While the Sabres don't think that rookie Dylan Cozens will be out for a while, he missed Wednesday night's game and doesn't look like he'll be back in the immediate future. It is a shame because he was one of the few shining lights in the season. Here is what the team had to say:

GMKA on Dylan Cozens during #Sabres AM skate livestream: "He's dealing with an upper-body, probably around a week. Hopefully it's more day to day than week to week. He's a tough kid but we certainly don't want to put him on the ice if he's not 100 percent."

— Mike Harrington (@ByMHarrington) March 31, 2021

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Tampa Bay got a bunch of their defencemen back at practice on Wednesday:

Good news for #tblightning with Erik Cernak, Ryan McDonagh and Victor Hedman among first on ice for practice. All in regular jerseys.

— Joe Smith (@JoeSmithTB) March 31, 2021

This is good news for a team that has lost three in a row. Not that they're in any danger of failing this regular season but no one wants the final month of regular season hockey to be filled with losses.

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Alex Pietrangelo returned to action on Wednesday night. Get excited for the stretch run, fantasy owners.  

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The Canucks signed Thatcher Demko to a five-year extension carrying an AAV of $5M. This locks up their goaltending for the foreseeable future.

This is a gamble. Maybe a necessary one, because five more weeks of excellent play may have driven the price up even more and this GM wants a goalie for the core. The problem is a cap-strapped team just tied up one goaltender for $5M a season, and that goaltender, going into Wednesday night, has 62 career starts. That is barely a season’s worth of games. If Demko ends up not being as elite as he seems this year, well, that’s one more albatross contract to add to Jim Benning’s mantle. It could work out excellently for them, however, and provide the security necessary as this team keeps building towards a contender.

He may have priced himself out of being a great value in cap leagues, though.

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Cam York and Alex Newhook both signed their ELCs on Thursday, following guys like Kuznetsov and Boldy in recent days. Spencer Knight did as well. List of recent signings available on Cap Friendly.

It appears York is going right to the big club. This is… pretty big news. I wonder how much their recent slide plays into things. Which leads me to…

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Shayne Gostisbehere cleared waivers, which is probably to be expected given the size of his contract and the flat-cap situation that teams are enduring. I am still a firm believer in Ghost and he has arguably been the team's best defenceman season. I have no idea what the Flyers are doing and it doesn't seem like they know, either.

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Blake Wheeler was injured against Toronto and left the game, not returning. The Vancouver/Calgary game was also postponed for COVID protocols. A reminder as the calendar turns to April that we still have to deal with this.

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Buffalo finally did it was they snapped their losing streak dating back to late February with a 6-1 beatdown of the Philadelphia Flyers.

Sam Reinhart, Curtis Lazard, Steven Fogarty, and Casey Mittelstadt scored to give them a 4-1 lead going into the third period, where Brandon Montour scored short-handed goals 37 seconds apart to give them a 6-1 lead. Yes, it is the fastest an NHL defenceman has ever scored two goals on the penalty kill.

Linus Ullmark saved 31 shots in the win.

The Flyers. A couple beatdowns by the Rangers, an overtime win against Buffalo where you were down 3-0, and now this. Tough month.

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Joonas Donskoi had a first period hat trick against Arizona. I don't know what's going on this season but it seems we're having a lot of, let's say, condensed-TOI hat tricks. Maybe it's recency bias.

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The Leafs' top line, with Zach Hyman, scored a pair of quick early goals and it was all they needed for a 3-1 win over the Jets. Winnipeg got a power-play goal from Josh Morrissey.

I am excited to see Hyman back on the top line. He really gives them something other guys throughout the roster cannot.

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One thing that is important to do every fantasy year is to regularly go through who has been on a hot streak. Streaks generally drive trade interest, and timing when to trade or acquire players is as much an art as it is a science.

With that said, there are always players who got on short streaks that boost their value and that makes them trade-high candidates. It is important to be judicious with these types of players; did David Pastrnak put up 12 goals in 11 games? Well, you might want to hang on to him. Conversely, if Calle Jarnkrok were to do the same, well, you might want to get rid of him.

Here are some players who had a great month of March and thus make potential trade candidates for the stretch run. We will discuss that aspect as it relates to each player.

Gabriel Landeskog

With just 9 points in his first 16 games, Landeskog had a real tough start to the season. It wasn't something that really extended to his line mates, either, as Mikko Rantanen was a point-per-game player in that span while Nathan MacKinnon was over a point per game. When those types of things happen, I worry that a player is falling off. If all three guys struggle on an elite line, usually there's just some bad luck going on. If one player is struggling while the other two are succeeding, well, it usually doesn't bode well.

We can forget all that is it relates to Landeskog as he posted 8 goals and 21 points in 16 games through March. What is nice to see in that span is he's gone from just over two shots per game to just under three shots per game as well. He won't post this point rate all year, but Colorado has 23 games left and only four of them are against one of Minnesota or Vegas. This could be a nice stretch run for him, which is why I'm not sure I would trade him. Even just something like 16 points in 23 games with his peripherals will play very well in multi-cat leagues. Perhaps in points-only leagues this is a better discussion, depending what he can fetch in a trade at the moment.

Travis Zajac

Everything is relative. I just talked about how 9 points in 16 games for Landeskog was bad. Well, 12 points in 17 games for Zajac is great, when considering that level of production (58 points in 82 games) is something Zajac hasn't reached in a full campaign in over a decade.

I hate to burst the bubble here, but half of Zajac's points (6/12) have been secondary assists this month. We know that secondary assists are very random and that anything too high or too low will regress. A player like Zajac getting over half his points from secondary assists screams a regression candidate, and we will definitely see that over the final five weeks or so.

The question with Zajac is one of ice time. He was at 17:45 a game in the month of March, up from 14 minutes a game in February. If he can stay in the 17-18 range, maybe he has a shot at retaining fantasy value. More likely is that even that level of ice time won't play in the NHL's toughest division on a weak team, and because of a lack of peripherals, it's probably time to move on. At least test the waters to see if he can be traded to help fill a hole on your roster.

Evgeny Kuznetsov

He is a fascinating player. There was a lot of hype when he was drafted in the first round in 2010 and then he took a few years to make his way to the NHL. But it was worth the wait as he posted 77 points in his second full season.

Then there were the off-ice issues that cropped up, then the pandemic, etc etc. Despite being a point-per-game player from 2017-2019 and posting a respectable 19 goals and 52 points in 63 games last year, he was treated as an afterthought.

That train of thought seemed to pay off early in the season as he had a cold streak that extended into March, posting just 6 points in 14 games. This was while the team had all their COVID issues as well, remember. Well, he has 12 points in 11 games since, and is even taking over two shots per game. He is actually shooting, somewhat! A miracle.

As for the rest of the season, well, Washington sure seems to be chugging along. They still aren't drawing many penalties, and that is a concern. All the same, Kuznetsov is playing well at 5-on-5 and he's getting 17-18 minutes a night. That will work. I would still check the trade market to see what the interest is like.

Dominik Kubalik

It hasn't been a monster month of March for Kubalik, but here's the thing that stands out: Kubalik has been on the ice for just six goals in the month of March, and he has a point on all six goals (at 5-on-5). This is a big problem because he was only one the ice for 2.3 goals per 60 minutes at 5-on-5, while the team shot 8.2 percent with him on the ice. That shot percentage is quite within range, which means they're not generating a ton of offence with him on the ice.

The caveat here is that most of those games were played without both Dylan Strome and Kirby Dach in the lineup and those guys returning make a big difference. Kubalik has been largely kept away from players like Kane and DeBrincat, which didn't leave him much to play with. Now he has some other talented forwards that he might get some time with.

Ice time remains the issue. Even as he remains on a hot streak, he's still not cracking 16 minutes a night regularly. That low level of ice time is hard to work with in fantasy, which is another reason to maybe check the trade market and seeing what he could fetch.

Tyson Barrie

This isn't to say Barrie was bad before his hot streak in March. In fact, he was quite good: through his first 23 games, Barrie had 18 points, 9 PPPs, and 60 shots on goal. That will work quite nicely.

But in the month of March, he's been even better, posting 14 points in 13 games, landing a whopping 41 shots on target. The curious thing here is only 5 of his 14 points in this stretch came with the man advantage. PP conversion rates and PP opportunities have been cratering league-wide for a couple months now, so it makes sense, but it also concerns me a bit. Barrie needs the PPPs to pick up the slack on any 5-on-5 downturn.

Recommending trading Tyson Barrie? Not quite. I am not that insane. Any defenceman who is PP1 for the Edmonton Oilers stays locked on the roster for the season. But I will say that with PP opps declining across the league, the Oilers need to get more efficient, or else Barrie won't be close to a point-per-game blue liner. Oh, and there's no way he keeps up nearly 3.5 shots per game for another 5-6 weeks.