The Dobber Midseason Guide drops today! Head on over to the Dobber Shop and grab your copy. ETA for it being made available to you is approximately 5pm EST, so have patience, I promise it's worth the wait. If you haven't considered grabbing yours yet, it has projections, prospects, and everything else you need to know for the balance of the season.

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Jack Eichel news:

Jack Eichel has headed out of town for another opinion https://t.co/0YjyBUdUzA

— John Vogl (@BuffaloVogl) March 10, 2021

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Vincent Trocheck was out for Carolina on Thursday night and we got a little update on Teuvo Teravainen:

Teravainen not playing tonight and "I'm not sure anytime soon," Brind'Amour said.

— Cory Lavalette (@corylav) March 11, 2021

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A quick update on Alex Radulov

Rick Bowness on Alexander Radulov. pic.twitter.com/HQJQhPciBH

— Matthew DeFranks (@MDeFranks) March 11, 2021

It appears as though he won't be long for the lineup which is good news for Radulov fantasy owners, as the team has 11 games in 20 days beginning Saturday. If he can get back by the weekend, there could be a lot of games for him real soon.

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Ben Chiarot has a broken hand and will be out indefinitely. It seems Victor Mete is about to be in the lineup every night, though where Chiarot’s minutes go remain to be seen. They could just be evenly dispersed through the rest of the D-corps.

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Jordan Binnington signed a six-year, $36M contract with St. Louis, so his fantasy cap league owners know what to expect moving forward.

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A little aside from Gary Bettman's media availability on Thursday:

Reading between the lines of Gary Bettman's answer on future NHL alignment: The North Division won't exist any longer than it needs to.

— Chris Johnston (@reporterchris) March 11, 2021

This is the right call. Some American teams desperately need the revenue from home games against the likes of the Leafs and Habs, be it in attendance or on TV. It might be better for fans of Canadian teams, but it's worse for the league and the game. The latter is more important to the long-term health of the NHL and hockey writ large.

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Great news from San Jose:

Hertl & Meier are indeed full participants at today's #SJSharks practice

— Sheng Peng (@Sheng_Peng) March 11, 2021

There were also quotes from Hertl about how much his COVID battle impacted him and about how worrisome it made him. The fact that we're a year into this pandemic and we're still getting "I guess it could happen to anyone" quotes still blows my mind. Maybe things will be different in Year 2.

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It appears that Oscar Klefbom's season is officially over, though we'll wait for confirmation from the team before writing him off entirely: he is scheduled for surgery in a couple weeks.

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Boston's big boys came to play as Patrice Bergeron and David Pastrnak both scored while Brad Marchand had a trio of assists in the team's 4-0 shutout win over the New York Rangers. Jake DeBrusk was back in the lineup, on the second line with David Krejci, and those two had the other goals. Jaroslav Halak saved 25 for the shutout.

This was a bad game for the Rangers and their lines were a mess. They are surely welcoming Artemi Panarin back with open arms here soon.

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Evgeni Malkin picked up a goal and an assist in Pittsburgh's 5-2 win over Buffalo. After a slow start to the season that saw him post just three goals and seven points in the team's first 14 games, he's had three goals and 14 points in 12 games since. He is still not shooting a lot (24 in that span) but it's nice to see the point totals start to come around.

Tage Thompson scored a nice goal for the Sabres where he fought off the check of Sidney Crosby and powered a wrap-around in. If he can do more of that, he can start making good on all the flashes of promise he's shown in the past.

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The Islanders took a 5-3 win from the Devils on Thursday night but they may have suffered a bigger loss as Anders Lee got tied up with a Devils skated and kind of got twisted up. He was helped to the bench and missed the second and third period. We obviously don't know more than that now but an extended absence could hurt a team that is mid-pack by scoring anyway.

Ryan Pulock had a nice fantasy nice with a pair of assists, a plus-2 rating, three shots, a block, and a couple hits. Those are the kinds of nights he's drafted for. That gives him 21 shots in nine games, a marked improvement over the 32 in 18 he started the season with.

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Florida scored four unanswered goals and erased a 4-1 third-period deficit to steal a 5-4 win from Columbus. Goals from Ryan Lombord, Owen Tippett, and Aleksander Barkov eight minutes apart tied it up 4-4 and Frank Vatrano scored the OT winner.

It overshadowed what was a great night from Oliver Bjorkstrand, who had two goals, an assist, and five shots in 19 minutes of ice time. More of this, thank you.

Elvis Merzlikins was in net for all five goals on 32 shots.

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Auston Matthews scored the OT winner in a great game against Winnipeg, as Toronto took a 4-3 victory. He and Mitch Marner each had a goal and an assist while William Nylander scored a goal and landed five shots. That is seven goals in 11 games for him.

Nikolaj Ehlers had two goals and an assist in a great night for the winger. He now has 13 goals and 28 points in 26 games in what has been a superlative season.

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My part of the Dobber guide was working on the trade deadline targets. This is going to be a different kind of deadline so I want to talk about what to expect when it rolls around in a few weeks, and why this is important for your fantasy leagues.

Quarantine

The first and obvious impediment to the trade deadline is the two-week quarantine period at the Canadian border. Any player being traded from an American team to a Canadian one will need to quarantine for two weeks, as we saw with the Winnipeg/Columbus trade. That puts a lot of wrenches into a lot of plans, but allow me to explain why it may not be a huge deal for some of the teams.

First, it doesn't matter for Ottawa. They are currently 12 points out of a playoff spot and more games played than most teams above them. In other words, they don't have to worry about quarantines because they don't need players for a postseason push. The same applies to Toronto though for kind of the opposite reason: they're so far ahead of the rest of the division they don't have to worry in the slightest about sliding out of a playoff spot. The Ontario teams, then, can pretty much wheel and deal as they see fit.

The same could apply to Vancouver if they don't get in gear by the end of March. They are only five points out of a playoff spot but have more games played than anyone else in the division and some teams above them have five games in hand. They have a four-game set with the Habs that starts at the end of March. Anything like a 1-3 or 0-3-1 mark probably pushes the Canucks out of the playoff race and into the trade market. If that happens, a team like Edmonton could already have a playoff spot wrapped up as well.

It isn't hard to see at least three, if not four, Canadian teams having relatively little concern for the quarantine issue as the deadline approaches. It will have a big impact on borderline teams like Winnipeg, Calgary, and Montreal, but perhaps less so with the teams at the extremes of the standings like Toronto, Vancouver, and Ottawa. The players themselves will still have to quarantine and that hurts fantasy rosters, but I don't think it impacts some of what the teams will do themselves.

Cap crunch

Besides the quarantine, most of the teams are dealing with a cap crunch. That means a lot of teams will have to move out money in equal amounts that they take it in. There are exceptions, though.

There are four teams with more than $4M in cap space, according to Cap Friendly, and those teams are Ottawa, Detroit, Los Angeles, and New Jersey. Though the Kings are making a charge, all four teams look to be outside the playoffs looking in. That makes them fertile ground for trades, as they can take on money without having to move it out. It also puts those teams in fantastic leverage spots and it's why I think we see more three-way trades than in the past. "Oh, you need to shed that guy with a $4M salary so you can acquire Taylor Hall? Sure, we'll take him off your hands, it'll only cost you a second rounder." Maybe not necessarily three-way trades, but you'll probably see a player get dumped with a pick and then the trading team can acquire the high-salary guy they want. There are only so many of those players, but I do think we see those kinds of trades.

For that reason, I think we could see some of the basement teams actually improve over the final month. A team like Carolina doesn't necessarily need Jordan Martinook and could trade him to shed salary, but he would mark an improvement over someone in the Ottawa or Detroit lineups. Don't ignore the basement teams down the stretch on your fantasy rosters.

Just be aware we may not see a ton of deadline movement. The money is a bigger issue than it is most years and teams will be hesitant about adding much, even if they're able.

Draft Picks

This is related to the cap crunch and it's something I wonder: are teams going to be more hesitant to trade draft picks? Young players are the NHL's greatest source of contract value and the money, as mentioned, is tight for a lot of teams. Let us say a team is in a position like Vancouver the last couple years where they can give up a first-rounder for an established NHLer like J.T. Miller or Nate Schmidt, do they do it? In years gone by, I would have said yes, without a doubt. Now? I am less sure.

And that makes me wonder if we're even going to see that much movement at the deadline. The quarantine issue isn't as big for some teams, but it's a massive hurdle for a few others. The cap crunch is a real thing for every team in the league, whether they're spending to the cap or not; teams have their own internal cap that they have to stand by. And finally, the cheap-labour resource is one that teams may not want to dig into for short-term gains. We have been seeing less and less of that as the seasons have gone by, and I think it will be even more extreme this year.

What about some trade targets? Here are a few I mention in the guide.

Kyle Palmieri

This guy could slide onto almost any playoff team's second line and be a great two-way winger for them. He's shooting less than half (7.3) his rate last year (16.1) and much lower than his three year-average (13.3) and yet would still push past 15 goals in an 82-game season. If he sits at 11 percent shooting, he has a couple more goals and is one pace for nearly 25 again. This guy can score 25 in his sleep and would make a great playoff asset. A team like Boston makes a lot of sense here.

Bobby Ryan

Though not a great season with 13 points in 25 games, we have to remember who he's playing for, and the fact he'd push for 20 goals on this roster is nothing short of a miracle. His AAV is $1M so his pro-rated hit is low enough for over half the league to acquire without having to move money out. That makes him desirable, and he should draw a lot of interest as a depth scorer on a playoff team. I am not sure that would boost his value for the final month of the season if he's getting secondary PP minutes and falls to 14 minutes a night.

Mikael Granlund

The UFA isn't having a great year in Nashville points-wise, but almost no one is outside of Filip Forsberg anyway. He can play all three forward positions and is defensively responsible, and those factors should make him a target for a playoff team. Even if he sees a loss in ice time, it'll be hard to be worse than 10 points in 22 games in a new locale, so keep him on the radar.