There was a very significant trade on Monday as Tyler Toffoli was traded to the Calgary Flames. Going the other way is Tyler Pitlick, a first-round pick, a fifth-round pick, and prospect Emil Heineman. His Dobber Prospects profile can be viewed here.

Dobber wrote about the trade yesterday and readers can check out his column here.

For my opinion, while I can see Toffoli going to the top PP unit, there's one thing that's nagging in the back of my head. It's the fact that Sean Monahan has been on the top unit basically all season, with the team rarely using Andrew Mangiapane instead. I don't understand why Toffoli would get pushed right to the top PP unit – especially when this very coach infrequently used him on the top power play in Los Angeles – with Mangiapane never getting an extended look. Maybe they do just go right to the new option but as someone with Bread Boy on a couple fantasy rosters, it would be a tough pill to swallow.

As the resident Habs fan, this feels like a light return. Toffoli's 82-game pace this year is 20 goals and nearly 60 points in a season where his team is last in goals scored per minute. Before that, he had 34 goals in 62 regular season games between Vancouver and Montreal. He is a great offensive player and is no slouch defensively. He is also signed for two more years at just $4.25M per season. Pitlick is for salary purposes and the fifth-round pick doesn't have much value. This is basically 2 ½ years of Toffoli at a well-below-market contract for a late first rounder and a non-top prospect. I would have rather Montreal eat some salary, tell the Flames to keep the prospect and picks, and get a better prospect. Draft capital is great but I've also been a Habs fan long enough to not get excited about them stocking draft picks. Also, what was the rush to do this deal? Do they think this is the absolute most they could ever get for him in the next 13 months? If so, I guess it's fine. I do think this seems a bit fast to pull a deal like this together.

He should thrive in Calgary, fantasy-wise. He should be rostered in every league, too. He is going to look great on that second line. I do wonder if this means the end of the Flames tenure for one of Gaudreau or Tkachuk this summer?

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Just a reminder that coming out of the All-Star break, the league has new COVID protocols. Everyone was tested once coming back to their teams following the ASG, but now the only players being tested are either unvaccinated or symptomatic. So, if we see players hit the COVID list – as we saw recently with Semyon Varlamov – they are not missing games despite feeling 100% fine. We do need to keep an eye on players that hit the list and how they perform when they return.

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Good news for Patrice Bergeron

Patrice Bergeron (non contact) is practicing.

— Fluto Shinzawa (@FlutoShinzawa) February 14, 2022

They said he had a laceration and the team wanted to take it easy with him. That he's back skating, even in a non-contact jersey, is a very good sign.

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An update on Mark Stone:

Kelly McCrimmon announced Mark Stone will be going on LTIR.

— Jesse Granger (@JesseGranger_) February 14, 2022

Also to be mentioned is that Jack Eichel was skating on the top line in practice on Monday, as well as the top PP unit. One is going on the injured reserve and one is coming off, with Eichel set to make his debut on Wednesday night against Colorado.

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It has been several weeks since the holiday break and the significance of that is it gives us a decent sample size to look back on. In that span, only one team has played fewer than 15 games (Minnesota, 13) and nearly half the league (15/32 teams) has played at least 18 games. This particular time frame also includes most teams getting past their COVID issues. There have continued to be some players missing time across the league, and that will persist, but the new protocols mean we're not likely to see a mess like that again this season.

Regardless, I thought it'd be worth to look back on what's happened since the Christmas break, both at the player- and team-level. Here are some things that stood out to me. Stats from Frozen Tools or Natural Stat Trick.

Crown 'Em

In this span, four of the five teams that lead the league in expected goal share (xGF%) at 5-on-5 are Calgary, Toronto, Boston, and Tampa Bay. Not sure there's a surprise in there. The surprise is the fifth team: Los Angeles. They are second in the league, behind only the Flames, in xGF% over their last 17 games. They are 10-5-2 in that span and are sitting in a playoff spot as of early Monday night.

It really has been a team effort. Each of the first, second, and fourth lines are all sitting with an expected goal share of at least 55% since Christmas. The second line, in particular, has been great. They are controlling over 60% of the expected goal share, scoring roughly four goals per 60 minutes.

Phillip Danault probably deserves a lot of credit here. He came over from Montreal and instantly gave this team a great second line, along with Viktor Arvidsson. Danault leads the team in points per 60 minutest this year at 5-on-5, which might make him enticing for fantasy owners. The problem remains the same as it was in Montreal though: lack of power-play production. He is stuck on the second PP unit for the Kings, and that's led to one whole PPP on the season. He is also hitting less than he has in recent seasons, a trade-off for shooting more, it seems.

This all has to be exciting for Kings fans. They have one of the deepest prospect pools in hockey and the NHL roster seems to have been reconfigured after a few down years. It just may not be a great spot for fantasy production because all the usual suspects are likely rostered already, and everyone else has a role to play.

Blue Monday

At the other end of that spectrum is the St. Louis Blues. The only teams with a worse expected goal share since the holiday break than the Blues are the Canadiens, Sabres, and Rangers. What is keeping them afloat for now is the team is shooting over 12% at 5-on-5. A team cannot sustain anywhere close to that for a season, so that will decline the rest of the way. Unless this team starts generating a lot more offence – 26^th in expected goals for per 60 minutes – then when the shooting percentage dries up, so will the wins.

This is a problem that is persisting across the entire team. It's tough to say "it's this guy's fault" or whatever when all 13 regular forwards are below 47.5% expected goal share over the team's last 15 games. There are some players playing extremely poorly – Brayden Schenn has good point totals but that's also a huge percentage bender – but it does seem like everything is going wrong for this team.

Whatever the issues are, they need to figure them out fast. They are nowhere near a certainty for the postseason and they can't relying on 12% 5-on-5 shooting for 36 more games.

Jack's Hugh-ge Shot Rate

Quite simply, Hughes has to be one of the more interesting players in the NHL. All his micro-stats scream Perennial All-Star but he has just 59 points in his last 85 regular season games. It is one thing to have wonderful micro-stats, but if they don't translate to monster fantasy success, we don't care very much, do we?

Well, one thing he's doing a lot more of lately is shooting. Since the holidays, he's top-20 among all forwards in shot rate per 60 minutes. There are still a lot of pieces that need to come together for him to take the next step in the fantasy game, like Alexander Holtz showing up next year and starts scoring. A line of Holtz-Hughes-Bratt could be very good for Hughes' fantasy profile.

But those are the pieces that need to come together for fantasy stardom: he needs to be an elite player (he probably is), he needs an excellent shot rate (he will if this persists), and he needs great line mates. The profile is starting to come together.

Not Dunn Shooting

On the topic of shooting, Vince Dunn has seen his own shot rate jump of late. He has 33 shots in his last 15 games since the calendar turned to 2022, and is top-10 in the league among all defencemen in shot attempts per 60 minutes as well. That per-game rate might not seem like a lot, but this guy has never had a season with 2+ shots per game and that's unlikely to be the case again this year because he had a very slow start. If he can keep up anywhere near this shot rate, though, this changes his fantasy profile.

The second note here being that Dunn had briefly, very briefly, taken over the top PP unit for Mark Giordano before getting the boot again. My guess is the Kraken are more concerned with pumping Giordano's trade value right now, and that's going to mean Dunn's role takes a step back again.

But it's not long until the trade deadline. It is under five weeks, in fact, and that means it may only be another month of minimal fantasy value for Dunn. He is clearly next in line whenever Giordano does get traded, and that'll be a boost to his fantasy profile. He is also averaging nearly 21 minutes a night in February, the most TOI in any month this season (heading into Monday night's contest against Toronto). If he can keep this upswing going, he could be valuable for the fantasy playoff run in late March through mid-April.