With it being American Thanksgiving yesterday, there wasn't really a lot of news to go over. Not that there is usually much to talk about in the middle of the NHL's off-season, but really not a lot here.

I did see an interesting tweet from Eric Macramalla, who is a sports law professor that also appears on TSN. It reads as such:

NHL CBA prohibits a lockout during term of CBA. The league, however, may suspend the season. That could be met with litigation.

— Eric Macramalla (@EricOnSportsLaw) November 26, 2020

I was not aware of the lockout prohibition, which is an interesting wrinkle in the face of owners trying to renege on their deal they signed four months ago. This isn't the same as 2012, not by a longshot, so it'll be interesting to see where the owners believe they can create leverage.

*

Before I forget, a hearty congrats to Dobber Prospects’ Jokke Nevalainen, who has joined the Carolina Hurricanes’ scouting staff:

Sometimes, hard work pays off and dreams come true. That is something that happened to me recently.

I want to thank Darren Yorke and Don Waddell for giving me the opportunity to scout for the Carolina Hurricanes. I can't wait to get started. Go Canes! 👊

— Jokke Nevalainen (@JokkeNevalainen) November 25, 2020

Anyone who has read or interacted with Jokke over the years knows how good he is at what he does. It is very well-deserved, and is very well-earned. All the best to him on the next step of his journey.

*

For anyone who missed it yesterday, I finished my look around the league and changing trends. That includes rising shot rates, declining shot-blocking rates (in some instances), lowered shooting percentages for defencemen, and more. A lot of the stats that were found really made sense but some did not which is why it's fun to do these kinds of things.

If anyone has research ideas, feel free to send them my way. Chances are I can't do anything with them but there's no harm in trying.

*

It is the end of the week and I wanted to have a little bit of fun. Today, that fun will entail creating fantasy rosters from the West and the East. Here are our rules:

• Only one player selected per NHL team and they must play their natural position. No putting Leon Draisaitl on defence. He can go RW, though.
• We are going to use nine forwards, five defencemen, and two goalies in the East, and nine forwards, four defencemen, and two goalies in the West.
• Standard fantasy scoring of G/A/PPP/SOG/HIT/BLK.

That is it. Those are our three rules. What should the rosters look like? Well, let's start in the East.

Goalies: Corey Crawford (NJD), Jaroslav Halak (BOS)

Fifth Defenceman: Shea Weber (MTL)

This is much harder than it looks. For instance, let's look at Tkachuk. Originally, I had Evgenii Dadonov because I wanted Jake Guentzel on the left side, so we didn't need Tkachuk. If we put Dadonov in Mantha's spot, we're missing a DET player, who would probably have to be Dylan Larkin, but then we'd likely have to take off Crosby, and so on. I think this way is better anyway because Tkachuk hits a ton and Mantha is no slouch in this regard, while both have 30-goal potential with lots of shots.

That was one thing I wanted to make sure I was doing. In an exercise like this, it's easy to get caught up on taking just the best players on the roster. We need to mix in peripherals like hits/blocks to make sure we get what we need. Tkachuk was a lock and I think including Mantha helps across the board, particularly in a winger position.

Where I got caught up was with the defencemen. By the time I got to the end of the experiment, I had three rosters spots to fill and they were all blue liners. My initial roster didn't even have Ovechkin – I had John Carlson – and that tripped me up even more once he was gone. The defencemen I landed on give me a good feeling about the roster, though.

One pair of players I was unsure of is Barkov/Pulock. My initial thought was to have Barzal/Ekblad, but really, Barkov is already what Barzal hopes to be in the fantasy game, and Pulock has a big edge in some peripherals over Ekblad.

I think we ended up with a pretty good mix of players. Some of our forwards don't bring the peripherals like Kucherov or Marner, but they should bring lots of points in their respective positions, and we have Ovechkin and Tkachuk bringing down the hammer.

Four out of the five defencemen selected have brought triple-digit numbers to either hits or blocks in recent seasons, if not both – only Werenski is the true points-only guy back there. Power-play points will be an issue, as Pulock isn't great with the man advantage, and all of CBJ/PHI/MTL have bad power plays.

Locking in Corey Crawford from New Jersey was the easiest decision on the whole roster. There just isn't a lot there and Crawford is still one of the top goalies in the league. When I looked at Montreal, I thought of which elite fantasy options we could use – it was basically just Shea Weber or Carey Price, if Price could be the guy of a few years ago. I'm not sure he is anymore, so we're going with Weber/Halak instead of Price/McAvoy.

The final roster looks pretty good to me.

Now we head West to see what they have to offer.

Goalies: John Gibson (ANA), Antti Raanta (ARI)

Initially, there were a couple here that may have seemed like cheats and I was going to using them. Patrik Laine has spent about 300 minutes (or more) on the left side over the last couple years so dual-eligibility may have applied. Also, Shea Theodore is listed as LD/RD on CapFriendly, so we could have gone with that. Instead, we're going with what we have, and that is players in their natural positions.

Left defence sticks out immediately. The thing is, there just aren't many great LHD fantasy options in the West. We're talking Duncan Keith, Sam Girard, Ryan Suter, Ryan Ellis, Josh Morrissey, OEL, and Mark Giordano. There were a few great players but they're over 35 years old now. We could use Ellis, but my player from Nashville almost has to be Josi, regardless of hardships elsewhere on the roster. I just don't see great fantasy LHD options; even Krug and Hughes, as good as they are offensively, bring very little in peripherals. This wasn't an issue in the East. At the least, there should be a big PPP edge from our Western defencemen.

One thing I do like about this roster is a handful of bangers up front. The East had two big bashers in Ovechkin and Tkachuk, but each of Pacioretty and Laine are capable of triple-digit hits, M. Tkachuk upwards of 150, and Kane has averaged two hits per game for three years. They might not each put up B. Tkachuk hit numbers individually, but I have faith they can get close to their opposition in the collective.

Peripherals, as mentioned, will be a problem. Hughes and Krug bring little in either hits or blocks, and Heiskanen doesn't hit much either. We are probably going to be sacrificing blocked shots every week.

On the flipside, I think we have two of the top-5 goalies in the league on the West's team, and they will be the backbone of the roster.

Overall, looking at the two sides, I think the defence in the East is just vastly superior and that means a matchup of these rosters in fantasy would lopsided. But, in real life, I think the West's balance between offence and defence with superior goaltending would make for a close matchup. What say you?