Buffalo fired coach Ralph Krueger early on Wednesday morning, which is what normally happens when a team that had hopes of a playoff spot this year ends up where they are. (For the record, they started the year 4-3-2 and are now 6-18-4. It is hard to come back from a 2-15-2 record for any coach on any team in any season.)

The fantasy impact was covered by Alex MacLean here.

All I will say is that division in particular was expected to be difficult, and it is: the Flyers would be on pace for a 98-point season in an 82-game campaign (heading into Wednesday night) and would miss the playoffs under our current format. It is taking, quite literally, a 100-point pace just to scrape in the playoffs in their division. That they're this bad is why Krueger is gone, but that they didn't find success isn't strange.

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The Canucks claimed Jimmy Vesey. He is UFA and this is part of the hope of rebuilding some depth in the short-term. I guess they could flip him for a late pick at the deadline?

Related to that:

Vesey claimed by Vancouver and Galchenyuk in #Leafs' blue forward group with Matthews, Marner, Thornton, Tavares and Nylander. Carry on …

— Terry Koshan (@koshtorontosun) March 17, 2021

I am intrigued here. It is clear that Galchenyuk is talented but something was missing. He has had about a month with the Leafs skills coaches. Maybe this is the start of the second act of his career? Time will tell.

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Anders Lee is done for the season after undergoing surgery on his torn ACL. This is a huge blow to an Islanders team that legitimately looked like a Cup contender through the first two months of the season. It will be interesting to see what additions Lou Lamoriello makes at the deadline. Maybe a certain Buffalo Sabre left winger who is now looking for a new home?

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A significant Dallas update:

Update on two critical #GoStars injuries: Tyler Seguin (hip) and Ben Bishop (knee) resumed skating over the last week in Dallas. Both are looking at 3-to-5 week timetable from now to return to lineup, classic "own" deadline acquisitions for a team scratching and clawing.

— Frank Seravalli (@frank_seravalli) March 17, 2021

That would get them back in the lineup sometime next month, though the timing could mean maybe 8-10 regular season games or 18-20. That is a big difference, but for a team that wants a playoff appearance, any news is good news.

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Well, it finally happened. The New York Rangers breakout game finally happened.

As I write this, it's the second intermission of their game with the Flyers, but it's 9-0. The true definition of a laugher. The Rangers coaches were put in quarantine for COVID concerns, so the guys from Hartford drove in for the game. They got Adam Fox and Pavel Buchnevich back and they destroyed Philadelphia.

Mika Zibanejad scored a natural hat trick in the second period, scoring one at even strength, on the power play, and short-handed. Sometimes, regression can come all at once. He had three assists as well, and Buchnevich had a career game of his own with two goals and two assists. I guess he was ready to go.

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Brennan Des had a piece a couple days ago about fantasy MVPs (and you guys should read it). His piece got my brain churning a bit: who has surprised me this year?

I realize this question is kind of dumb because everyone reading this doesn't know what was in my head three months ago when I was making my projections. At the same time, one thing I think is very worthwhile is going through players you missed on, for reasons other than injury, and figuring out why you missed on them. That helps sharpen your analysis for the future, and if we aren't continually learning, we're falling behind.

Here are some guys who've surprised me – in a good way – this season with their fantasy production.

Patrick Kane

I feel safe saying that I wasn't the only person who seriously downgraded Kane, and basically every other 'Hawks player, when it was announced Jonathan Toews was done for the year and Kirby Dach had broken his arm. It was a reasonable assumption to make, I think. Regardless of how reasonable it was, through 30 games, Kane has a whopping 42 points, a mark of 1.40 points per game. That rate, if he maintains it for the next nine weeks, will set a career-high. He is also averaging over three and a half shots per contest. It really has been a superb effort.

If we were to look for signs of regression, there really aren't (m)any: his IPP of 79.3 is well within norms, if not a bit low; his individual shooting percentage of 11.2 is also within norms, if not a bit low; his on-ice shooting percentage at 5-on-5 is a career-high (11.5 percent) and will likely come down. That is the concern here. At the same time, as mentioned, there may be gains to be made in both IPP and shooting percentage. If those improve a bit as his on-ice shooting rate declines a bit, what is the net effect? I don't think it'd be much. And even if those don't improve, and his on-ice shooting percentage drops to a more reasonable 10 percent, we're talking maybe a few points lost the rest of the year. It really isn't make-or-break, as long as he and the team don't go into a prolonged slump.

For those that got him low in their drafts, it has been a home run. And honestly, unless I had a glaring hole somewhere on the roster that needed a superstar, I would hold Kane for the balance of the year. I guess, sometimes, you just need to bet on superstars in your drafts. That feels like a good lesson to learn in my second decade of fantasy hockey.

Jonathan Huberdeau

When Aleksander Barkov and Jonathan Huberdeau were split, combined with the departure of Mike Hoffman, I was pretty sure the Panthers would be struggling to score. Well, at the halfway mark of the season, Huberdeau has 34 points in 28 games, a career-best 1.21 points per game. The power play has been hugely beneficial with 15 PPPs in those 28 contests, but that's not the only reason for success.

The big reason is he's shooting 20 percent at 5-on-5 and has a career-high 88.9 percent IPP. Both of those will come down, and that's the problem. One regression factor may only cut off a couple points, two or more, well, now we're talking decline. A shooting percentage of just 10 percent, at his shot rate, would see just three more 5-on-5 goals the rest of the season. Add a few PP goals, and it's not tremendous goal-scoring production.

This is one where I think he ends up around where I thought he'd be by the end of the season. I am willing to take the 'L' here but lets wait a month or so.

Vincent Trocheck

I have written about Trocheck at length (as recently as a few weeks ago) and not much has changed since. He is currently out of the lineup with an injury but is averaging a point per game and has 13 goals in 24 contests. The 19 percent shooting will continue to fall, but he should still be a great asset in fantasy in multi-cat leagues.

He has talked about how it took him well over a year after that brutal ankle injury to really recover. That this is the first time he's really been healthy since that point. That would make sense. I saw Mike Johnson talk about something similar with an ankle injury. Well, Trocheck had been healthy until recently and the Hurricanes were reaping the rewards.

The downside here is that, yes, he's currently injured and it doesn't look like he'll be back anytime soon. It seems unrelated to his prior injury which is good news in a sense, but we can only hope he's back sooner rather than later.

Sometimes players just need to heal from injuries. It appears that was the case for Trocheck a a year ago, and is going to be true again now, just for a different reason.

Charlie McAvoy, Darnell Nurse, and Jeff Petry

Sometimes in our search of power-play points, we tend to overlook some pretty good defencemen. At least, it's obvious that I do that. I wasn't particularly high on any of the three players in the title in fear of a loss or absence of power-play minutes. On the year, both McAvoy and Nurse are over 50-point paces while Petry is over 70 (that's per 82 games, by the way). Petry is shooting nearly 16 percent, which is one reason for his success, but he's also getting PP point production (10) along the way.  

I won't dig into each individual season but even with moderate PP production, Petry would similarly be over a 50-point pace. What we should carry forward is that top-end defencemen from teams expected to score their fair share of goals, as all these teams were, should garner more recognition. Just getting a lot of ice time at even strength is a great thing for point production, and it was probably reasonable that at least the first two guys on that list would play career-highs for minutes this year.

Thatcher Demko

At a certain point, you (we, me) need to just take a stand on a goalie. It was fair to assume that Vancouver wouldn't be very good defensively this year, but goalies from average-to-poor defensive teams have good fantasy seasons all the time. Last year, Connor Hellebucyk and Darcy Kuemper were examples of this. Hellebuyck is an elite goalie, sure, but Kuemper had less of a track record over more years. Even MacKenzie Blackwood, who is probably the best comparable goalie here. Braden Holtby was a guy we knew with relative certainty was not a true starter. We had no idea about Demko. We still don't, really, but we have a better idea now. One bad week can undo a lot of good work, but more of this and he'll be in the running for the Vezina.

Demko being a starter would be a welcome thing in Vancouver, presuming they can get him under the cap. Either way, sometimes we just need to believe in the goalie and take a chance.