Drake Batherson jumped to the top line in Ottawa with Josh Norris and Brady Tkachuk for Wednesday night's game. Batherson has been a great rookie this year (I think he still qualifies?) with nine goals and 18 points in 28 games, showing some of the offensive promise he was drafted for.

This could be a great situation for both wingers. They are clearly both talented and both get the top PP minutes on the same unit now. It could be a case where they elevate each other's games to a new level. One can hope, anyway.

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Great news on Artemi Panarin:

DQ says Panarin won't play tomorrow.

"We're glad to have him back. When he's going to play again, we don't know."

Said he seems good physically. #NYR

— Vince Z. Mercogliano (@vzmercogliano) March 10, 2021

Like they said, he won’t get into a game right away but he’s practicing with the team and they have one contest left on the road trip after tonight. Getting Panarin into a road game on the weekend before going home seems like it would make sense. At least he looks to be ready next week for weekly fantasy players.

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A bit of an update on Alex Pietrangelo:

DeBoer on Pietrangelo-

"Obviously not a great sign that he returned home for evaluation. I'm not concerned that it's long, long term, but he's definitely out for the foreseeable future."

— Jesse Granger (@JesseGranger_) March 10, 2021

Vegas is good enough to make the postseason without two months of Pietrangelo but they definitely need him if they want to make a Cup run. We'll update when we get more information. Until then, expect more minutes for Alec Martinez and some secondary PP minutes for Nic Hague.

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Staying with Vegas, it appears Robin Lehner is off to practice with the AHL team, a good sign he could be returning in the next couple of weeks. He may need some time to get back into shape like Ilya Samsonov over in Washington, but it shouldn't be long until he's back in the cage.

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Still no update on Tyler Bertuzzi and at this point, it's becoming a big concern. There has been little clarity around his situation and he's been out of the lineup for six weeks. It seems there is something serious here and the team is dancing around it.

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An update on the Boston guys:

Per Don Sweeney:
No definitive time table on returns of Kase, Miller, Carlo.
Lauzon could be six weeks from time of fracture.

— Kevin Paul Dupont (@GlobeKPD) March 10, 2021

Specifically, Cassidy said that they have no idea when Ondrej Kase will return, which may factor heavily into what they do at the deadline. They have a few weeks to figure that one out.

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Today is your last day to pre-order your copy of the 2021 Dobber Hockey Midseason Guide because, well, it goes up on the site tomorrow. Just head on over to the Dobber Shop to pre-order yours, or check out everything else for sale in the store.

Included in the Guide are things like rest-of-season projections, prospects we need to know down the stretch, changing depth charts, trade deadline tips, and a whole lot more. It will help those that need a push for the final two months of the season, or anyone looking to get a head start on their 2021-22 prep.

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Joel Eriksson Ek continued to show why he's one of the breakout stars of the 2021 season with a pair of goals for Minnesota en route to a 4-3 Wild win. The real story of the night was Dylan Coghlan scoring a hat trick for Vegas. There was not a single mistake in that sentence: Coghlan, playing his 12^th NHL game and just one assist to his name, tallied a hat trick. This sport, man.

Besides Coghlan, Kaapo Kahkonen had a pretty good game in goal, and is really starting to thrust himself into the Calder conversation.

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We have basically reached the mid-point of the season (a bit shy for most teams but by next week we'll get there) and I just wanted to talk about some things that have stuck out to me this season. It truly is a season like we've never seen before so I want to get these thoughts down while I still have them sloshing around in the ol' noodle.

Jake Bean

This isn't necessarily about Jake Bean, though it is. It is more about what Jake Bean represents: a player who clearly has earned an opportunity with the big club and then knocks it out of the park. One thing I remember hearing over and over in my life as a hockey fan is that teams want players "over-seasoned" when they get to the NHL, as if they're lemon-pepper chicken and not a human being. Development isn't linear and sometimes players are as ready at 19 and 20 years old as they will be at 22 and 23 years old. That doesn't mean they can't or won't improve, it just means they're capable of handling the workload. Jake Bean, a guy who had 44 points in 70 games while taking 2.5 shots a game in the AHL as a 20-year-old, was probably ready before January 2021. I even said back in February of 2020 that he should be on the roster. He probably should have been on it all 2019-20. (That I thought he was ready and the team didn't obviously doesn't mean he was. I do think how well he's performed this year showed it at least was a conversation rather than a straight 'no'.)

Now, entry-level contracts and RFA status play a factor here, but Bean was a guy identified as ready to go at least a year ago and now here he is, just crushing his role. Who are some other guys that could fit that bill?

For me, Ville Heinola is the guy I always think about. Again, I have a divergent view from the team as this was my view on Heinola before the season started:

Heinola should be in Winnipeg's lineup and there's a non-zero chance he's their best defenceman right now.

— Michael Clifford (@SlimCliffy) January 5, 2021

He has 12 points in 22 games between the NHL and AHL over the last two seasons and just turned 20 years old last week. He showed very well at the World Juniors as well and certainly looks like the puck-moving defenceman they desperately need.

Ryan Merkley is another guy I think of, though I'm much less sure of his readiness. All I see is a Sharks team that is floundering and largely moving further and further from a playoff spot as Merkley gets more seasoning in the AHL. This was a defenceman over a point-per-game in the OHL in his draft year. Do I know if he's ready? I have no idea. But he can't really hurt a Sharks team that has the worst goal differential in their division and are seven points out of a playoff spot.

5-on-5 Scoring

Goal scoring is down in general this year, down to a four-year low of 2.96 per team per game, and that's despite a seven-year high in PP opportunities per game and a conversion rate not seen since the mid-1980s. If PP goals are up and goal scoring is down, that means 5-on-5 scoring is down even more than we might envision, and the question is why?

One general theory I have is that we have teams playing a condensed schedule, which leads to fatigue. There was even a story on ESPN a couple days ago from Emily Kaplan where she interviewed players and they say they don't feel like they normally do. That they're experiencing the same pandemic fatigue the rest of the public is dealing with isn't a shock.

The game now is also much different from even five years ago, where several passes in-zone are likely necessary to setup a decent shot. It would make sense fatigued players wouldn't have the same juice generating offence when they have to work all shift for it rather than just setup a PP in the zone. (I admit there may not be a lot to stand on here, I'm just thinking out loud.)

Another theory is that some players are just taking more time to get used to the new NHL, an NHL where transition and cross-seam passing are so important. It really is teaching players, not necessarily a new skill, but a different application of their current skills.

Maybe the defence is just getting better? It is possible.

One thing I want to see – and I know it won't happen – but is to make the ice bigger, and the nets proportionally bigger as well. So if we add 10 percent to the width of the ice, we add 10 percent to the width of the nets. The players are simply too fast for the same ice surface they were using decades ago. It is barely the same game anymore.

Joel Eriksson-Ek

I don't think there's been a more surprising player to me this year than Eriksson-Ek. Not that I expected him to be a bad player; I just never expected him to be this good. Let us count the ways:

• 1.28 individual expected goals per 60 minutes at 5-on-5. That is Eriksson-Ek's ixG/60 number and it's currently second among all forwards (Brendan Gallagher is first at 1.36). That has translasted to 1.62 goals/60 at 5-on-5, good for 10^th in the league.
• His offensive impact is three standard deviations above the league average, and defensively he's nearly two. In other words, he's been among the most impactful players in the league in play-driving this year:

• An on-ice expected goal share over 64 percent and an actual goal share over 69 percent.

He has just 13 points in 23 games because of low assist totals, and that will keep him from any kind of Hart conversation. But he could very well be in line for some Selke love, even a Selke win. He has been phenomenal, and I never saw this kind of offensive upside coming from him. He is just a wonderful hockey player.

I have other observations, but I'll keep them to myself for now; some of them are a bit too far out there. But I do think there are going to be lots of interesting takeaways from a season such as this. Just don't get fooled by some of the randomness and don't forget it's all intra-divisional play. Comparisons across divisions and across the league can be a bit wonky.