Over the last few days I have done some work for the Dobber Midseason Guide – which is available for pre-order now in the Dobber Shop – and one thing I thought a lot about was the trade deadline and how that will work for Canadian teams. We saw a direct example of this with the Laine/Dubois trade when Dubois was sidelined for a couple weeks but Laine only had a few days quarantine before joining Columbus. At face value, it would seem there is a big impediment to the trade deadline and it's Canada's two-week quarantine order.

I would say that is probably a bit overblown. With the way Toronto is running away with the North Division, and with the way Vancouver and Ottawa are falling out of the playoff race, nearly half the division probably won't have a lot to play for over the final 3-4 weeks of the season. There is also Winnipeg, currently seven points up on fifth-place Calgary with a game in hand, that could run away with a playoff spot real soon. They have a three-game set with Calgary at the end of this month that could bury the Flames for good.

That is basically why I think the quarantine issue won't be as big a problem as we might have thought initially. Will it move up some deadline acquisitions? Probably. But I also think we're about four weeks away from having the top-2 spots virtually locked up and the bottom-2 spots also virtually locked up. Is the NHL's trade deadline going to be held up because three teams will have quarantine issues to consider? I suspect not.

Maybe it's wishful thinking – I do enjoy trade deadline day quite a bit – but I don't think we have a lot to worry about for deadline deals. Like I mentioned, does the timeline get moved up a bit? Maybe for some teams. I am not overly concerned with deadline day itself, though.

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Gustav Nyquist update:

Gus Nyquist is also on the ice with the team for practice today. He's been skating on his own/doing some morning skates the last few weeks. #CBJ

— Jeff Svoboda (@JacketsInsider) March 3, 2021

He hasn't played a game yet this season and had 42 points in 70 games in his first year with the Jackets, skating over 18 minutes a night. If he can make it back soon, this might not be a bad look on the waiver wire. He could come in with top-6, top-PP minutes (might be a stretch, but the possibility is there) and that would be serious fantasy value, even in Columbus. Don't drop anyone productive for him yet, though, as it could take some time for him to get up to game speed.

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Anthony Duclair is expected to join the Panthers on their road trip so it doesn't seem as if he'll be out too much longer. He had 10 points in 19 games skating on a very productive top line, and was only shooting 4.1 percent. There is upside to come once that starts evening itself out.

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When people ask what the secret is to Florida's success this year, there are a lot of good answers: superlative performances from Barkov and Huberdeau on separate lines, a great power play, a reliable goalie in Chris Driedger, and whatever else we can come up with. What is catching my eye more than anything the team defence because that's something that had been missing for years.

As an example, below is a visual of Florida's 5-on-5 defence with MacKenzie Weegar off the ice for the 2019-20 season. I picked him because the pairing of Weegar-Ekblad was excellent defensively, so I wanted to see what it looked like when that defence pair was likely off the ice (from HockeyViz):

In two words, not pretty. It certainly isn't as horrific as we might think looking back on Sergei Bobrovsky's numbers, but not good. For teams to be good, they need to at least tread water when their stars are off the ice. That isn't treading water.

This year? Not even close to the same story. Yes, the team is still great defensively with the duo of Ekblad-Weegar on the ice, as expected. But without both of them on the ice? Night and day:

What are the changes? There wasn't a significant overhaul to the blue line; Mike Matheson out and Radko Gudas in. That is probably a defensive upgrade but not one worth that size increase defensively.

I would argue they made some upgrades up front that helped. Trocheck was not the player last year that he is this year and Alex Wennberg in effect just had to be a bit better than the injured Trocheck rather than the healthy one. Verhaege/Duclair have meshed well on the top line which has allowed them to bolster the second line with both Hornqvist and Huberdeau. Having a good second line is more than some other teams in that division have. A good first line is more than some teams in that division have, for that matter.

Either way, Florida legitimately looks great and I'm excited to see Sasha Barkov in a proper playoff run for once. Hope I didn't jinx it.

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Kevin Fiala is going through a bit of a tough stretch right now with no goals in five games and just three assists on the season. It is that second part that I want to bring attention to.

It should be noted that despite Fiala's very strong transition numbers, he hasn't really shown to be a great playmaker. At least not by racking up assists, which is how we judge playmakers in the fantasy realm.

Three assists in 16 games is a bad mark for Fiala but I'm not sure we can directly blame him. He is shooting 9.1 percent at 5-on-5, down from 11.9 percent last year but still a solid mark. At the least, it isn't apparent there's a massive unlucky streak for him shooting at 5-on-5. His line mates on the other hand are a different story: so far this year, his line mates (forward or defence) have taken 83 shots on goal at 5-on-5 and scored four goals. He has been on the ice for just seven goals at 5-on-5 this year and he's scored nearly half of them (3). I suspect Fiala's line mates won't keep shooting 4.8 percent at 5-on-5 and with it, Fiala's assist rate will climb.

More than that is the power-play assist problem. While he has never been a massive PP producer, has managed nine PP assist in three straight seasons; he has zero this year. The team has only scored two PP goals with him on the ice and he scored both of them. The Wild won't keep shooting zero percent on the PP outside of Fiala and as that rises, so will Fiala's power-play production, particularly assists.

Fiala has had a down year to start but there are serious signs of positive regression. The Wild are a good team and these percentages will turn around. Have faith, Fiala owners.

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While talking about power plays, we should have a baseline, so let's do that.

In the 2019-20 season, only two teams shot under 10 percent at 5-on-4 and neither team (ANA, S.J.) shot under 9.75 percent. The year before, three teams shot under 10 percent and the lowest was Nashville at 8.7 percent. Mind you, that was in seasons where the league-wide average conversion rate on the power play was lower (20 percent and 19.8 percent) than it is now (21.2 percent). So, the Wild are either going to have a power play that is historically bad in a season where power plays are converting at a rate not seen since the mid-80s, or they've been unlucky for six weeks or so (while enduring all those COVID problems) and are due for some good fortune over the final two months of the season. My bet is on the latter.

For that reason, I think guys like Fiala, Dumba, and Spurgeon make solid buy-low offers. This is a good team that should see its power play improve. Buy the dip and reap the rewards.

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Boston and Washington played a very, very sluggish game on Wednesday night – there were something like 20 combined shots through two periods and around 40 at the end of regulation. Not really sure the factor here as the Bruins are typically a high-volume shooting team and the Caps aren't great defensively. Just one of those nights were we had to slog through overtime, which isn't something we often have to do. A 1-1 shootout game gave us goals from Lars Eller and David Pastrnak.