Resting players is a tried and true tradition across any sport where teams have their postseason trip locked. That held true on Wednesday night as the Rangers sat Artemi Panarin, Andrew Copp, and a slew of other regulars on the second night of a back-to-back. The Florida Panthers called up a handful of players on Wednesday so it appears they're going to be in the resting business as well. Just another reason why fantasy leagues should finish the week before the regular season ends.

*

Alexander Holtz was recalled by the Devils, presumably to play the final two games of the year:

#NEWS: We have recalled F Alexander Holtz from Utica (AHL). He has joined the team in Raleigh.

📰: https://t.co/frlCUVMmbw pic.twitter.com/j7zzmkn9Td

— New Jersey Devils (@NJDevils) April 27, 2022

Just a reminder that he's sitting on seven games played on the season, so this will only push him to nine. That keeps him at the entry-level threshold, meaning it does not burn a year off his contract. Not that it matters much for many fantasy owners, but it means a lot to cap leaguers.

*

The released their annual NHL Player Poll:

The #NHLPAPlayerPoll is back for the 2021-22 edition!

566 players took part this season, with the membership anonymously weighing in on 15 questions covering a variety of topics: https://t.co/cFwAfA4rlI pic.twitter.com/erKIjzs1gJ

— NHLPA (@NHLPA) April 27, 2022

It's always fun to see how the players view their peers but one name that always stick out to me is Carey Price. It seems that players across the league still have a lot of faith in him, as he came in 2^nd for the 'Which goalie would you want in a single must-win game' category.

*

Some potentially huge news about Juuse Saros:

This time of year teams are incredibly tight about injury information, but hearing Juuse Saros will miss at least the Predators' final two games of the regular season.

— Elliotte Friedman (@FriedgeHNIC) April 27, 2022

It could just be something very small and the team wants him to be completely fresh for the postseason. Then again, anytime a goalie gets even the slightest injury this close to the playoffs is a huge concern. That goes doubly for a team that cannot out-score their opponents like Florida or Colorado are able to.

*

With just a couple days left in the regular season, playoffs are less than a week away. With playoffs less than a week away, playoff pools are just around the corner. There will be many articles and write-ups here at Dobber over the next several days talking about the postseason, but this is my last Ramblings before that begins, so I wanted to take this time to get some playoff thoughts down.

We should start with the box pools we have here at Dobber. There is a printable box pool template that Dobber has put together and his write-up on that can be found here. It is a good idea for anyone that just wants to check some boxes with some buddies and not get much more in-depth than that. Dobber has also setup a Bracket Challenge at NHL.com for our readers to join and compete against each other.

There is also the Dobber playoff list available for purchase in the Dobber Shop. For anyone playing a variety of playoff pools that needs well-researched information and data for the postseason, look no further.

Now that all that is out of the way, let's look at the postseason that lies ahead of us. First, let's talk about the teams.

As pointed out by just about everyone at this point, the East looks like a buzzsaw from top to bottom. We can argue about how good Washington actually is, but they're also probably the only team that would be a real surprise to make it out of the East. Then again, would it be that shocking if a team with Ovechkin (if healthy), Backstrom, Kuznetsov, Oshie, Mantha, Carlson etc. made it to the Cup Final? Maybe, if only because of the quality of the rest of the conference, but there is still a boatload of talent here.

That is what makes the East fascinating from both a player-selection perspective and a team-selection perspective. If someone wants to load up on Bruins players, or Hurricanes players, or Leafs players, it's hard to argue with them. This isn't conjecture, either, as the betting markets reflect this: on Pinnacle, as of Wednesday afternoon, there is no team in the East with odds longer than 14-1 to win the East (Washington), and they're the only team longer than 9-1. Meanwhile, on Vegas Insider, only Calgary and Colorado crack the top-8 by shortest Cup odds from teams in the West while the Kings are 22-1 on Pinnacle.

Each playoff draft is different and that's what makes fantasy drafts fun. Based on what we know about the depth in the East and the top-end teams in the West, we are going to see lots of Flames, Avalanche, and maybe even Oilers players come off the board at the top of playoff drafts. And likely drafted ahead of players from most every Eastern team outside of Florida. That presents a unique opportunity for people that are in a lot of different drafts. It seems like a good year to have one draft focusing on, say, Hurricanes skaters, then another on Bruins skaters, then another on Penguins skaters, and so forth. It's unlikely there'll be many Florida skaters left in the middle of drafts, and Leafs fans always seem to draft Leaf players, so there is a limit on options. With all that said, it shouldn't be hard to load up on a handful of Eastern teams in different drafts/pools to try and diversify.

My first piece of advice, thus, is to try and diversify your stacks from the Eastern Conference. There are simply too many very good-to-elite teams in that playoff bracket that just focusing on any one roster feels too risky. Of course it could work out, but it seems like a good way to get disappointed very quickly if, say, Igor Shesterkin goes ahead and Igor's the East.

My second piece of advice is looking for depth production. In this instance, I don't mean guys on the third and fourth lines for Colorado or Florida. Here, I mean looking at guys from teams that aren't expected to make deep runs but grabbing them anyway. The reason for that is there are always players that produce well in the postseason despite limited time. It is an arbitrary cut-off, but here are the number of players that have reached double-digit point totals in the postseason in each of the last three playoff campaigns (excluding the expanded 2020 playoffs), despite playing 14 games or fewer:

• 2017-18 – 12/36 or 33%
• 2018-19 – 10/38 or 26%
• 2020-21 – 9/33 or 27%

In short, we can expect at least a quarter of all players that reach double-digit points to effectively do so in two rounds or fewer. They often are the top-end players from teams that aren't expected to make a deep run but end up winning a round and then losing in 6-7 games in the Conference semi-finals. Who are some guys that would fit that bill? Well:

• Rangers: Panarin, Kreider, Zibanejad, Fox
• Penguins: Crosby, Malkin, Guentzel, Rust, Letang
• Minnesota: Kaprizov, Zuccarello, Hartman, Fiala, Boldy
• St. Louis: Buchnevich, Tarasenko, Thomas, O'Reilly, Perron

That is just a brief list, and we can quibble about teams not expected to go deep, but readers get the idea. After the first few rounds have passed and the stacks from top-end teams have been bled dry, it's time to start looking at other teams. The real question is whether having a third-liner from Colorado is better than having, say, Artemi Panarin. It could be, but it all depends on who is left on the board and what options are realistic depending on the draft.

Let's move on to looking at teams on the macro level. As mentioned earlier, Calgary and Colorado are likely to be teams that many people look to advance at least to the Conference Final. That's all well and good, but there are six other Western teams in the postseason, and we know hockey is weird enough to expect something funny to happen. Where, then, should we look?

The team that immediately comes to mind for me is Minnesota. This is a roster that has a lot of overtime wins this year, which doesn't help for the postseason because of the unlikelihood of any 3v3 situation. At the same time, they have been on an absolute tear to finish the year – top-5 by expected goal share at 5-on-5, behind only Boston, Florida, Toronto, and Carolina over their last 19 games. In other words, they lead the West in expected goal share over the last six weeks. They are 14-2-3 in that span. They have a great shutdown line, two good-to-great scoring lines, and a blue line that is deep enough (assuming Jared Spurgeon returns). If we're not looking at Calgary or Colorado, that is one team to consider from the West.

The other team is, of course, Edmonton. They are top-10 in the league by expected goal share over the last month and their season pulled a full 180 after the hiring of Jay Woodcroft. It is fair to wonder if Mike Smith will hold up in the postseason, but a first-round matchup against Los Angeles should – should! – mean two rounds out of McDavid/Draisaitl/Hyman and the rest of the gang. After that, a good two weeks of hockey gets them into the Western Final and then all bets are off. I don't think Edmonton is a top-3 team in the West but it's not exactly a murderous first-round matchup, either.

Finally, to touch on the East, it's the New York Rangers that attract my attention here. Maybe they don't get all the way to the Stanley Cup Final, but they are getting one of Pittsburgh/Washington in the first round, and that's a very winnable series either way. Then they probably need Igor Shesterkin to really step up, but he's very capable of that and could push them to the Conference Final. It's always easier on paper than it is in real life, of course, but there is a path here for the Rangers to win a couple rounds, and hopefully more after that.

Alright, those are my thoughts on the postseason both in general and specifically for this year. We will have our Dobber Panel predictions up on the site before the playoffs start, and that will have my official entries for Cup winner, Conn Smythe, Conference champs, and all that. This should be a really fun postseason. Good luck to all the fantasy players/box pool players/bracket challengers out there.