The Hart Trophy talk this season was as vibrant as any in recent memory, maybe as far back as the Taylor Hall MVP season. There were many great campaigns across the league, from goalies to defencemen to forwards. It seemed likely Igor Shesterkin and Auston Matthews would get nods, but the third spot was wide open. Or, at least it seemed that way. Here are the actual finalists:

Auston Matthews, Igor Shesterkin and Connor McDavid are Hart Trophy finalists as NHL MVP as voted by members of @ThePHWA.

— Stephen Whyno (@SWhyno) May 12, 2022

Not much argument from me here. There are cases for guys like Johnny Gaudreau, Jonathan Huberdeau, and Roman Josi, and to a lesser extent guys like Jason Robertson, Cale Makar, and Patrice Bergeron. But, again, no real argument from me on the finalists.

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Some good news for the Rangers:

#NYR Tyler Motte is a possibility and a game-time decision for Game 6 tomorrow in Pittsburgh, per Gallant.

— Mollie Walker (@MollieeWalkerr) May 12, 2022

This could be big news for the Rangers. He is a good defensive forward who can kill penalties and bring some stability to the fourth line, a line that has been a glaring weakness in their series with the Penguins.

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The Boston Bruins staved off elimination by taking Game 6 from Carolina by a score of 5-2. There was a pivotal 5v3 power play for the Hurricanes with the Bruins up just 1-0 that Boston killed off, and then tallied themselves just minutes later. It was one of those pivotal points where if one thing goes different, maybe we have a different story. But it didn't, so we don't, and Game 7 goes Saturday back in Carolina.

Boston showed a balanced attack in this one, getting goals from each of the four lines, with Derek Forbort chipping in a tally for good measure. Brad Marchand had a goal and an assist, as did Charlie Coyle. The latter scored on the man advantage with Boston's top offensive stars.

Andrei Svechnikov scored twice in the loss.

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It was an absolute barnburner of a Game 6 in Tampa Bay as Toronto tried to close out the series. A pair of goals from John Tavares late in the second period seemed to have them on their way, but a power-play goal from Nikita Kucherov mid-way through the third period sent us to overtime.

Toronto carried a good chunk of the play in overtime and a couple key blocks on good Tampa Bay chances gave them their chances to finish the series in turn. However, a goal-mouth scramble in front of Jack Campbell gave the opportunity for Brayden Point to slam home the overtime winner, and send this series to a seventh game. It will be in Toronto on Saturday night.

This was a game where both goalies played very well, particularly in overtime as each team had some good chances. It also may have been Andrei Vasilevskiy's best game of the series so far. He needs to do it again for the Lightning to have a real shot in Game 7.  

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In yesterday's Ramblings, we talked about defencemen who saw the biggest jump in individual expected goals per 60 minutes in 2021-22. We looked at the two years prior to this season as our comparison sample, so again, there are going to be a lot of younger players missing. We just don't have a real baseline to work with. And, again, an increase in individual scoring chances (iSC) or individual expected goals (ixG) doesn't guarantee an increase in scoring, it just means it's more probable.

The difference between iSC and ixG is the latter has varying expected goal probabilities i.e. a shot from the mid-slot is worth more than a shot from the blue line. That is in comparison to scoring chances, which are binary; a shot is either an iSC or it isn't. The reason we aren't using high-danger shot attempts, like we did with the forwards, is that they have not been shown to necessarily be repeatable year to year for defencemen, but scoring chances are. These are shots from anywhere inside the 'home plate' area that go out from the net to the face-off dots, up to the top of the circles, and across the top of the slot, as outlined in Natural Stat Trick's glossary (with an unrelated example):

Clear as mud? Great. Let's look at scoring chance jumps at all strengths per 60 minutes, and there is some overlap (Karlsson and Kylington, for example) with what we discussed yesterday. Just for fun: Karlsson saw the biggest jump in scoring chances, and it wasn't even close.

Drew Doughty

Doughty gets the mention here because he was 2^nd in the scoring chance jump from 2019-2021, trailing Karlsson (as mentioned above, the gap was pretty big; Karlsson's jump was nearly 30% higher than Doughty's). He also gets the mention because he was one of many Kings defencemen who saw a big jump: Matt Roy, Alex Edler, and Mikey Anderson were all in the top-10 for jump in scoring chance generation. That should tell us a couple things: the Kings weren't generating much the seasons prior, and the team wasn't afraid to let their blue liners jump in for a decent look at the net this season. Now, teams typically shouldn't want defencemen taking shots over their forwards – there's a reason most defencemen don't score much. At the same time, the entire team generated a lot more, as the Kings were third in the league by scoring chances this season, trailing only Florida and Toronto. The previous two seasons saw them in the bottom-10 of the league, so there was a huge change here.

Another reason for mentioning Doughty is he's typically the guy who well get drafted off this blue line in fantasy leagues, and he's approaching his mid-30s. Seeing a rebound in offence from him is a very welcome sight for fantasy owners, and the team's improvement, as a whole, saw his points per game jump to 0.77, his highest mark since 2014. There are some aging core pieces here, but there is also a bevy of young players that are making a big impact, with more to come. If Doughty can play 80 games next year, he could be a top-12 fantasy option for us, something he hasn't been in a long time. It may depend on his health, though.  

Dougie Hamilton

A few days ago, our own Brennan DeSouza wrote about Dougie Hamilton being a bounce-back candidate for 2022-23 and it's hard to disagree. He had a good start to the season before injuries slowed down his production or kept him out of the lineup entirely. He was tied for the eighth-largest jump in iSC among defencemen, but he shot a career-low 4.6%. We have to wonder how, or if, the injuries factored in, and he probably should have cracked double-digit goals despite missing 20 games.

Like Doughty and the Kings, there are a lot of good things coming for Hamilton and the Devils. Nico Hischier asserted himself as a top-line centre, Jack Hughes to a huge step forward in his development and is now on the cusp of superstardom, Dawson Mercer had a good rookie season, Jesper Bratt solidified himself as a top-line winger, Pavel Zacha has started to make good on his middle-six upside, and Alexander Holtz tore up the AHL. There is more than enough here for a very good top PP unit and two good even-strength scoring lines. That is enough to support a high-end fantasy season from Hamilton if he's healthy.

Nothing is guaranteed but the Devils are on the upswing and Hamilton showed plenty of flashes of what made him such a good fantasy asset over the years. His ADP this coming September should be interesting as there's a balance between what we saw from his in 2021-22 and what we might expect in 2022-23.  

MacKenzie Weegar

There was another Florida defenceman in the top-10 for iSC jumps and that was Brandon Montour. Like Doughty, though, MacKenzie Weegar is typically the defenceman that will be drafted in fantasy leagues – outside of Aaron Ekblad, of course – and that's why we're going to discuss his season.

Weegar set career-bests in a number of shot metrics like shot rate, ixG, iSC, and more. That shouldn't come as a huge surprise for a guy playing on arguably the best offence in the league; every Florida defenceman in our sample saw a positive increase in scoring chances. But it didn't necessarily translate to more points, as his PPG dropped to 0.55 from his career-high 0.67 last season. The simple reason for that was a four-year low in individual points percentage (36.7%). IPP, for the uninitiated, is the rate at which a player garners a point when the team scores with him on the ice. His three-year average heading into 2021-22 was 45.4%. That may not seem like a huge gap, but had he managed around 45% IPP, he adds 10 points to his final total. It seems a bit of luck was the difference between a very good and a great fantasy season for Weegar, and that's what we need to take away here.

We will have to see what Florida looks like next season as both Claude Giroux and Mason Marchment are UFAs, and the team doesn't have much cap space to work with. At the least, like New Jersey, there is enough left for two very good scoring lines and an elite top PP unit. Weegar won't get much run on the power play, but I think we saw his floor this season, and a jump in shooting percentages from his 4-year low should see him crack double-digit goals for the first time in his career.

Josh Morrissey

At the bottom of the top-20 was Josh Morrissey, who also saw a big jump in ixG for 2021-22 as well. Unlike Hamilton and Weegar, Morrissey saw a very nice 6.9% shooting, a 4-year high for him. That led to his career-best 12 goals in 79 games, against just 15 goals in his previous 180 regular season games. We should also mention that after missing good chunks of time from 2018-20, Morrissey has missed just three games over the last two seasons.

The 27-year-old led the Jets blue line in a number of shot metrics, which may be partly why he got such heavy usage towards the end of the season. He just seemed more involved in the offence than anyone else not named Neal Pionk. Winnipeg's issue is that the team was about a middle-of-the-pack team offensively and don't have the cap space to make an offseason splash. They have about $18M to spend, but need to sign Pierre-Luc Dubois, an entire bottom-6 line, and a backup goalie. Maybe they can go out and sign another middle-6 forward, but aside from Cole Perfetti, there isn't much internally that will help them improve. They need to figure things out on their own, and that's always a scary proposition.

The nice thing about Morrissey is he doesn't need 50 points to be a multi-cat asset. He can put up triple-digit blocks and hits, adding over two shots per game, plus the decent point totals. The Albertan could lose his PP role to a number of guys like Pionk, Ville Heinola, or even Nate Schmidt. That puts his value in a precarious spot. But if he can keep up the scoring chances, he has a good chance at double-digit goals again.

Mike Matheson

It felt right to include him for a couple reasons. First, he's had an up-and-down career, which kind of reflects his play. He can take chances that work out very well, or very poorly. He also had a quote recently – and I can't find the article now, apologies – that talked about how, in recent hockey history, if defencemen jumped into the play as much as they do now, they'd be benched. (It's not an exact quote but it was something to that effect.) He posted career-bets in goals (11) and assists (20) in what was a very good fantasy season for him. He did shoot a career-high 7.9%, but his three-year average heading into 2021-22 was 6.6%, so it's not completely unreasonable.

We also need to mention him because of the Penguins roster. Kris Letang is a pending UFA and while we should expect him to return, it's not a guarantee. There could be a very prime PP1 role opening in Pittsburgh, and Matheson (along with John Marino) are candidates as a replacement. We'll cross that bridge if we get there, but Matheson's penchant for shooting could see his fantasy relevance improve drastically next season. It's a lot of ifs, but it's also just mid-May.