Though the Red Wings welcomed back players like Robby Fabbri and Adam Erne, they are expected to be without Tyler Bertuzzi for the next couple weeks. He had been off to a nice start this season with five goals and seven points in nine games, to go along with four PPPs and 13 hits. He is the type of guy who can produce across categories, which means he's hard to replace with a simple waiver addition. There just aren't many guys who can do what he does. Fabbri, at the least, is going to the top line so maybe there's a chance to replace some of what Bertuzzi does. (This may surprise people, but Fabbri has very good hit rates for his career.)

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Kaapo Kakko was on the ice for Rangers practice, having been removed from the COVID list. That means he has tested negative and should be fine for games moving forward, though as we've seen across the NHL, that offer is only good for a very short period of time.

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Speaking of COVID: more players to the list. Among them are Tobias Rieder and Brandon Montour from Buffalo, a half-dozen guys from Minnesota including three centres, and some more names in New Jersey. The Wild are postponing games through February 9. Full list here.

Tyson Jost from Colorado is on there, which is notable because they just played Minnesota – a team that just had a third of a roster hit the list – three times in four days.

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It was nice to see Arthur Kaliyev called up by the Kings but I wonder what their plans are with him this year. Clearly, unless he's on the top line, it'll be hard for him to have much fantasy value on that roster. There just isn't enough talent to support him playing 15-16 minutes a night and still have fantasy relevance.

Remember that it's seven games to trigger an ELC year, a threshold crossed by Tim Stuetzle on Tuesday night.

One thing I will mention about ELCs and Kaliyev specifically is that the Kings don't necessarily need to worry about cap implications of having to having to sign him in two years or three. All of their contracts, outside of Anze Kopitar and Drew Doughty, run out by the end of the 2022-23 season, or the absolute earliest Kaliyev will need a new deal. The team will not have nearly as much cap crunching to do as teams like Vegas or Tampa. For that reason, I think it's possible we see Kaliyev up with the Kings for the balance of the campaign. It is just a guess on my part, though.

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With Braydon Coburn hitting waivers, it seems like Erik Brannstrom is set to join the Ottawa Senators in short order.

Brannstrom is a great prospect but be wary in the fantasy game. The Sens don't have a lot of scoring depth and when healthy, it'll be Thomas Chabot on the top PP unit. It will be nice to see Brannstrom get in some NHL games, but I suspect we're a few years away from him really hitting his stride for fantasy managers.

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How much does the team matter for a goalie's fantasy value? John Gibson, he of a .924 save percentage, has four wins in 10 starts. That is the same number of wins Carter Hart has, and Hart has just seven starts, and an even .900 save percentage. It is also the same number of wins as Connor Hellebuyck, who also has seven starts, but a .907 save percentage. It is almost as if being a starting goalie on a team that can't score really hurts for certain categories, much like being a goalie on a team that is porous defensively.

I know this is nothing new but it's one of the issues with drafting goalies from bad teams. Gibson could legitimately win the Vezina this year and not be a top-5 fantasy goalie. On the flipside, if Gibson keeps up this level of play, even if he only wins like 20 games in 45 starts, fantasy owners will have reaped huge rewards from drafting him late. That is kind of the double-edge sword here.

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Before the season, I mused about a Martin Necas breakout and was kind of against it because I thought he'd be too reliant on playmaking and not other fantasy categories. While he hasn't had a breakout, he has put up 2.4 shots per game and over one hit per game. While those aren't monster totals, at least the former is a big improvement on the year prior, and progression is improvement.

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A couple days ago I was talking about Jakub Vrana on Twitter. Why was I talking about Jakub Vrana on Twitter? Because Jakub Vrana has virtually identical 5-on-5 production rates as Auston Matthews going back to the 2018-19 season:

points/60 at 5v5 over the last three years. two of these guys are considered franchise cornerstones and future Hall of Famers, the third was on the fourth line last night pic.twitter.com/ea0fxrpgub

— Michael Clifford (@SlimCliffy) February 2, 2021

Anyone who has followed my writing for a while knows that I like Vrana a lot as a player. One thing I have come around more on is that coaches generally know when players aren't capable of handling more minutes. In other words, I think there's often good reason guys with great rate stats don't always get a ton of minutes – I'm thinking of players like Brendan Gallagher or Craig Smith.

On the other hand, we never really know unless they get the minutes, and that makes this a hard situation. I could very much believe that for any number of reasons, Vrana can't play 18-19 minutes a night every game. That maybe he can do that every seven or eight games, but the rest of the time it has to be 14-15. That is believable. But we don't know if that's the case, and that's what is frustrating.

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Los Angeles defenceman Sean Walker could be out up to a month after surgery on his nose. He was the one who took the Matt Dumba slapshot to the face, so all things considered, this could have been much worse. Speedy recovery to Mr. Walker.

In the meantime, Mikey Anderson and Kale Clague played over 22 minutes in the Kings' last game, so it looks like that's where part of the slack will be made up. Anderson has shown decent peripherals so far this year. Don’t expect much production.

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Tampa Bay beat Detroit 5-1 in a game that featured 41 total shots. (That feels like it's going to be par for the course in these matchups this year.) Alex Killorn had a goal and an assist while Blake Coleman had a pair of helpers and a couple penalty minutes.

On the bright side for Detroit, Anthony Mantha scored for the third game in a row. His team does, however, only have two goals in aggregate otherwise in that span. Growing pains abound.

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Before the season, I said that Cale Makar was #1 in my points projections for defencemen and I explained why that was such a weird projection for me.  While he's not currently leading defencemen – as of Wednesday afternoon, that belongs to Quinn Hughes – he's not far from the top and provided Nathan MacKinnon stays healthy, he should be near the top by the end of the season. There is a bit of relief, believe me, in knowing that my methodology is holding up so far. When you get outlier cases like Makar, how to project them is a big issue.

How about a couple gifs of Makar breaking ankles? Sure? Sure.

.@Cmakar8 is not playing around. 🥵 pic.twitter.com/Iis344zzh0

— NHL GIFs (@NHLGIFs) February 3, 2021

Sorry, Minnesota fans…

This footwork by Cale Makar pic.twitter.com/AYSXNrcXzs

— Dimitri Filipovic (@DimFilipovic) February 1, 2021

When I see a defenceman do things typically reserved for guys like Sidney Crosby, Brayden Point, or Jeff Skinner, well, I take pause. And that's just from two games against Minnesota in the last week. It is a scary thought that he's still a couple years away from really hitting his stride as a defenceman.

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How about the start to the season Justin Faulk is having in the fantasy game? Sure he has just four points, but three goals in 10 games, including 26 shots, 12 blocks, a whopping 37 hits, and a plus-11 rating.

There are obvious signs of regression here – notably goal scoring and plus/minus – and that makes him a sell candidate, but if he keeps playing 23 minutes a night, he should keep up his very solid other peripherals. My guess is he didn't cost much to acquire in drafts. Depending on the return, it could make a lot more sense just to keep him on your roster.

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Sticking with defencemen for a minute, one guy worth talking about right now is Seth Jones.

Jones saw a breakout in 2016-17 with 12 goals and 42 points to go with over two shots per game, and over two hits+blocks per game. He followed that up with a superlative 2017-18 which saw him post 16 goals and 57 points in 78 games, posting over three shots per game and nearly three hits+blocks per game. It seemed like perennial fantasy stardom was a certainty.

Until it wasn't.

Jones has 78 points in his last 142 games, or a 45-point pace. Not bad. But that includes just 16 goals – which is as many in 2017-18 alone – and he is now in his third straight year of shots/game decline. He has fallen from 3.2, to 2.5, to 2.3, and finally to 1.9 this year. This is a big concern.

Jones not shooting is a problem because goal scoring was once a coveted trait of his. Not only that, but Columbus isn't exactly known for goal scoring in general, so racking up assists will be tough. With few goals, declining shots, and a poor offensive environment, well, those issues add up quickly.

To me, this screams of coaching influence, so a notion that Jones can't reclaim his past glory is false. But at the same time, as long as that influence remains, how can we rely on him in the fantasy realm? I would argue it's very difficult to do so.

Zach Werenski isn't very far behind, either…