We have reached December without an agreement between the players and owners. Rather, it should be said that an agreement was reached but, just months after this agreement, the owners are trying to renege on it. (I really wish every news item was framed this way; there was an agreement in place, one agreed to by all parties, mere months ago.) For a January 1^st start to really be feasible, players from Canadian teams would need to be reporting to camp this week. We are looking at mid-January or later now.

Darren Dreger had a few words about this:

This week may very well produce a timeline for the start of the 20/21 NHL season.  Postponing training camps until after the holidays has to be considered.  CoVid is still in charge.

— Darren Dreger (@DarrenDreger) November 30, 2020

Players getting to training camp on New Year's Day or shortly after, with 14-day Canadian quarantine rules in effect, puts us on track for a February 1^st start.

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Over the weekend, I started sketching out some power-play units. When doing an exercise like this, understanding what coaches usually do is of utmost importance. It doesn't matter one iota what we would do or what coaches should do, all that matters is what they want to do. We will never really know exactly what they want to do, but we can look at what they've done in the past to figure out what is going to be done in the future.

Things do change, though. We have seen Jakub Vrana take Evgeny Kuznetsov's spot on the top PP at times, we've seen Mark Giordano have a tenuous-at-best hold on his PP minutes in recent seasons, Victor Hedman gave way to Mikhail Sergachev in a few games this past postseason, and Jeff Skinner (a multiple 30-goal scorer and recent 40-goal scorer) lost his role to a rookie drafted in the seventh round years ago. Reliable roles change, coaches change tactics, and there is a lot of movement around the league.

Here are some situations I think we see some big changes this year. They may not be changes right out of the gate, but certainly once the season gets moving. We are probably going to have a season around 50 games, so teams can't wait 7-8 games for their power plays to figure it out. Here are some situations ripe for big changes. Stats from Natural Stat Trick and line combos from our Frozen Tools.

Columbus

The long and short of it is that despite the reputation for running a 3F/2D power play with Zach Werenski and Seth Jones, the Jackets really didn't do much of that last year, or the year before. Over the last two seasons, they have spent just 61 minutes together on the power play, and hundreds of minutes without each other. The team has run 3F/2D on the second unit – something like Jones/Kukan or Werenski/Savard – but for the most part, the top unit has been held down by one defenceman.

I don't see much reason for that changing this year. They have added some offence in the form of Max Domi and (hopefully) Mikhail Grigorenko, so it doesn't seem likely they take forwards off the PP to add more defencemen.

The question is figuring out which four forwards will be on the top PP unit. My guess is that Domi heads straight to PP1 with a bullet. This team spent a significant asset acquiring him and will be looking to him to be a big offensive contributor. They won't stick him on the second PP unit under those circumstances. Pierre-Luc Dubois is an automatic as well. I will also use Oliver Bjorkstrand here because he led the team's forwards in PPTOI down the stretch in the regular season last year (in somewhat limited action), so that makes me think they see him as a big part of the offensive future. The question is the last forward.

This depends on PLD. I think he can be used as kind of a below-the line roamer who is best used setting up teammates, but that distinction may go to Domi with PLD heading back to the front of the net. If we have Domi below the goal line, PLD somewhere in the slot, and Bjorkstrand on one circle, I think we see Cam Atkinson at the other. It gives them a one-time option for Bjorkstrand on one side (where he often played in the regular season last year) and an option for Atkinson to crawl down on his strong side on the other.

That is my guess for now: Domi-PLD-Bjorkstrand-Atkinson with (I hope) Werenski as the blue liner. The changes would be their second PP unit. I think we see another 4F/1D unit on PP2, something that has not been frequent for the Jackets, and that means little-to-no PP minutes for players like Savard and Kukan, and additional minutes for a forward. This will be some sort of Stenlund-Nyquist-Foligno-Bemstrom or Nyquist-Texier-Stenlund-Bemstrom combination. Not that guys like Savard ever posted huge PP numbers, but I think it will give a forward more PP time than they otherwise would have, and may bring a Bemstrom or a Texier into more fantasy leagues.

Nashville

So, uh, whew.

Jon Hynes took over coaching duties in Nashville on January 7^th. From that point to the end of the season, the Preds had four forwards with at least two minutes of PPTOI per game: Mikael Granlund, Craig Smith, Filip Forsberg, and Kyle Turris. Three out of four won't be suiting up for the Preds in 2020-21. So, yes, there will be massive changes coming here.

Here is what we know: we'll have Filip Forsberg on the left side of the PP and we'll have Roman Josi at the top. At least that should happen; if it's something else, something has gone horribly wrong. I have to assume a healthy Viktor Arvidsson finds his way back to the top PP unit, so now we have three. Four is going to Ryan Johansen, because someone has to take faceoffs and he's very good at them. The question is the final spot.

It makes sense to round out the PP unit with Matt Duchene, their big-money forward. Despite a poor 2019-20, his even-strength playmaking numbers were still excellent, and that bodes well for a rebound. For my money, I think they start with Forsberg/Johansen on the two half-walls, Arvidsson in the middle, and Duchene down low.

The wrinkle comes with Philip Tomasino. The 2019 first rounder seems poised to join the NHL roster and I wonder if he gets PP1 minutes. I assume he gets them at some point through the year, it's a matter of how much and when. I think it makes sense that, unless he completely blows the doors off, he gets his feet wet playing PP2 for the half-season and then comes back PP1 for the full 2021-22 season. It is just conjecture for now.

St. Louis Blues

I won't take a lot of time here because the major change – Alex Pietrangelo in Vegas – is a simple replacement with the incoming Torey Krug. Swap one for one, easy-peasy.

The real challenge comes with figuring out what to do with Vladimir Tarasenko's spot. He had another shoulder surgery at the end of August and the initial timeline was five months. Counting on my fingers, that brings us to the end of January. If he is still on the initial timeline (I haven't seen an update so if anyone else has, feel free to post in the comments) and the league doesn't start until February, it's possible Tarasenko doesn't miss a game. If it's mid-January or earlier, well, that changes our equation.

Schenn/Schwartz/ROR/Perron has been the typical top-four quartet, but I expect Robert Thomas to make a charge this year. He is supremely talented and can only be kept from prime minutes for so long. I will be interested to see how the Blues handle the top PP this year if Thomas keeps progressing and Tarasenko doesn't recover as expected.

New Jersey

This is a bonus, and it's more a question than anything: who is going to be the PP1QB? Over the final few months last year, they had three d-men all skate basically the same minutes: Subban, Vatanen, Severson. With Vatanen gone, if they keep the same basic structure of a 4F/1D and 3F/2D, they have a spot open on one of the PP units, and we're still no closer to answering who is PP1QB.

My guess is that Subban gets the minutes initially. They probably want to pump his value for an eventual trade, and PP1 minutes are the way to do that. Severson got the PP1 role down the stretch last year so he's ostensibly the favourite, but I still think upping Subban's value is the priority. (Just by the by, depending on ADP, Severson may be the best draft option of the two. We will have to wait and see.) Our second question, then, is which defenceman jumps up and gets Vatanen's PP minutes.

To answer that question, we have to answer another: does Ty Smith jump to the NHL roster? The team signed Dmitry Kulikov and that gives them Murray-Butcher-Kulikov down the left side. But Kulikov is nothing special and Smith should be a cornerstone for years to come. If he's in the lineup, it's hard for me to think he doesn't get some PP2 time. But he has to get into the lineup first.