No Jack Eichel meant no goals for the Sabres, and a shutout for Brian Elliott. The veteran Flyers goalie stopped all 23 shots he faced to earn his second shutout of the season. The 35-year-old Elliott might not be viewed as a must-own fantasy asset, but he has posted quality numbers (5-1-0, 2.03 GAA, .931 SV%, 50 QS%). When you combine that with Carter Hart's struggles (3.68 GAA, .891 SV%), it's difficult to not make a case for a possible timeshare here. The Flyers play four times next week with weekend back-to-backs, so I'd have to think that Elliott would be good for starting two of those games. Go ahead and roll with him.

Since returning to the lineup five games ago, Sean Couturier has been on fire with nine points (4 G, 5 A). That included a goal and an assist on Saturday.

Jeff Skinner returned to the Sabres lineup after a three-game healthy scratch, playing on a line with Casey Mittelstadt and Riley Sheahan. After 15 games, he still has yet to score his first goal of the season. At least there's nowhere to go but up, even if there's nothing left fantasy-wise.

More tales of woe from the Sabres: Rasmus Dahlin's minus-16 is the league's worst. Dahlin made the All-Disappointment Team that Steve Laidlaw and I created last weekend. Here's our team, which was well-represented by the Sabres.

This week on the podcast @Ian_Gooding and I discussed the early bids for the All-Disappointment Team. Check it out, and let us know who has left you disappointed!

Apple https://t.co/kFkJy9c0Aw

Spotify https://t.co/j3yM9o19FF pic.twitter.com/lkfeauXXQg

— Steve Laidlaw (@SteveLaidlaw) February 23, 2021

Don't forget to give Steve’s podcast a listen if you haven't already.

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Mikael Backlund broke out of his eight-game point drought in a big way on Saturday. The Flames center scored a goal while adding two assists to go with a plus-4 and four shots on goal to power the Flames to a victory. For those in faceoff leagues, he also won a personal season-best 13 faceoffs. Linemates Matthew Tkachuk and Andrew Mangiapane also scored a goal and added an assist.

Johnny Gaudreau also pitched in two helpers, including this effort on Jusso Valamaki's goal.

Oh yeah, @johngaudreau03's feelin' saucyyy today. pic.twitter.com/AOYpIjfQZh

— NHL (@NHL) February 27, 2021

With a goal and an assist on Saturday, Drake Batherson now has goals in each of his last five games. That gives him eight points (5 G, 3 A) in his current five-game point streak. At just 16 percent ownership in Yahoo leagues, Batherson might be available in your league.

Batherson has been lining up with Tim Stutzle, who is starting to make an impact at the NHL level with five points over his last five games. Stutzle's multicategory league value has also been boosted by his recent shot total (22 shots in his last five games). The Sens appear to have the makings of at least some top-6 pairings, with Batherson/Stutzle on one line and Brady Tkachuk/Josh Norris on another. For now, just be careful if you add Stutzle in a league that counts plus/minus (team-worst minus-15 – I'll tell you who has the league's worst plus-minus in a moment).

After posting three consecutive wins, Matt Murray was again the victim of a Really Bad Start. He allowed six goals over the first two periods of Saturday's loss. There's still a ton of risk in starting Murray, even if the Senators have shown signs of improvement recently.

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If you've waited this long on Pavel Zacha (I simply couldn't), good on you. The Devils forward scored again on Saturday, extending his point streak to nine games. Over his past 12 games, Zacha has been scoring at a point-per-game pace (13 points, including six goals). Although his icetime hasn't changed much, his power-play time has increased a bit. Zacha still has a relatively high shooting percentage (19.4 SH%), which shows that he will likely cool off to some degree. He scored at a 40-point pace last season, so it looks like we can pencil that and more in for him going forward.

Zacha's linemate Nico Hischier scored a goal and added an assist of his own. However, he had to leave the game after taking a deflected shot to his face.

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In his return to the lineup from a lower-body injury, Mattias Ekholm scored his first two goals of the season. Along with numerous other Predators, Ekholm has been mentioned in trade rumors recently. An Ekholm trade would leave a huge void on the Preds blueline, as he has consistently logged 23+ minutes in each of the previous four seasons. As well, he's been on a 40+ point pace over each of the previous two seasons, which is important for a team that depends as much on the defense for their offense as the Predators do.

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It sounds like the Leafs decided to err on the side of caution by keeping Auston Matthews out of the lineup on Saturday with a wrist injury. On Hockey Night in Canada, Chris Johnston described the decision to rest Matthews as "situational", so this doesn't sound like anything for Matthews owners to panic about.

It didn't matter for the Leafs, who cruised to a 4-0 win over Edmonton. Jack Campbell pitched a 30-save shutout in his return to the Leafs lineup after missing a month. Campbell might receive more work in the near term, as Frederik Andersen hasn't returned to the lineup from injury yet. Andersen is on the Leafs' road trip, so it's entirely possible that he returns next week, particularly with the Leafs playing back-to-backs on Wednesday and Thursday.

With a goal on Saturday, William Nylander has scored four goals in his past five games. I can hear the "trade Nylander" screams from Toronto all the way over in the west coast, but Nylander is a nice fallback option for when someone like Matthews is out of the lineup. Plus he's benefitted from the coaching change last season.

William Nylander has 31 goals in 67 regular-season games under Sheldon Keefe. #LeafsForever

— Nick Alberga (@thegoldenmuzzy) February 28, 2021

Joe Thornton also returned to the Leafs lineup and chipped in an assist. Staying in the lineup hasn't been easy for the 41-year-old future Hall of Famer, but he's still scored 10 points in his last eight games. He should be rostered in many fantasy leagues while he's riding on the top line. With Matthews out, John Tavares moved up beside Thornton and Mitch Marner.

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Kris Letang scored two goals (including the overtime winner) and added an assist to give the Penguins a 4-3 win over the Islanders. Letang had gone without a goal in his first 14 games, but he's now scored four goals over his last four games. Over his last nine games, Letang also has 10 points. Letang might have had a slow start, but he's now at least outscoring Evgeni Malkin (14 points to 12 points).

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In a Stanley Cup Final rematch, Andrei Vasilevskiy took care of all 20 shots he faced in a lopsided 5-0 win. Vasilevskiy now leads the league in wins (12), while his 1.75 GAA and .938 SV% are among the league's best. So far he has delivered on his draft-day value. There shouldn't be much debate about whether to start him every time he plays.

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After a strong start to the season, Alexandre Texier has gone eight games without a point and 15 games without a point.

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Dylan Larkin missed Saturday's game against Chicago, and he is also expected to miss Sunday's game. Larkin will be featured in our Geek of the Week article this week, which will be the debut piece for new writer Scott Royce. Be sure to check it out, particularly if you're trying to figure out what to do with Larkin.

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Talk about a buzzer beater from Matt Dumba to extend the Wild's winning streak to six games. I can't say that this is the case for all reverse retro jerseys, but the jersey matchup here is amazing. The pre-Gretzky Kings in Minnesota to face the North Stars.

MATT DUMBA BEATS THE CLOCK!!! pic.twitter.com/3wwiUfRz9O

— FOX Sports North (@fsnorth) February 28, 2021

Kaapo Kahkonen is definitely ahead of Kaapo Kakko in the Kaapo power rankings. Kahkonen picked up his fifth consecutive win on Saturday. As I mentioned yesterday, both Kahkonen and Cam Talbot are worth owning, at least while the Wild are red hot and possibly beyond that.

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Cale Makar was out of the lineup on Saturday because of an upper-body injury. As a result, Samuel Girard logged 25 minutes, which included first-unit power play minutes. He chipped in two assists, with one on the power play. In case you were wondering who would take first-unit minutes between Girard, Devon Toews, or Bowen Byram should Makar be unavailable.

The goal that Girard assisted on was scored by Gabriel Landeskog, who scored his first goal in 11 games and his first point in six games.

The Coyotes were without team leading scorer Conor Garland on Saturday because of a lower-body injury.

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The Winnipeg Jets need to give Connor Hellebuyck a gift basket… with a bottle of his favorite beverage inside. Over his last seven games, Hellebuyck has had games where he has faced 42, 45, and on Saturday 41 shots. Yet the Jets managed to hang on for a 2-1 overtime win. Hellebuyck has now won three in a row.

Safe is death: Paul Maurice goes with three forwards in 3-on-3 overtime and Paul Stastny gets the #NHLJets a victory on a night where they were outplayed by Montreal.

— Chris Johnston (@reporterchris) February 28, 2021

The Jets also did this to the Canucks last Sunday and scored 27 seconds into overtime. Don't be surprised to see more teams try this to try to end the game early.  

If you were watching this game, you may have noticed that Joel Armia received first-unit power-play time. That looks like a change by the new coach Dominique Ducharme. Armia scored two goals on Thursday, and followed that up with an assist on Saturday. Something to watch there.

Fantasy Take: Claude Julien Fired by Montreal

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Erik Karlsson returned to the Sharks lineup on Saturday (no points, but six shots in just under 21 minutes), but that wasn't the most interesting story of the San Jose/St. Louis game. Nor was it the second-most interesting story.

At one point it seemed like these two teams wouldn't stop scoring. It finally ended at 7:14 of the third period, when Marco Scandella scored his second goal and point of the game (and the season) to give the Blues a 7-6 lead that they wouldn't relinquish. Somehow, Scandella ended this game with a plus-4. Give this man the first star!

In a losing cause, Evander Kane and Timo Meier each scored two goals, while Meier added an assist as well. Kane now has three goals, five points, and 15 shots over his last three games. As for Meier, the goals were his first in seven games.

Devan Dubnyk got the entire game experience in net for the Sharks, allowing all seven goals without getting pulled. Neither Dubnyk nor Martin Jones has a goals-against average of below 3.00 or a save percentage of above .900. Games like this aren't necessarily an anomaly for the Sharks, as they've already allowed seven goals in one game earlier this season.    

Jordan Binnington was just a tiny bit pissed at the Sharks after he got pulled. I'm guessing those Sharks players weren't saying something polite like "So sorry. Better luck next time." If your Twitter handle is @binnasty, it might not take a whole lot to set you off.

BINNINGTON JUST PUNCHED THREE PPL 😂😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/3r44erYEm1

— Tony X (@soIoucity) February 28, 2021

Dubnyk, on Binnington: "I don't know why he's skating around, pretending to punch guys. I told him to get off the ice, he's 165 pounds, swinging at guys, fake punching guys."

— Sheng Peng (@Sheng_Peng) February 28, 2021

By the way, the four goals Binnington allowed on 19 shots qualifies as a Really Bad Start. Fortunately, Ville Husso allowed just two goals after Binnington was pulled to prevent Binnington from receiving his fourth consecutive loss. Imagine your team earning a win after its goalie loses his mind like that. Then again, it's the 2020-21 season, where a whole lot of things don't make sense.

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For more fantasy hockey discussion, or to reach out to me, you can follow me on Twitter @Ian_Gooding