughly 10.57 percent. Goals per 60 minutes among forwards, in that same span, increased by 10.53 percent. A big chunk of the increase came from forwards and not defencemen, then.

Let's check in on those blue liners.

Defencemen

Goals per 60 minutes barely moved so that is why forwards are responsible for most of the goal increase. This is noteworthy for us because if goals are unevenly distributed as they grow, they become more scarce, thus more valuable, for blue liners.

I need to call out the one thing that jumped out at me and that's shooting percentage. We saw on Tuesday that the league-wide shooting percentage increased a good amount, and that was reflected in what was presented among forwards earlier these Ramblings. But defencemen? Their shooting percentage dropped at all strengths despite a league-wide trend of rising shooting percentages. The question is: why?

My general, off-the-cuff theory is that teams have gotten more selective with shot location, which leads to more in-zone passing before the shot. By the nature of their position, defencemen are going to be on the receiving end of high-percentage passes much less often than forwards. As offensive tactics have developed to include defencemen leading the rush, it hasn't translated into more high-percentage shots for defencemen, per se (though their goal rate did increase with the shot rate), but it has translated into more goals for the defenceman's team, which is more important to the team than individual stats.

But, that's just a theory I have. I have no concrete evidence as to why shooting percentage has dropped among defencemen over the years. I am all ears as to alternate ideas.

The other note for rearguards is the ratio of shots to shot attempts (which further ties into my selective shooting theory). From 2014-17, defencemen converted 45.87 of shot attempts into shots on goal. In the next three years, that ratio rose to 47.77 percent. That is nearly an extra two shots on goal for every 100 shot attempts. This, in conjunction with the rise in shot rate, is why defencemen were scoring more often despite the drop in shooting percentage.

This series is going to continue next week as we dive in further between and within the positions, looking at things like hits and blocks. I have my assumptions now, but we'll hold off until we look at the data.

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When writing my Ramblings a few days ago, I touched on stacking teams and the Flames. That got me thinking about one of their blue liners: Rasmus Andersson.

In the second half of last season, the power-play time splits were as such: four defencemen had between 1:23 and 2:01 of PPTOI per game. One of those defencemen (Erik Gustafsson) is now elsewhere.

In the playoffs, it was all Erik Gustafsson, as he took about 36 minutes of the PPTOI, and no other defenceman had more than 16 (Giordano). Effectively, it seems like it's between Giordano/Hanifin/Andersson for the top PP slot in 2021.

That Hanifin fell off in PPTOI as much as Andersson in the postseason tells me they're in the same boat: chasing down Giordano. However, Giordano's role was reduced as the year went on: he dropped from about three minutes per game in the first half of the season to two minutes per game in the second half, and then 90 seconds per contest in the playoffs.

If Giordano's role is diminished, then it makes sense it's one of Hanifin or Andersson to get those minutes. I do think Hanifin has a leg up but it probably makes more sense to draft Andersson, when considering draft cost. We'll see when ADPs are released; I'm just spit-balling for now. But I do think there is a PP1 slot that is up in the air, and those minutes are incredibly valuable for fantasy. They are minutes worth investing in, even if we go broke on the investment.