The Colorado Avalanche have been shut down for the second time this season. Games on Friday and Sunday against Los Angeles and Tuesday against St. Louis have been cancelled. This news will be disappointing for fantasy owners of players like Nathan MacKinnon (and to a lesser extent, owners of Kings and Blues players). However, the most important takeaway here is player health. Hopefully everyone on the Avalanche will be okay. Unfortunately, COVID is still hanging around.

Joonas Donskoi was the newest Avalanche player added to the COVID list on Friday, joining Philipp Grubauer and Bowen Byram. There may be more names to follow.

Meanwhile, the Vancouver Canucks have an official return-to-play plan, with their first game scheduled for Sunday against Toronto. It's going to be a hard slog with 19 games in 32 days, even more so with players that may be at various levels of fitness. Ex-Dobber alum Thomas Drance had an interesting comparison of the Flyers, Sabres, and Devils before and after their COVID shutdowns. There were more numbers than this in the article, but this is a start. This is certainly worth the read if you have the time.

Correlation doesn't always equate to causation, but it's hard to ignore the trend seen in teams before and after COVID outbreaks.

What does it mean for the Canucks?@ThomasDrance | @harmandayal2

📚 https://t.co/GmWu5L7aZx pic.twitter.com/EuTLxIVbTz

— The Athletic NHL (@TheAthleticNHL) April 16, 2021

At this point, any narrative that the Canucks will be well-rested in facing teams jockeying for playoff position seems like complete and utter BS. Add to this that the Canucks were dealing with a more highly contagious variant. After reading Drance's article, I certainly have a lot more understanding toward the Sabres and their 18-game winless streak. Even with this high volume of games, temper your expectations if you own any Canucks.

If you're waiting for Elias Pettersson to return, it may not happen this season. Canucks GM Jim Benning said on Friday there is no timeline for his return and brought up the possibility that may not return at all this season. Because of his injury, I pulled Pettersson from the Top 100 Roto Rankings.

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The Jets have signed Adam Lowry to a five-year contract extension worth $3.25 million per season. Lowry is scoring near his career high this season (20 points in 44 games), but he's an important part of the Jets' bottom 6. In fantasy leagues, he has reached at least 100 hits and 300 faceoffs won in each of his seven NHL seasons. Lowry's 132 hits and 309 faceoffs won both lead the Jets this season, so he has fantasy value in the right type of league.

From a salary cap perspective, this contract doesn't seem ideal given Lowry's role on the team. This is not to disparage a player like Lowry, and this contract isn't a back breaker in terms of amount. The five-year term seems a bit concerning, but not unlike what Lowry might receive if he were to become a free agent.

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Tyler Toffoli has been hot for much of the season, but he entered Friday's game with no points in his last four games and no goals in his past six games. He ended that slump on Friday with Montreal's only two goals, along with five shots and four hits. That gives Toffoli 21 goals in just 38 games, easily the best goals per game rate of his career. I've described before how Toffoli is benefitting from a high shooting percentage, but he is a goal scorer by trade with 20 goals in three of his last four seasons.

With a 28-save performance in the Habs' 2-1 win over Calgary, Jake Allen posted his third consecutive quality start this week. Carey who?

Eric Staal scored a goal in his first game as a Hab. Since then, he's been held without a point along with a minus-7 in his last six games. That's not exactly an improvement in value since he left Buffalo.

Elias Lindholm scored the Flames' lone goal, which extends his point streak to five games. He has three goals and seven points over that span.

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Even though Tuukka Rask returned earlier this week, the Bruins still need another one of their young goalies since Jaroslav Halak is on the COVID list. That means that Jeremy Swayman still has value in fantasy leagues, and he was able to deliver on Friday with a 25-save shutout of the Islanders, the first of his career. The 22-year-old Swayman is proving that he can handle the NHL game so far with quality starts in four of his five games, a 1.78 GAA, and .938 SV%. The Bruins' goaltending future seems to be in good hands with Swayman and Dan Vladar. Rask or Halak could leave as free agents (or Rask could retire as has been speculated), so Swayman's chances to be on the Bruins roster full-time next season appear to be very good.

Taylor Hall scored a grand total of two goals in 37 games as a Buffalo Sabre. In just three games as a Boston Bruin, Hall has scored another two goals, which have been over back-to-back games on Thursday and Friday. He's also posted a plus-3 and taken three shots in each of those three games. Hopefully you didn't drop Hall, as it appears that you will recoup some of your investment. It's easy to assume that the jump in value is from getting out of Buffalo, yet Hall was shooting a measly 2.3% with the Sabres. He was eventually going to score no matter where he plays, but he just might do it with more frequency in Beantown.

The Bruins' other trade deadline acquisitions have also been chipping in. Curtis Lazar scored an empty-net goal to ice the win for the Bruins. Mike Reilly assisted on David Pastrnak's goal, which gives Reilly assists in back-to-back games. With Matt Grzelcyk out of the lineup, Reilly has been receiving first-unit power-play minutes, even with Charlie McAvoy in the lineup. Dating back to his time on Ottawa, Reilly has 10 points (all assists) over his last 12 games. And he's just 13 percent owned in Yahoo leagues.

Pastrnak broke a seven-game goalless drought with his goal. Yes, that's been his longest slump of the season.

Josh Bailey missed this game with an undisclosed injury, meaning his consecutive games streak ended at 196 games.

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Nick Bonino scored a goal and added an assist to lead the Wild to a 3-2 win over the Sharks. Bonino now has five points over his last two games, after he scored a goal with two assists on Wednesday.

Bonino has been on a line with Zach Parise, who has also been hot recently with goals in three of his past four games and points in four of his past five games. Prior to that, Parise had not scored a goal in over a month. I decided at that point that I wasn't going to wait for him to come around.

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The Vegas/Anaheim game probably went exactly as you would have predicted. Vegas dominated the play, scored a few goals, and John Gibson made a million saves. Okay, I'm exaggerating the number of saves, but I'm willing to bet 47 saves seems like a lot to you. Even though Gibson allowed four goals, you were okay if your league counts a category with the word "save" in it, like "save percentage" or simply "saves." That's as much as you can expect if you own Gibson, because the wins sure aren't there (eight wins in 29 games). No goalie has as many games with as few wins as Gibson, although Thomas Greiss has played one fewer game and has only five wins.

At the other end, Robin Lehner had a relatively easy 16-save shutout. Those who drafted him early probably assumed that his first shutout wouldn't have been in mid-April, but this is only his 13^th game. He's at the other end of the scale compared to Gibson when it comes to wins and losses (10-1-2), and he's posted quality starts in seven of his last eight games. Since March 19, Lehner has a 1.62 GAA and .937 SV% in eight games. He's been solid, but the problem is that we haven't seen enough of him because of injuries and the play of Marc-Andre Fleury.

With a goal and an assist on Friday, Chandler Stephenson has six points over his last five games. And yes, he's on the Max Pacioretty – Mark Stone line. He's worth owning while he's on that line, which has been the case for two-thirds of the season minutes-wise.

Speaking of Stone, he now has multiple points in three consecutive games after recording two assists on Friday.

Tomas Nosek has also been hot for over a month, scoring 16 points (7 G, 9 A) over his last 19 games. That's pretty good for a player who is consistently in the bottom-6 and shows how deep a team Vegas is. But he missed Friday's game due to an undisclosed issue.

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For more fantasy hockey discussion, or to reach out to me, you can follow me on Twitter @Ian_Gooding