It's February, so that means it's time for Filip Forsberg to score a few extra goals. It seems as though every year he finds a little bit extra for "Filbruary". Maybe a good guy to sell-high on at your league's trade deadline in a month, but in the short-term, a good guy to have in your lineup. He scored two last night, and added five shots and four hits just for good measure.

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It sounds like we may get the World Juniors in August this year. It would be a great time to hold it as far as the fans are concerned, as August is an especially dead month when it comes to content. Time to stock up your minors system with WJC players again!

Hopefully they can find a way to get the women's side running as well, they really have gotten the short end of the stick for too long.

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The Brian Flores class action lawsuit against three NFL teams is not immediately hockey related, but it should be and it will be very soon. Flores is claiming that he has been discriminated against in the hiring process (and it sounds like he has receipts), in addition to noting that he was offered incentives for every loss while coaching the Dolphins. This is not just an NFL issue, it goes all the way to the top in all of the major sports, and it would not surprise me to see this become the call to action that actually starts a ripple of change through these leagues.

Greater diversity in coaching, management, and even on the playing surfaces is god news for the sport. The main hockey ripple I would like to see is that the same 40 coaches stop getting rotated for the head coaching jobs in the NHL, and instead we bring in some new people who can bring some innovation towards winning games.

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Ryan Pulock returns for the Isles after missing a few extra weeks on top of the initial six weeks estimated for his broken ankle. This is great News for the Isles goalies, but it shouldn't really affect the rest of the team much in terms of fantasy production. Noah Dobson shouldn't have to look over his shoulder either, as he has entrenched himself as the go-to offensive defenceman on the team. Pulock saw third pairing minutes in his return, so he is getting eased back in.

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After potting six points on Monday, Mason Marchment follows it up with another stat stuffing night, dropping the gloves with Ryan Strome and adding another minor, plus two shots and two hits. He's averaging over two shots and two hits per game despite only 13 minutes of ice time per game. That third line is clicking, and there’s going to be some consistent offence as they beat up on teams who don’t have the depth to defend against this Florida team that can roll these three potent lines.

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Having gone plus-one in his last four games, Jakob Chychrun is no longer on pace to set the NHL record for the lowest plus-minus rating. That's not to say it can't happen, but it does seem that the Coyotes have become a little bit more comfortable with who they are on the ice, and they're less of a sieve defensively than they were at the start of the year.

Chychrun's lowest six ice-times this season have all come in the last six games though, which tells me either he's still not 100% after returning from his injury, or that he's lost a bit of the coaching staff's trust. Neither bodes well for his production in the short term, and in any leagues where less than ~75 players are kept, he's droppable at this point.

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Goalies continue to be voodoo.

Vitek Vanecek left a minute into the Caps game with an injury. Looks like he might have taken a knock to the noggin, so we'll see if he misses any time.

Jack Campbell got starts on back to back nights after he was pulled early on Monday. He rebounded well with only one goal against in the win, giving the Leafs the sweep of the set.

If a goalie gets pulled early in the first half of a back-to-back, giving the net to the same guy seems to be the usual way coaches go in deciding who starts the second game. Really, the replacement goalie ends up with the higher workload, so it makes sense to go back to goalie A rather than overworking goalie B in consecutive nights. Something to keep in your back pocket for projecting future starters.

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We had a reader ask last week about teams and how they deploy their players with the goalie pulled, wondering if there was an advantage to knowing who these players were as they were maybe more likely to get an extra point at the end of the game. My initial reply to the reader was this:

"I think it is that it’s an interesting tidbit to look into, though I don’t know how actionable it would be considering a team may only see time with their goalie pulled every few games, and then the points amassed in those situations are an even smaller sample. It could give you a hint or two towards some players maybe next in line for ice time/lineup bumps, but it’s something I might use more as a tiebreaker between players rather than a key deciding factor."

To further expand on that, during my research I noted that some teams had gone more than a month without seeing time with the extra skater at the end of the game, so it's really not something that we wanting to base decisions off of. These players are also more likely to get a minus at the end of the game than they are to get a point, so if your league counts plus-minus, then the whole idea of it being an advantage kind of flies out the window.

That being said, I still think it's an interesting angle, so I wanted to dive into it. Here are my notes on each team's most recent deployment when they have the goalie pulled. This took some digging, as it isn't outlined anywhere I could find, but the Frozentools reports and boxscores made it fairly straightforward to find.

Now, some of these go back a month, and have different players in-and-out of the lineup, so take these with a grain of salt when looking at them in comparison to the current state of things.

Ducks – Getzlaf-Grant-Rakell-Zegras-Carrick-Lindholm

Coyotes – Boyd-Schmaltz-Keller-Hayton-Gostisbehere-Capobianco (Chychrun hurt at the time)

Bruins – Bergeron-Marchand-Hall-Coyle-Pastrnak-McAvoy

Sabres – Skinner-Tuch-Thompson-Cozens-Krebs-Dahlin

Flames – Monahan-Lindholm-Gaudreau-Tkachuk-Mangiapane-Andersson

Hurricanes – Staal-Trocheck-Teravaien-Necas-Svechnikov-Slavin (Deangelo/Aho hurt)

Blackhawks – Kane-Toews-DeBrincat-Hagel-Jones-Gustafsson

Avalanche – Kadri-Landeskog-Rantanen-Compher-Toews-Makar (Mackinnon hurt)

Blue Jackets – Voracek-Nyquist-Jenner-Bjorkstrand-Laine-Werenski

Stars – Pavelski-Seguin-Hintz-Robertson-Klingberg-Heiskanen

Red Wings – Fabbri-Erne-Bertuzzi-Larkin-Raymond-Seider (Vrana hurt)

Oilers – Draisaitl-McDavid-Foegele-Yamamoto-Nurse-Bouchard

Panthers – Huberdeau-Barkov-Reinhart-Duclair-Weegar-Ekblad

Kings – Kopitar-Danault-Arvidsson-Kempe -Doughty-Durzi

Wild – Zuccarello-Hartman-Eriksson Ek-Boldy-Kaprizov-Spurgeon

Canadiens – Hoffman-Suzuki-Toffoli-Lehkonen-Evans-Wideman (Gallagher hurt)

Predators – Duchene-Johansen-Granlund-Forsberg-Tolvanen-Josi

Devils – Bastian-Hischier-Bratt-Hughes-Severson-Smith (Hamilton hurt)

Islanders – Bailey-Lee-Pageau-Nelson-Barzal-Dobson (Pulock hurt)

Rangers – Zibanejad-Strome-Kreider-Panarin-Kakko-Fox

Senators – Tkachuk-Batherson-Norris-Stutzle-Chabot-Brannstrom

Flyers – Giroux-JVR-Atkinson-Laughton-Konecny-Provorov (Couturier/Farabee hurt)

Penguins – Carter-Crosby-Kapanen-Rodrigues-Guentzel-Letang (Malkin hurt)

Sharks – Couture-Hertl-Meier-Barabanov-Burns-Karlsson

Kraken – Eberle-Johansson-Jarnkrok-Gourde-McCann-Giordano (Schwartz hurt)

Blues – ROR-Saad-Barbashev-Kyrou-Thomas-Krug

Lightning – Perry-Stamkos-Kuch-Killorn-Point-Hedman

Maple Leafs – Spezza-Tavares-Nylander-Matthews-Kase-Rielly (Marner hurt)

Canucks – Chiasson-Pearson-Boeser-Pettersson-OEL-Hughes (Horvat hurt)

Golden Knights – Stone-Smith-Karlsson-Marchssault-Theodore-Pietrangelo (Pacioretty/Eichel hurt)

Capitals – Backstrom-Eller-Kuznetsov-Wilson-Ovechkin-Carlson (Mantha/Oshie hurt)

Jets – Wheeler-Scheifele-Copp-Dubois-Connor-Pionk (Ehlers hurt)

The two names absent from this list that stuck out the most to me were Kevin Fiala and Ondrej Palat. Both are top-six wingers with scoring talent, and have a dynamic edge to their game. Fiala has 14 points in his last 11 games, and has paced for 65 points in each of the last three seasons – that's better than every other Wild forward outside of Kaprizov. Palat does have more star power in front of him, but he should be the clear number-four forward after Steven Stamkos, Braden Point, and Nikita Kucherov. To see him riding the bench when the Lightning need a goal, and both Corey Perry and Alex Killorn are on the ice instead is head-scratching to say the least. Both Fiala and Palat are up for new contracts at the end of the year. It's going to be interesting to see how happy Fiala is to negotiate again with the Wild this time around, while Palat looks like he will be another cap casualty for the Lightning.

The Kings' set is also interesting, as one of the few teams that ran out two defencemen with the net empty, and leaving a few capable forwards on the bench to do so. Iafallo is on pace for a 25-goal season and Dustin Brown is maybe the most accomplished net-front presence that the team has. Both are on the top power play unit with Kopitar as well, but neither was first over the boards when the team needed a goal. Trevor Moore has also had the Midas touch of late, and he was on the bench as well. To be out there as a defenceman over these names, Sean Durzi has hugely impressed the coaching staff. When the Kings have a healthy defence corps, Durzi will still be a part of it. His time in the minors appears to be done (he has played an average of 22 minutes a night in the last two games as well).

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Last week I mentioned that you should watch for Tyler Ennis, Adam Gaudette, and especially Alex Formenton with Drake Batherson (and now Josh Norris too) out of the lineup. In their last five games, the trio has racked up a combined 10 points, and this nice spin-o-rama by Ennis – who is also playing up on the top line.

SPIN-O-RAMA! 🔄

Tyler Ennis, that was beautiful. 🤩@scotiabank | #HockeyDay pic.twitter.com/TH78oh6ZWs

— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) January 29, 2022

Even without a game tonight, the Sens play five games before Valentine's day, which means regardless of what kind of schedule your league is on, they have the highest volume of games coming up in the short term.

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Joel Hanley, in career game 100, scored his first Regular Season goal. His only other NHL tally came in the Stanley Cup Final. Not fantasy relevant, but a fun story.

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Find me on Twitter @alexdmaclean if you have any fantasy hockey questions or comments.

Cheers!