If it wasn't the COVID pause that has really stalled out their season, it could be the injuries that have started to pile up for the Stars that may have done them in. There is hope on the horizon for some of their key players, though:

The Stars are planning for Tyler Seguin, Ben Bishop and Alexander Radulov to be on the ice with the taxi squad Saturday.

— Matthew DeFranks (@MDeFranks) April 8, 2021

That these guys are skating is a good sign, just don't expect them back in the lineup ASAP.

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We have some brand new Flames lines:

#Flames lines and pairings at practice:

Gaudreau-Lindholm-Tkachuk
Mangiapane-Monahan-Dube
Lucic-Backlund-Nordstrom
Bennett-Ryan-Ritchie
Leivo

Giordano-Tanev
Hanifin-Andersson
Valimaki-Stone
Kylington-Nesterov

Markstrom
Rittich
Domingue pic.twitter.com/wW5mfWdoyv

— Derek Wills (@Fan960Wills) April 8, 2021

I am eminently excited to see Gaudreau play alongside Tkachuk. This has been two bad years in a row for Gaudreau, and it would be nice to see a turnaround from him over the last month of the season.

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News out of Vancouver that isn’t COVID-related:

3 years. $3.25 mil aav for Tanner Pearson and the Canucks.

— Darren Dreger (@DarrenDreger) April 8, 2021

This seems like a standard Canucks contract. Too much money and term for a replaceable player. Not that Pearson is bad, but there’s a flat cap and Pettersson/Hughes to sign. They also have some good prospects coming. Anyway, as long as he gets top-6 minutes he could have fantasy value, though at this point we’re probably looking at 2021-22.

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For details on the Brett Connolly trade from yesterday, click here.

One thing I didn't mention there because it's not really fantasy relevant is how steep a price that is to get rid of Connolly. Effectively, both Carlsson and Wallmark are borderline NHLers; bodies for depth. They are contracts to make the contract swap work. The Blackhawks basically got Borgstrom and Stillman for the price of adding $3.5M to the cap in each of the next two seasons. This could be a real good deadline for teams out of the playoffs with cap space.  

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New Jersey laid a beatdown on the Sabres the day following the trade of Zajac and Palmieri by a 6-3 score. This was a game where it was as lopsided as the score would indicate, though a couple late goals made the score more lopsided than it was for basically 58 minutes.

Give Jack Hughes 1-2, Janne Kuokkanen the same, and a couple goals for Pavel Zacha. Ty Smith had two assists and three shots in this one, playing over 21 minutes. He won't get the Calder talk of Robertson or Kaprizov, but he's up to 21 points in 38 games on a very bad team. That is an outstanding season so far.

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The depth in Tampa had a monster game against Columbus, as Blake Coleman and Barclay Goodrow each had a goal and two assists while Yanni Gourde had four helpers in the 6-4 win. That line has been quiet at times this year, but this is a nice reminder of the depth the team has when playoffs roll around.

Ryan McDonagh had a pair of goals and six shots in his best offensive game of the season.

It should be noted the team loaded the top line with Palat-Point-Stamkos but Stamkos left the game late in some discomfort. That isn't a good thing for a guy with his recent history.

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Alex Nedeljkovic saved 24 shots for his third shutout of the season in Carolina's 3-0 win over Florida. Vincent Trocheck had a goal and an assist to go with five shots and a hit, keeping him well over a point per game this year.

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Charlie McAvoy was out once again for Boston though they took a 4-2 win behind another solid performance in goal from Jeremy Swayman. He stopped 31 of 33 in the win.

Jeremy Lauzon has now played over 24 minutes in each game that McAvoy has missed, and scored in this one to boot. Both Brad Marchand and Craig Smith had 1-1 in this game.

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Sometimes, I still marvel at what Brady Tkachuk is able to do in the fantasy game. Realistically, it hasn't been a great season for him production-wise. His goal rate is in line with his previous two seasons while his assists are a bit lower than normal. But it's everything else that is incredible. Putting up over four shots and four hits per game? What??? It is almost beyond comprehension.

I wonder about his future fantasy value. I am not sure he's a guy that ever posts huge goal totals. He does an excellent job getting to the net and creating both havoc and volume, but he's not exactly a sniper: HockeyViz's estimated shooting talent for Tkachuk is 14 percent below average. That is real, real bad. His brother Matthew is around three percent below average while Tkachuk's closest on-ice comparable (not in stature, of course), Brendan Gallagher, is also three percent lower than average. Those guys are known for not scoring to their expected goal levels, and Brady's is considerably worse than theirs.

That is what makes the younger Tkachuk such an interesting case. His peripherals are so far off the charts that he can probably score 25 goals and 50 points and be a top-10 fantasy skater. In fact, in standard Yahoo! leagues that count plus/minus and face-off wins, Tkachuk is a top-10 skater despite his 82-game paces being down a bit points-wise from last year.  

But what about the future? I would like to believe he won't sit at 14 percent worse than average by individual finishing skill, and one reason I say that is he hasn't really had an elite centre to play with. The closest he's come is Matt Duchene and they barely spent any time together before Duchene was traded a couple seasons ago. I don't doubt that his finishing can improve with a better centre – and it may just be Josh Norris, too! – but it's one of those things I'd need to see before I believe it. Also, the degree is necessary to consider; can he get to 40 goals? Or would a great centre only take him from 25 to 30?

Regardless of where he lands, Tkachuk has already established himself as a perennial top-10 skater in multi-cat leagues. Or, at least, as long as his shot and hit rates stay where they are, he'll be a perennial top-10 skater. The question is just how much upside he can have from year to year. I think there's a lot more to come, but the team around him needs to be built up as well.

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Looking at Tkachuk's stats got me looking through some other players' stats from the season. Here is a fun one: out of all forwards with at least 400 minutes played, Patrik Laine is last – last! – by individual expected goals per 60 minutes at 5-on-5. That is terrifyingly bad.

Not that Laine was ever someone to put up high ixG numbers – in fact, he's notorious for having such good finishing skills that he's been able to get by with mediocre ixG numbers for his career. But there's a difference between "around the middle of the league" and "literally dead last in hockey". This year has been the latter, and it's killed his fantasy value.

Laine's goal-scoring rate per game in Columbus has been half what it was in Winnipeg. His shot rate is non-existent. He has been benched and had his ice time Yo-Yo'd around. I feel comfortable saying this year is going to be a write-off for him.

The question is why things were so bad in Columbus. Not that we expected them to be a great offensive team, but this is something else entirely. Laine was one of the greatest goal scorers in hockey for four years and then the Jackets just nuked his value completely.

I guess what I'm asking is if Laine can turn things around in that environment? This isn't a team concerned with scoring goals at any level and I don't see any centres on the way that will be able to replicate what guys like Mark Scheifele, Kevin Hayes, and Paul Stastny were able to do. Can Laine get back to 40 goals playing with Kevin Stenlund? Or Riley Nash? I like Jack Roslovic and Max Domi both, but are they good enough to get Laine back to where he was even two years ago? Is the power play going to ever be good again? All questions we don't have the answers to and that is worrisome for a guy that has been a borderline first-round pick in fantasy as recently as a couple seasons ago.

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Here is something I didn't realize: David Krejci doesn't have a single even-strength goal this year. He has just two goals on the season and both came with the man advantage. He has put up a pile of assists (a career-high per game, in fact) but hasn't been able to score this year.

Not that Krejci has ever been a big goal scorer, having never scored more than 23 in a season, but I haven't been really paying attention to his goals, just his production, and his production has been good.

This probably couldn't come at a worse time for Krejci; the guy is UFA at the end of the year. Definitely not the season you want to shoot a career-low in shooting percentage, but he's obviously still a valuable playmaker.

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On the topic of rates this year: Joe Pavelski's shot rate has completely disappeared. Not that it's a huge shock that an aging player is shooting less, but he has three seasons with over 10 shots per 60 minutes and this season he's below 6.0. It has been a steady decline in shot rate for years now which, again, is not a surprise for a player of his age.

But it is a concern when we think of fantasy value moving forward. His shooting percentage is over 18 percent and while he has been able to put up high shooting percentages before, I don't rely on them year after year. The combination of high shooting percentage and declining shot rate make it pretty easy for me to ignore Joe Pavelski heading into the 2021-22 season. I guess his ADP will matter, and it's not like I think he's useless, I just don't expect him to repeat this season again next year.

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On the topic of declining shot rates: Chris Kreider has the lowest 5-on-5 shot rate of his career, or at least since his rookie year when he played 23 games. His incredibly high shooting percentage (over 22 percent) is a big reason why he's been able to retain his fantasy value, even as his shots and assist rates have cratered.

This is one of those cases where I'm not sure it's entirely related to Kreider. We have talked extensively about how Mika Zibanejad struggled through the first six weeks of the season and we can't forget just how bad this defence was early in the year (remember pairing Jack Johnson and Tony DeAngelo together?!). Things have righted themselves and there's still another month left. I want to see how Kreider finishes up the year, because I don't think the downturn in some of his metrics are really all his fault. The final month of the season could show us that.