We had the Hall of Fame inductions on Monday night, which means a light NHL slate. With congratulations to all the other inductees, it's Jarome Iginla whom I want to talk about.

It does suck to see him retire without a Stanley Cup, but I often wonder about his impact on hockey in general. I very much understand that his legacy in hockey is valuable in many important ways, but the one I want to focus on is the time he existed, particularly the second half of his career.

After his two Richard trophies, we would be remiss to not focus on what he did after the 2005 lockout. Remember that the Oilers made the Cup Final in 2006, and then disappeared until the McDavid draft. The Canucks had a lot of good years in the late aughts/early 2010s, but Toronto didn't, and Ottawa wasn't much more than a playoff threat. The Canadiens also had some good playoff runs, but other than them and a few Vancouver seasons, it was a desert of greatness in Canada. Winnipeg was just arriving, so it was cheer for one of Montreal/Vancouver every couple years, or watch your teams not succeed.

Iginla gave us a reprieve from the failures of our favourite teams. Even in the years when Calgary wasn't great, he was, and that made them worth watching. Even on nights he wasn't scoring, he was noticeable on the ice, the sign of a true impact player. In those lean years up here when most of our teams were flailing, Iginla made it fun to watch hockey. That is worth its weight in gold, something he's also familiar with.

That, along with his assist to Sidney Crosby in the 2010 Gold Medal Final, is how I'll remember him the most. Again, I understand he means a lot to a lot of people in different ways, and I respect that. I just think it was important for someone to keep Canadians interested in at least one Canadian team at a time when most of them were varying levels of bad. So, congratulations on a wonderful career, and thank you.

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A big showcase for Logan O'Connor:

#Avs lines today:

Landeskog-Rantanen-O'Connor
Nichushkin-Kadri-Burakovsky
Jost-Newhook-Aube-Kubel
Helm-Megna-Sherwood

D: MacDermid, Murray, Makar, Toews, JJ, EJ

No Bowen Byram or J.T. Compher. No Girard, but he's been taking maintenance days. Francouz skated before practice.

— Peter Baugh (@Peter_Baugh) November 15, 2021

Nathan MacKinnon is out a couple more weeks. Only two games for the Avs this week, but they're on the off days of Wednesday/Friday, and they're against Seattle and Vancouver. Next week, four games that include Ottawa, Anaheim, and Dallas. It would depend on your league, but I just picked him up for depth in a multi-cat cap league.

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Not for nothing, but Nils Hoglander is off to a good start this year. I will write about him in depth in the near future.

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I guess it's starting to get bad enough:

The NHL will postpone games vs. New Jersey Tuesday along with Thursday vs. Nashville and Rangers here in Ottawa Saturday because of the COVID-19 outbreak with 10 players in protocol. The club has cancelled its flight to New Jersey. #Sens

— Bruce Garrioch (@SunGarrioch) November 15, 2021

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Just as the Avalanche were getting healthy, MacKinnon gets hurt, and now this:

J.T. Compher will be out approximately a month, per Jared Bednar. Bowen Byram is in protocol. He won't skate until he feels better.

— Peter Baugh (@Peter_Baugh) November 15, 2021

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Columbus overcame a late third-period deficit to turn what could have been a 3-2 loss into a 5-3 win, thanks to Yegor Chinakhov and Zach Werenski. The rookie and the defenceman scored three minutes apart just two minutes after Lucas Raymond gave Detroit a 3-2 lead, and Alexandre Texier scored a late empty netter to wrap it up.

Werenski had a goal, was plus-2, had a hit, three bocks, three shots, and a takeaway. Not a bad fantasy performance.

Both Raymond and Dylan Larkin had a goal and an assist, as that top line just keeps rolling for the Red Wings.

Chinakhov added an assist to go with his game-tying goal, including four shots. He still skated just 13 minutes, though, so don't get too excited just yet.

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Victor Hedman had a pair of assists and Brayden Point had one goal and one helper in Tampa's 4-1 win over the New York Islanders. For Hedman, that is now 13 points in 14 games, and remember that the team may get Nikita Kucherov back around Christmas. This may just be his production this year.

Hedman also had a plus-2 rating, three shots, two blocks, two PIMs, and three hits. Just a fantasy beast.

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To piggyback on Tom Collins and his Top-10 column from yesterday discussing players with rough starts who'll be in tough for a rebound, the opposite: rough starts that do have signs of a turnaround.

This will serve two functions: players that are buy-low targets in trades and also players to search for on waiver wires/not give up on. Even elite players can go cold for a month: David Pastrnak had 10 points in 16 games mid March-April last year. That stretch was bookended by a 16 points-in-15 games stretch and a 22-points-in-17 games stretch. The key for Pasta is he was still skating 20 minutes a night and landing over 3.5 shots per game. The offence was going to rebound, it was about looking for some key indicators.

Let's look for a few of those players for this season. We will exclude players that have been or are injured, like Nathan MacKinnon or Nikita Kucherov. That is a little too easy.

Alex Pietrangelo

The window here is probably closed, depending on the league and owners. He had one point through the month of October but has eight points in seven games since. Vegas is finally getting healthy so if the Pietrangelo owner has hung on this long, it's likely they're going to keep holding. All the same, it's worth checking out, and this also applies to Petro owners who think they may want to get rid of him while he's riding high.

He had 19 blocks and 25 shots through the teams first eight games, skating over 26 minutes a night. That level of shot blocking on defence, combined with the shots and ice time on offence, meant the turn around was always coming. Compounding the problem was all of Vegas's injury problems. While Max Pacioretty and William Karlsson are still missing, the latter should be back by Christmas and the former is progressing in rehab. They're getting healthy, and Pietrangelo is starting to reap the rewards.

It is worth noting that Vegas's offence is worse this year with all the injuries. At the same time, the team is generating roughly the same amount of scoring chances that St. Louis did in Petro's last year with the Blues, and he had 52 points in 70 games with them. Even with his slow start, Pietrangelo is still a 60-point threat this year, especially when looking at how weak most of the West is.

Tonight, Vegas is at home to Carolina, the most penalized team in hockey. After that, the next 10 games include Columbus, Detroit, Anaheim, Arizona, and Dallas. Look for Pietrangelo to keep the production going, if not at quite a point-per-game pace, for the near-future. After that, guys like Karlsson and Pacioretty will be much closer to being back in the lineup, and then we're loaded for a second-half run.

Nikolaj Ehlers

Following a season where he was nearly a point-per-game last year, Ehlers sits with just 10 points in 14 games this year. Even worse are the three goals, putting him on pace for his lowest total since his rookie year, and that includes the 21 goals in 47 games from last season. There are a lot of reasons for optimism, though, and he's at the top of my buy-low list. Or, more accurately, buy for as low as possible.

At all strengths, Ehlers is second in shot rate on the season among all forwards. Higher than Matthews, higher than Ovechkin, and higher than Tarasenko. His problem is he's shooting 5.9%, a career-low, and the lowest of anyone in the top-15 by shot rate. One explanation would be that he's shooting from low-danger spots, but the fact is he's averaging 11.5 individual scoring chances per 60 minutes. He has never had a single season above 10.0 per 60 minutes. Not only is he shooting more, his quality-of-shot appears to be higher than ever. And yet, the shooting percentage.

More than the shooting is the ice time. We, as Ehlers fans, have long complained about his ice time. Well, he's earning nearly 19 minutes a night, a rate that has continued even as injured players returned to the lineup. The coaching staff has finally seen the light.

The extra ice time, the PP minutes with Scheifele/Wheeler, and the shot rate are all excellent signs here. He is just getting unlucky through his individual points percentage and his shooting percentage. He has legitimate top-25 upside for the balance of the season. Start buying.

Martin Necas

This is cheating a bit because Necas has been going through some injuries but I also think it's an interesting case in its simplicity. When looking through his stats, other than a small downturn in hits, the loss in fantasy value is coming from assists. The question is asking why those assists have dried up.

Long story short, he's just missing secondary assists. That's it. He has none on the season. We know they can be random for forwards, and there wasn't anything last year that spoke to a massive regression coming. Quite simply, he accumulated a point on at least 75% of the goals Carolina scored with him on the ice for his career, dating back to his seven-game debut in 2019. He is sitting at 46.2% this season. The reality is a normal number would have him with 60% more assists, and a lucky streak would see him with double the assists. If he has 8 points in 11 games, a 60-point pace, I'm not sure people are worried about his start.

When this starts to turn, it'll turn big for Necas. The team is scoring 4.3 goals/60 minutes with him on the ice this year, having never cracked 3.6 before. The power-play production is going to turn around as well and I think we can see Necas post at least 50 points over the balance of the season, even with secondary PP minutes. It would be nice to see him more ice time overall, though, so that's something to monitor. He could be cheap in a trade and it's worth finding out just how much, exactly.

Dominik Kubalik

I suppose there's always a chance Kubalik really does go minus-40 or thereabouts this year. Whether that happens, well, the team should improve on the .890 SV% it has when he's on the ice. It's a career-low, but it is possible to stay there; both Philadelphia and San Jose finished around that rate or worse last year. The plus-minus could very much maintain its rate, it would just be a huge hole reserved for only a few players each season.

If the goaltending can improve on .890, then there's upside to come. That obviously doubles for people in leagues without plus/minus. He is mired in a brutal slump right now, being goalless in nine games. But he's still skating 16:38 a night and is even getting PP1 time once in a while. We know he is a great goal scorer and it's not likely he shoots 8% the rest of the season. Considering the quality of his team, he may just be on the waiver wire right now. This is a guy who can score 25 goals over the balance of the season.

Matt Grzelcyk

The Bruins defenceman has two points on the season, and they came in the same game last week. He has maintained a good shot rate though, coming in at 2.5 per game. Though he doesn't hit much, we never expected him to, and he's blocking 1.5 shots per night as well. The problem is he paced over 40 points last year and is on pace for about 13 this year.

A couple unlucky notes. First, the team is goalless with him on the ice on the power play. He has lost a lot of PP time thanks to Charlie McAvoy's emergence, but he's at 1:17 a night, and that's enough to threaten 10 PPPs in a full season. That is not a lot in general, but for depth fantasy defenceman who can threaten 40 points as a result, it is. Not having a PPP on the year is a problem.

Second, his shooting percentage. It is zero percent, and that's despite 15 scoring chances on the year at 5-on-5, having had just 14 last year in 37 contests. The double whammy of no PP production, and no goals, makes his season look awful.

Of course, the team will start scoring with him on the PP. That is doubly true now that Taylor Hall has been bumped down to PP2. If that PP starts scoring, and he starts scoring, Grzelcyk's rates will turn around, and he can be a top-30 defenceman the rest of the way.