The 2022 Dobber Hockey Fantasy prospects report was released last week! Head on over to the Dobber Shop to get the information you need on the next generation of stars. Hundreds of players reviewed, their estimated NHL arrival, fantasy upside, and a whole lot more.

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It wasn't quite the inverse of Game 2, but Tampa Bay roared back in Game 3. Gabriel Landeskog scored a pair of goals, both on the power play, for Colorado, but the Lightning seemed to score at will early on in the game. Goals from Anthony Cirelli, Ondrej Palat, Nick Paul, Steven Stamkos, and Patrick Maroon through the first half of the game chased Avalanche goalie Darcy Kuemper from the net. His replacement in Pavel Françouz gave up a power-play goal to Corey Perry only a few minutes after entering the game, and a 6-2 lead would be more than enough for Tampa Bay to hang on in Game 3, bringing the series to 2-1 for Colorado by that score.

Nikita Kucherov left the game late in the third period and did not return. With Brayden Point also missing this game, the injury concerns are starting to pile up for the Lightning.

Colorado now has a decision to make in net. Kuemper has been one of the few letdowns in the postseason for the team and they probably don't want to see a repeat of this game on Wednesday night. Being able to take a 3-1 series lead back home might change how they approach their goalie situation.

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The Canucks signed undrafted free agent Andrei Kuzmenko. Dobber gave us his take on the signing here. I have no take on this signing, given I’ve never heard of him until now. Regardless of my thoughts, it’s a good low-risk signing that bubble teams like Vancouver need to take.

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In last week's Ramblings, we discussed a handful of players and their scoring chance contributions. This is an attempt to look at the fantasy season some players just had, whether it was a mirage or not by going through some scoring chance data, some other red flags that we should be aware of, and what it could mean for next season. Scoring chance contributions (SCC) are just scoring chances taken, and generated for a teammate, per 60 minutes. Most of the top scorers in the league – Auston Matthews, Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon, Kirill Kaprizov, Brad Marchand, Nikita Kucherov – all rate very highly by this measure. In that sense, if we can find some gems that may have just broken out, are on the verge of doing so, or could be undervalued as a veteran. We are using data from Corey Sznajder's game tracking Patreon, as well as Natural Stat Trick and our own Frozen Tools. Cap data from Cap Friendly.

Seth Jarvis

The top Carolina Hurricanes forward by SCC was not Sebastian Aho, Andrei Svechnikov, or Teuvo Teravainen (though the first two on that list are inside the top-50). Rather, the top forward by this measure was rookie Seth Jarvis, who posted the same rate as Leon Draisaitl. To be clear, I am not saying that Jarvis is as good offensively as Draisaitl. McDavid and Roope Hintz had nearly identical SCC per 60 minutes in 2021-22 but that doesn't mean the two are similar offensive players. But it does mean that Jarvis was very involved in the offence as a rookie, and that his production wasn't a result of purely being on a percentage bender.

This jives with other data we have. Jarvis's high-danger shot attempt rate was in the 88^th percentile across the league. His rate was just behind Brayden Point, and just ahead of Tomas Hertl and Aleksander Barkov. The rookie's production problems are a combination of two things that plague a lot of rookies: low overall ice time and secondary power-play minutes. It is hard for any player to put up a relevant fantasy season skating under 14 minutes a night, but it also speaks to how impressive his 40 points in 68 games really was.

Having already written about Jarvis extensively this offseason, there's no reason to really dig in much further here. His individual shooting percentage at 5-on-5 was 15.7%, which was near the 90^th percentile of the league. That is an issue for his goal scoring if his deployment doesn't improve in 2022-23. If he's skating 15 minutes a night with secondary power-play minutes, expecting more than 25 goals and 50 points is probably expecting too much. However, if he takes a TOI leap similar to that of Svechnikov in his sophomore season, and flirts with 17 minutes a night including top PP minutes, we could see a real breakout here, and a 30-goal threat. That he doesn't mind hitting – about one per game – will help keep his value reasonable in multi-cat leagues no matter what.

Troy Terry

Whenever a player has a huge breakout season, the question is always whether it was a function of luck or skill. The former means we can't expect the same again, the latter means it could be the start of a trend. This is what happened with Terry, who had 15 goals in his first 129 regular season games, and posted 37 in 75 games in 2021-22. Yes, the 19.3% overall shooting sticks out like a sore thumb, and any player would be hard-pressed to repeat that season after season. Well, any player but Alex Tanguay, who was a career 18.6% shooter.

The first place I look in cases like this is at Hockey Viz. They have a tool that can show us the most common shot locations for a player. If someone is firing shots from the wings and converting at a high rate, red flags go up. If someone is taking a lot of shots from the anywhere in the slot area, it makes it a bit more palatable to accept. This is where Terry shot from in 2021-22 at even strength:

It seems Terry got a lot of his shots from the low-mid slot, which is a very good sign. What struck me is that doesn't look a whole lot different than his shot chart from the COVID 2021, and he also shot 13% at 5-on-5 that season. Maybe there is some pullback in 2022-23 because repeating north of 15% at 5-on-5 is hard to do, but there isn't necessarily reason to believe he'll fall off to 8% or something. To that end, the team converted their shots at a lower rate in 2021-22 with Terry on the ice than they did the season before. Maybe his goal-scoring at 5-on-5 falls off a bit, but his assist rate could see a boost if the team adds some scoring. That is TBD this summer.

What makes me even more hopeful was looking at the SCC data from the COVID 2021 season. Terry had a similar profile to names like Nikolaj Ehlers and Mathew Barzal. This is now two seasons of great SCC rates for Terry, and the dividends finally paid off. Maybe he scores 30 goals instead of 37, but count me as a believer in his breakout. The next challenge for the team, as mentioned, is to add offensive pieces around him and Trevor Zegras. Anaheim has the most cap space in the league. If they can add a Filip Forsberg, or even Kevin Fiala, Terry could be a 30-goal, 70-point winger in 2022-23.

Evan Rodrigues

Unlike Terry, this is a breakout that didn't have prior seasons of underlying data to point us in this direction. I won't ramble on here (pun intended) because I did a deep dive on Rodrigues's season a month ago. He is an unrestricted free agent and the team has a lot of key players they need to sign (or not sign) this summer. It'll be interesting to see what happens.

Regardless, Rodrigues's SCC data was very strong in 2021-22, finishing inside the top-50 of the league, and just ahead of names like Svechnikov and Bryan Rust. In that sense, his production wasn't a mirage, it was a result of good underlying process. The issue is that good underlying process hasn't been a part of E-Rod's game until now, and he turns 29 in July. Wherever he ends up, he's no guarantee to be a 20-goal, 50-point guy. There is a chance this is a new wrinkle in his game, but it's a risk. We'll see where he lands, and where his ADP lands, this offseason.

Dawson Mercer

There aren't many surprises in the top-50 list by SCC. They're largely names of the superstars you'd expect. One name that surprised me was Reilly Smith, and he was talked about yesterday. Another was Jarvis, whom we mentioned earlier. The third surprising name, coming in 46^th on our list by SCC per 60 minutes, was New Jersey's rookie Dawson Mercer.

Not that Mercer is a bad player or anything; he looked like a future star for them this season. But rookies just usually don't appear on this list, as evidenced by Jarvis and Mercer being the only two in the top-50 (I guess Michael Bunting makes three but, I mean, come on). Mercer finished just behind Svechnikov and Sam Bennett (and another guy we'll get to in a second) and just ahead of the Calgary duo of Matthew Tkachuk and Elias Lindholm. That makes three New Jersey Devils skaters in the top-50, with Jack Hughes and Jesper Bratt inside the top-15, and discussed yesterday. It seems the team is on the verge of offensive stardom? I guess we'll find out soon enough.

Looking at the team's points per 60 minutes rate at 5-on-5, Mercer didn't rate very well, coming in fifth on the team at 1.71. League-wide, that's comparable to names like Connor Brown and Lawson Crouse. Considering the rate of scoring chances he either took or generated for a teammate, that doesn't seem very good. Looking closer, though, his secondary assist rate was 0.11 per 60 minutes. Among 280 forwards league-wide with at least 750 minutes at 5-on-5, that was tied for 275^th. We know that secondary assist rates can vary wildly for forwards from season to season. Had that been 0.44 instead of 0.11 – somewhere close to the middle of the league – he would have added six points to his final total and flirted with 50 points. That is with minimal PP production, too, posting just five such points in 82 games. With a bit more luck, we could be looking at a 50-point rookie for the Devils, and that's with little run on the top PP unit. What could he do with more luck and better PP deployment? The upside seems obvious.

His role is one that will be interesting to watch. He started the season as a centre but moved to the wing later in the season. Because of that, he didn't have much time with Jack Hughes and Nico Hischier. In fact, he skated just 333 of his total 1126 5-on-5 minutes with either of those two, or just under 30% of his total TOI. Add in his TOI with Bratt, and that moves to 55% of his TOI. In other words, he spent nearly half his 5-on-5 time playing away from the team's top forwards, and still posted great SCC rates. As a rookie. That's impressive.

Just a quick note, this is how Hughes and Mercer performed together this season:

Anywhere near that goal rate in 2022-23, and Mercer could be a breakout star.

The Devils are starting to accumulate a lot of high-end talent and that puts Mercer's ability for a PP1 role in doubt. But if he can get there, it wouldn't surprise me to see him fly past 60 points next season.

Ross Colton

Our own Jamie Molloy discussed Colton in his 'Capped' column last week, so go read that for more analysis. All the same, Colton finished inside the top-50 of our player list, just behind the aforementioned Mercer and just ahead of Timo Meier. A good showing from a player that had just 30 regular season games to his name before 2021-22.

Colton finished the season with 2.15 points per 60 minutes at 5-on-5. That is a great mark but was largely floated by a huge goal rate of 1.39 per 60, tied for 5^th in the entire league. However, he did finish the season with 1.02 expected goals per 60 minutes, tied for 11^th in the league with names like Zach Hyman and Matthew Tkachuk. He over-performed a bit, but it wasn't extreme, and better deployment could help his cause as we round into 2022-23.

That deployment is what's of interest to us. Colton had 865 minutes at 5-on-5 and just 22% of those minutes were spent with one of Steven Stamkos, Nikita Kucherov, or Brayden Point. In other words, he had great SCC rates despite not getting premium line mates, and that bodes very well for him. What if he can move into a top-6 role next season, and start skating with the team's top offensive talents? One has to wonder.

We may not have to wonder for long. Ondrej Palat is a free agent and the team just can't afford to re-sign him. (It feels like we say this every season about Tampa Bay, but they did have to let guys like Blake Coleman and Barclay Goodrow walk, and traded J.T. Miller. They believe in their ability to replace the non-core pieces.) Alex Killorn, meanwhile, turns 33 in September. It is not unreasonable to think that Colton works his way up the depth chart and finds himself with a top-6/top PP role a couple of months into the season.

Tampa Bay may have another late-blooming star on their hands. We need to see more out of him, given his short track record, but that short track record has been impressive. As Jamie pointed out, he brings a lot of peripherals as well, so there could be a monster multi-cat player in the making here. He did have 22 goals this year, skating under 13 minutes a game. Is a 30-goal/55-point/160-hit season that unreasonable? I don't think so.