The Midseason Fantasy Hockey Guide was released on Friday (January 14). You can buy it here and download it right away. This will still be helpful until the All-Star break this coming weekend.

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I spoke in a recent Ramblings about how well Viktor Arvidsson was doing, and alluded to the fact that from an offensive standpoint his linemates were beneath him. They work well together in terms of each bringing something different to the table – Philip Danault an elite checking forward, Trevor Moore a hardworking guy with hustle, and Arvidsson with underrated hands and smarts. But I'm starting to wonder if I've undersold Moore. With two goals on Sunday, Moore actually has 16 points in his last 14 games. That's easily the hottest run of his NHL career. He was a point-per-game player in college and in his third and final AHL season he was hovering around that mark as well. At 169 career NHL games, his Breakout Threshold is coming in late March. So a small bump in his production in the second half was to be expected. But this? Sometimes, true chemistry can really bring the most out of a player, even without a superstar as part of the trio.

If Moore can somehow reach 50 points this year, then he'll punch his ticket maintaining his spot on this line as a top-sixer next season. By the time the high-end prospects find their way on this team, Moore will be an unrestricted free agent (summer of 2023). His next team would sign him based on next year's numbers, and so he could wind up seeing quite a bit of dough coming his way. How well he sustains this chemistry on that line – and it sure looks as if it's heading that way – will determine his deployment next season. I'm obviously not saying he's a point-per-game player, I'm just saying that with 36 games left he's on pace to finish with 41 points and I think he gets at least close to 50 (say 47?). That means another 24 points in those 36 contests.

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Sidney Crosby needed a few games after his injury to find his mojo. After just two points in his first seven games, he has 36 in his last 26 including two on Sunday. The 34-year-old is not on a normal player's career timeline. When your normal star may start his decline at 32, with Crosby you can add a good five years to that. Evgeni Malkin and Alex Ovechkin have this same rule of thumb. And Connor McDavid will have it, too.

Since his five-point game on January 2, Bryan Rust has 21 points in 11 games so far in 2022. Ten (!) of those points have come on the power play, so Malkin's return to action has obviously impacted this even though the two aren't ES linemates.

Evan Rodrigues may be out of the offensive mix, but he's finding a way to add value in other ways. He had an impressive 10 Hits on Sunday.

Kasperi Kapanen's ice time has gone from 18:07 to 15:56 to 13:31, 11:01 and then a season-low 8:03 on Sunday as he tumbles further and further into Mike Sullivan's doghouse.

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LAK prospect defenseman Jacob Moverare is one to watch. He's in the lineup right now with Mikey Anderson hurt, but he's the next guy to join the big club. Moverare, 23, doesn't have huge upside in terms of offense, but he's a big guy who will rack up the BLKS. He was paired alongside Drew Doughty on Sunday and picked up an assist two Hits and three BLKS.

Two games after his first career NHL goal and Quinton Byfield was back down to 11 minutes of ice time. He took a couple of penalties on Sunday and struggled at the faceoff circle. Since the Kings are scratching the likes of Rasmus Kupari and Carl Grundstrom to keep Byfield in the lineup, I suspect his little tryout won't last for much longer. I still believe in Byfield's high upside, but as I said from the start it will take time. He is extremely young for a pro and his 6-5 frame will take him several years (not unlike Jesse Puljujarvi). When he arrives, he will dominate.

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Igor Shesterkin stole another one Sunday, stopping 40 of 42 to get a one-goal win. In 2022 he's been almost perfect – seven of his eight games have been Quality Starts. Here he is in 2022 so far:

7-1-0, 1.86 GAA, 0.947 SV%, +10.098 GSAA and 7 QS.

With his three-point effort on Sunday, Mika Zibanejad has 26 points in his last 18 games. He had 21 in 28 before that, giving fantasy owners his usual slow start.

K'Andre Miller has been so reliable defensively that it has allowed Jacob Trouba to open things up again. And now I'm kind of kicking myself for trading him away last year for a song in my dynasty. Still not doing much on the power play, he nonetheless has 21 ES points and should finish the year with close to 45. That would be the second highest of his career. Trouba has 22 points in his last 34 games and eight in his last seven.

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With his two-point effort on Sunday, Jared McCann now has 11 in his last 13 and has extended his lead as Seattle's top scorer. As I had projected here and in the Fantasy Guide. He wasn't treated like the top offensive player initially – also no surprise (though I have no idea why NHL coaches don't listen to me!), but he's starting to now. His TOI in the third quarter is up over a full minute per game more than in his first quarter of the season.

Ron Francis. What a terrible GM. Terrible expansion draft, and then followed that up with a terrible signing in Philipp Grubauer. And now Seattle is stuck being forced to keep playing this guy for the next five years after this one, thanks to that $5.9M cap hit. Grubauer can be good when he's behind a good team. But he won't steal games for a bad team and is completely exposed on this one. The goalie signing doesn't follow the same strategy as their drafting, which was clearly analytics-based. And while I believe you should absolutely put a team together leaning heavily on analytics, I don't believe you should draft that way. You draft the most valuable players. The biggest assets. Then you trade those assets for the analytics darlings.

Seattle fans are going to have it rough for more than a few years. For a Columbus-like length of time. Because it will take ownership five years to realize how big a hole this team started in, and that Francis won't be the person to help them climb out of it. And then you have to give the new GM a good three or four years to fix things!

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A small thing, but something I'm keeping an eye on because I own him in one dynasty – Jonathan Dahlen has points in three straight games now. He has fived 12 SOG in that span and that's his highest three-game shot total in his short NHL career (he also had 12 SOG in three games in late October – when he was on fire).

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My rule of thumb for star players when they are coming off of missing an entire season due to injury is to give them 25 games when they return. Those 25 games are 100% a Mulligan. I ignore what happens there completely. That number isn't chiseled in stone, as some players obviously get rolling at Game 17 while others may take 40 games. In the case of Tyler Seguin, it was 35. He had 13 points in those 35 games and if you picked him up on the cheap at that point – well done. He had three more points on Sunday and has nine in his last seven.

The domino effect here is that his linemates Jamie Benn and Denis Gurianov will also get going. Gurianov has 10 in his last 11, while Benn had a two-point game on Sunday to snap an 11-game pointless drought.

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Linus Ullmark got the hook after giving up four goals on 15 shots. Jeremy Swayman got into his first NHL action since Tuukka Rask was signed, but he only did marginally better (two goals on 14 shots faced). Swayman has actually struggled a little in the AHL in his four games there, obviously not taking the undeserved demotion very well. He's still Boston's future though, it's just tough to pin down which year he'll start being a consistent help to fantasy owners given Ullmark's contract.

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With three points in a losing effort Sunday, Artturi Lehkonen has 10 in his last 11 games and 18 in his last 30. This is easily the best scoring pace of his career. Well past his BT, he's obviously the exception to the BT strategy. But he's now worked his way up to third in team scoring despite zilch for PP time and the only player in Montreal's Top 7 scorers to not see at least 17 minutes per game (he's at 14:29). The 26-year-old is an RFA in the summer and there is some trade interest out there to acquire him. A breakout season and a fresh start on a new team could make him a nice stash if one has the room for him on their fantasy squad. He's been getting upwards of 18 or 19 minutes lately.

Montreal's two big waiver wire pickups, Rem Pitlick and Kale Clague, are a combined minus-10 over the last two games.

Carey Price says that he will know within two weeks whether or not he will be back this season, and when.

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#CBJ set a new franchise record tonight with the fastest to score 4 goals to open a game in club history. The Blue Jackets recorded 4 in the 1st 13:14 of the contest in Montreal, surpassing the previous record of 4 in the 1st 14:10 vs. Anaheim on Oct. 28, 2016.

— CBJ Public Relations (@BlueJacketsPR) January 31, 2022

Gustav Nyquist has 13 points in 13 games thanks to a pair of assists Sunday.

Despite the six-goal outburst by Columbus, Oliver Bjorkstrand wasn't in on any of them. Ditto for Adam Boqvist. Bjorkstrand has just five points in his last 14 games. Boqvist pointless in six.

Jake Bean suffered a lower-body injury and left the game after just under seven minutes of ice time. No word on severity.

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Fiala is really clicking with Boldy. That's a pairing to watch going forward. The two would boost each other's totals

— Dobber (@DobberHockey) January 31, 2022

Matt Boldy has played nine NHL games and Matt Boldy has nine NHL points. Not a bad start. And Kevin Fiala has points in 11 straight.

Marco Rossi will eventually take Ryan Hartman's spot as top-line center and play with Kirill Kaprizov. But in the meantime (i.e. I think next season) he will slot in between Fiala and Boldy. And that would be quite the force. Imagine having Zuccarello-Kaprizov followed by Boldy – Rossi – Fiala. This is solid, with the Joel Eriksson Ek line as one of the best third lines in hockey. Even if Kaapo Kahkonen ends up being just an average NHL starting goaltender – he's going to pile up the W's with that lot in front of him. If you want a good long-term goalie investment, he should help you out by 2023-24.

And no, Yaroslav Askarov is not the guy in 2023-24. He's still five years away. Just like I was telling you regarding Spencer Knight last year.

The more Kahkonen plays, the more he's showing that he'll be the guy. Cam Talbot will start more than half the games down the stretch and he'll be the starter in the playoffs. But Talbot will be on a short leash and I think that, much like Ville Husso in St. Louis, we could see a permanent goaltending change early in the first round with the Wild. In 16 games, Kahkonen has stopped over five goals above what the average NHL goalie would have stopped (based on shot location, game situation, and shooter quality).

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Casey Mittelstadt played just under five minutes of ice time and then left the game – another game – with an undisclosed injury. His third injury of the year and that's quite worrisome. He had surgery on a UBI back in early December and had only recently returned.

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This has snuck up on some thanks to his missing time this year, but Valeri Nichushkin is breaking out. And as a 6-4 forward, this is his BT season (i.e. will play 400 career games). While I do question his durability, I do not question his current production rate. He's that good, we just gave up on him because he wasn't a superstar within three years. Two more points Sunday give him six in five games, and 23 in 27 on the season. And he's going to fly at a higher production rate right now, as he is on the top line while Nathan MacKinnon is out.

Because Nichushkin moves up to the first line, Alex Newhook moves up to the Nazem Kadri line.

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Follow me on Twitter for details and the official 'launch' announcement of the new Goalie Post! Two of my three programmers got COVID, so not much was done last week. Sigh. Always something, am I right? But look for it soon. The programmers want to turn their attention to the commenting section on DobberHockey. After that will be work on the Dobbernomics relaunch.

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See you next Monday.