The Ottawa Senators are an interesting team here down the stretch. They just got Drake Batherson back over the weekend, but Thomas Chabot looks to be out for the balance of the season. They may be getting some rookie reinforcements – more on that in a minute – but still have a bevy of depth veterans both up front and on the blue line.

To add to the intrigue, a bit of an update on Matt Murray:

Matt Murray on the ice this morning getting some work in at the Bell Sens Plex. pic.twitter.com/g3Q17MmAtU

— TSN 1200 (@TSN1200) March 28, 2022

Murray hasn't played in over three weeks since allowing eight goals against Arizona, the game where he seemed to get injured but kept playing. He was actually having a pretty good season until March, as he had a .920 save percentage in his first 18 games (he missed all of December). His last two games saw him allow 13 goals on 53 shots, which makes me wonder if it didn't all start a bit earlier than that Arizona game.

Regardless, it does appear Murray could make his way back to game action this season. There is still over four weeks left so lots of time to get re-acclimated, as long as it's nothing serious.

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Jake Sanderson signed his entry-level deal yesterday with Ottawa and the prospect blue liner is set to turn pro. The confounding issue here is that he suffered a hand injury a few weeks ago and had surgery on it. He won't be able to step into the lineup right away, but the team is still expecting him to suit up before the end of the campaign.

Let's talk about Sanderson a little bit.

To start with, his Dobber Prospects profile can be found here. Going into the 2021-22 season, there were some concerns about point totals but those can sometimes be misleading for defencemen. He replied with 26 points in 23 games at the University of North Dakota, not bad a for a 19-year-old. Our prospect writers were, and still are, very high on him.

Scott Wheeler over at The Athletic talked about some prospects he felt he was wrong about, and one of them was Sanderson. I'm paraphrasing here, but his issue was that he came in too low on Sanderson's offensive tools, namely his shot, and that he has developed those quickly. That is very important for the fantasy realm, but we need to remember that Chabot will be around next year. He will take those prime PP minutes, so we need to be patient with Sanderson's fantasy value, particularly on a team that's still coming together.

That offensive upside is very important overall, though. Byron Bader has a prospect comparison tool, which basically looks at a player's production in given leagues, and compares them to historically similar players. Not that these players have the same style, but that their impacts can be judged similarly across eras. It isn't perfect – scouting prospects well might be the hardest thing about hockey – but it does give us a barometer for prospects. Sanderson's big production uptick this past season has been huge for his long-term outlook, at least early on in his post-draft career:

There is still obviously a lot more to come from Sanderson as to just how much of an impact he'll make. But we shouldn't underrate the season he just had and how important it was for him to flash that offensive upside. It should help soothe the nerves of dynasty owners a little bit.

I will say that I thought Sanderson was drafted too high and there were other players on the board Ottawa should have gone after. But all that is in the past and none of it matters. All that matters now is development and we'll see how much the Sens can help him.

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Another guy skating with his NHL club after signing an entry-level deal was Philadelphia's Noah Cates. He was a late-rounder in 2017 and has spent the last four years playing for the University of Minnesota-Duluth. That means he's an older prospect, having turned 23 back in February. All the same, the Flyers don't have a lot of depth at the moment, and he could get a decent tryout down the stretch here. He's at least someone to keep an eye on to see what they do with him.

His Dobber Prospects profile can be read here.

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I don't talk about goaltenders a lot for a couple reasons. First is that I'm not good at scouting goalies. It's hard enough to scout skaters, so I tend to rely on goalie-specific scouts for opinions. The second is that there is a lot of variance in the position and too often, I think we over- or under-rate how a goalie is playing based on raw numbers. It is very frustrating but they're a crucial part of the fantasy game.

I do want to talk about Collin Delia.

The Blackhawks' AHL goalie this year has had an uneven career. He had some good games for Chicago back in 2018-19 when they had a bunch of injuries, but he was not their long-term solution. They had Corey Crawford, then Kevin Lankinen, and then Marc-André Fleury. None of those options worked out, at least not as intended. Lankinen is now getting some starts – he did on Monday night – with Delia as the backup. The thing is, Delia really hasn't been that bad.

It is tough to parse AHL numbers because the data just isn't as in-depth as what is available at the NHL level. He does have a .913 save percentage over his last three full-ish seasons in the AHL (over 2400 shots faced, excluding his four-game stint in 2020-21). That isn't elite, but it would have him as a middle-of-the-road starter in the AHL. Maybe faint praise, but he really hasn't been bad in the minors.

When looking at his NHL numbers, he has a .905 save percentage across 27 NHL games (23 starts). That doesn't seem very good, but that overall save percentage is misleading. When looking at just 5-on-5 numbers, he sits at .923. That is in a similar range over the last five years as Jacob Markstrom and Frederik Andersen. By goals saved above average (GSAA, or how many goals saved above the league average), Delia was at 2.83 in those 27 games. A positive GSAA on such a bad defensive team is nothing to sneeze at, even in a tiny sample. It was the penalty kill numbers that killed his overall save percentage, and blaming a goalie for the penalty kill while playing for the Chicago Blackhawks feels a bit misguided.

Again, these are all small samples, and we probably won't ever get Delia having a serious run in net. But maybe Chicago should see what they have in the netminder before running out to free agency this summer.

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On the topic of goalies, some good news for Vegas:

Robin Lehner is also on the ice this morning.

— Danny Webster (@DannyWebster21) March 28, 2022

This could be very important for Vegas. They have a plethora of injuries, and that includes their goaltending depth taking a hit. They only have three games in the next 10 days so there's time to get Lehner back in the lineup without missing much of the remaining schedule.

As for that schedule, the next 10 games look good for them. Sure, they get Washington, Edmonton, and Calgary, but they also get Seattle twice, Vancouver three times, Arizona, and New Jersey. It seems a pretty good opportunity for them to go something like 6-3-1 and stay in the thick of the playoff race. That is also a lot of good matchups for Lehner if he can get back into the lineup anytime soon.

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Logan Couture was back at practice for the Sharks on Monday after leaving a game against Edmonton last week then missing a game on the weekend.

It has been an up-and-down year for Couture, as it has been for a lot of Sharks. He has just 19 points in his last 29 games, dating back to January 1^st. The big problem is he has just nine assists in all those games. While not typically a big assist guy, having 9 in 29 games is a big problem for fantasy value. This is something that has persisted since last year, really.

This has been a problem for a lot of Sharks. They just aren't scoring: only Anaheim, Seattle, and Ottawa has a lower goal rate than the Sharks since January 1^st. With Timo Meier's shooting percentage drop, and the inability for almost anyone outside of those two and Tomas Hertl to score, a lot of assist totals have taken a hit over the last 12 weeks or so.

San Jose doesn't really have an easy schedule coming up, either. Their next 10 games, spanning the next three weeks, see them face Colorado, Dallas twice, Minnesota, Nashville, Calgary, and Edmonton. Those 10 games also include seven on the road, and that's not good news here. It's hard to sit Couture, particularly in leagues that count face-offs, but fantasy players need to have an honest look at this team, their schedule, and how they've been performing. They haven't been able to be even consistently average for months now.

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Carolina absolutely beat down Washington by a score of 6-1 on Monday night. Martin Necas led the way with two goals and an assist, which gives him six points in his last four games. If he can turn back into the player he has typically been, scoring-wise, that changes the outlook of this team as they get set to roll into playoffs.

Brady Skjei also had a goal and an assist in this one, plus two PIMs and three hits on the night. Just a great fantasy evening for him.

Vitek Vanacek was pulled after five goals and 40 minutes of play. The Caps' goaltending has been an issue for much of the year, but the entire roster is now coming under scrutiny for its defensive play as well. They aren't doing their goalies any favours.