David Pastrnak is expected back with Boston sooner rather than later, but they still have games to play in the interim and that top-line right wing spot is still a coveted spot. At practice on Wednesday, we saw a new face:

Prax lines:

Marchand-Bergeron-Smith
Ritchie-Krejci-Coyle
Frederic-Lindholm-Studnicka
Bjork-Kuraly-Wagner
McKegg-Pastrnak

Lauzon-McAvoy
Grzelcyk-Carlo
Zboril-Miller
Vaakanainen-Clifton
Moore

Halak
Booth

— Fluto Shinzawa (@FlutoShinzawa) January 27, 2021

Again, not that Smith will get a lot of run in this spot because Pastrnak may be back in the next week or so, but even just a few games on that line can do wonders for short-term fantasy value. Check the wires.

Jake DeBrusk will miss at least one game with a lower-body injury, so we might get top-6 Craig Smith for longer than we think.

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Jamie Benn returned to practice for the Stars after missing Tuesday night's game but Roope Hintz did not. From what I've been able to tell, we still don't know exactly what's wrong with Hintz, but that Benn is back and Hintz is not is a bit of a concern.

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The Penguins announced GM Jim Rutherford will be stepping away for personal reasons and that Patrik Allvin, their assistant GM, will take over. We don't have more details at the moment except that it's not related to his health. Best wishes to Rutherford and his family.

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On the bright side of injury news, Philippe Myers was skating in Flyers practice yesterday so it seems like whatever was bothering him isn't much of an issue anymore.

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Carolina ran some power-play units in practice yesterday and they looked as such:

PP unit 1: Aho, Svech, Trocheck, Staal, Hamilton; unit 2: Necas, Nino, Geekie, Dzingel, Gardiner.

— Chip Alexander (@ice_chip) January 27, 2021

Remember that Teuvo Teravainen is on the COVID protocol list, which is why he's not here, and why he's not expected to suit up on Thursday. And also remember that Carolina has been off for 10 days and that teams returning from bye weeks in recent memory have done very poorly.

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A full breakdown of Matthew Tkachuk getting a puck flipped at him:

Tkachuk gets puck flipped at him and doesn’t like it, a breakdown pic.twitter.com/YxP0Y411gl

— Jomboy (@Jomboy_) January 27, 2021

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J.T. Miller and Tyler Motte each had a pair of goals while Thatcher Demko stopped 42 shots in Vancouver's 5-1 win over Ottawa. Demko stood tall in the first period, holding off a barrage and then the Canucks started converting on their chances. Pettersson had a goal and an assist and looks pretty close to form, if you ask me.

Josh Norris had a goal and seven shots with Brady Tkachuk just casually putting up six shots with a helper.

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The Preds took a 2-1 shootout from Chicago that was about as exciting as that score sounds. Kevin Lankinen looked pretty good in net for the Hawks.

With a pair of blocked shots, Viktor Arvidsson has eight in seven games this year. It would be fun to see him put up a big BS season out of nowhere but I have my doubts.

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One thing that was often discussed by myself and others heading into the season was the effect of intra-divisional play on scoring. In a normal season, teams play their conference opponents 4-5 times and out-of-conference opponents twice, so there is a really good mix in the schedule to get a broad consensus of how good/bad each team is. With all intra-division play, the quality of the teams in your division matters a lot. I surmised that we would see a big uptick in scoring in Canada, above-average scoring in the Central, and below-average scoring elsewhere. The results so far have been even more stark than I anticipated. Heading into Wednesday night's games, goals per game per team, by division:

• North – 3.40
• Central – 2.90
• West – 2.84
• East – 2.81

Now, it's just two weeks of action and 50-some games in each division, but we're seeing the obvious result of cramming a ton of offensive stardom in a division with several weak defensive teams. The only real surprise here is that the Central isn't scoring more. I wonder about the injuries to Chicago specifically. With Kirby Dach and Jonathan Toews around, it's not hard to imagine the Blackhawks scoring considerably more than they have and bringing up that Central mark even more.

It will be fascinating to see this work itself out the rest of the year. I don't expect the Canadian division to remain so far above everyone else, but considering three of the bottom-6 teams league-wide by expected goals against are all in Canada, maybe they will.

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Cam brought up K'Andre Miller in his Ramblings yesterday and I'm glad he did. I have watched every Rangers game to date because there are many guys with a lot of fantasy upside for decades to come on that roster and getting an accurate picture now will help a lot down the road. With that in mind I want to say that Miller has probably looked like their best defenceman outside of Adam Fox.

That comes as a bit of a surprise to me because I did not expect Miller to be ready this soon, if at all. I was much lower on him as a prospect than most and assumed if he did make it, it would take a few years. That doesn't look to be the case at all. His physical gifts are obvious but it's his decision-making with and without the puck that has impressed me. He is not making many typical rookie mistakes, and it's showing well in his numbers and play. High-level stuff from the rookie.

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Something strange going on in Montreal: Tomas Tatar is not shooting the puck at all. Like, at all. Through six games, the guy has nine shots on goal, scoring on three of them. Six points in six games is nice, but he's down to 15 minutes a night – the lowest for him in four years – and his shot rate has fallen off the map. Not that he's ever been a shot volume monster, but he's never had a full season below two shots per game yet sits at 1.5 right now. And that was with half their games coming against a defensively-awful Canucks team.

Now might be the time to get out from under Tatar if you own him. He has three goals and is a point-per-game player. It shouldn't be too hard to move him for an under-valued asset.

In general, be aware of how Montreal is spreading their ice time around. The only forward getting more than 17 minutes of ice time is Nick Suzuki, and only he, Phillip Danault, and Tyler Toffoli are over 16 minutes in total ice time per game. If you're paying attention, the Habs have three forwards averaging over 16 minutes of ice time per game, and all three skate on separate lines.

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With two shutouts in his first six games, John Gibson already has more shutouts than he did last year. He sits with over eight goals saved above average in those six contests, which means he's literally saving them over a goal per game with his performance compared to the league average.

Best goalie in the world? He is certainly among them.

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It is still so early for Dallas that the sample is irrelevant, but this made me laugh: Denis Gurianov is currently averaging over 30 shot attempts per 60 minutes, just by himself, at 5-on-5. As a team, the St. Louis Blues are putting up 43.8 shot attempts per 60 minutes. In other words, there is a bigger gap in shot rate between Denis Gurianov (30.03 iCF/60) and Dominik Kubalik (16.10) than there is between Gurianov and the entire St. Louis roster combined (43.8).

What does it mean for fantasy hockey? Probably nothing unless Gurianov stays anywhere close to the top of our iCF list. If he does, well, he could be in for a real big fantasy season.

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Can I just say quickly that Arizona has looked a lot better than I expected them to, even with the loss of Oliver Ekman-Larsson? I thought they'd be the doormat of the division and they look like they'll firmly be in the playoff race. Nick Schmaltz looks like the guy I thought he was a couple years ago and Conor Garland continues is very strong play. Contributions from depth like Tyler Pitlick as well. Just a real solid start to the season for them.

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Carter Verhaege is off to a nice start with three goals and five points in five games. He has been skating almost exclusively on the top line with Sasha Barkov, and that's led to over 18 minutes a night with three shots on goal per game.

I will remind everyone that this is a guy who put up 130 points in his previous 134 AHL games playing for Syracuse, Tampa's farm system. The Bolts are notorious for finding under-valued guys and turning them into valued assets (Johnson, Marchessault, and Gourde, to name a few). That Verhaege could be the next in this list isn't impossible. Regardless, it's time to check the waiver wires and make sure a guy playing 18 minutes a night with Barkov and a history of production doesn't find his way to someone else's roster.

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Also, I think most people expected Buffalo to be better this year, but I don't think we expected them to be as good as they are. The 3-3-1 record belies the fact that they've played very well – top-5 by expected goals percentage – and the only reason they haven't done better is goaltending. Rather, I should say, as has been the case for a while now, they need to stop giving starts to the guy who couldn't see the puck last year.

The surprise for me is just how well the second line seems to be playing. We are still dealing with small samples but Eric Staal is a bit long in the tooth and Dylan Cozens is a rookie. Their expected goal share, all the same, is close to break-even, and without Victor Olofsson on the line, it's even better.

I am very interested in this Sabres team for the rest of the year. The top-6 looks as solid as any time in the last 10 years and as long as they keep starting Ullmark, they should have decent goaltending.