While we didn't have a couple of the big dominoes fall on the first day of free agency, namely Evgeni Malkin and Ondrej Palat, there were lots of signings with significant fantasy impact to discuss. For anyone that missed the coverage, the entire Dobber editing group pitched in to cover all the big names, and those articles can be found here. This is always one of the busiest days of the season for our group, so a shout out to Dobber, Ian, and Alex for their great work. It really is a team effort on a day like Free Agent Frenzy, and I hope they relaxed with a cold beverage or five last night.

There were lots of players and situations I didn't get to cover specifically, so I'm just going to cover what interested me. Cap information from Cap Friendly, player data from our Frozen Tools or Natural Stat Trick.

Detroit

The biggest mover of the day had to be the Detroit Red Wings. They had over $30M in cap space entering the day and have a pretty clean cap sheet moving forward. It didn't take them long to get busy as Andrew Copp's signing was announced almost immediately at 12:00 ET. Throughout the day, they added David Perron, Dominik Kubalik, Ben Chiarot, and Olli Mattta. In one day, GM Steve Yzerman quite literally added an entire forward line and a defence pair. I would quibble with some of the values – I do not think Chiarot is worth $4.75M for four years – but this was a team desperate for depth and added a lot of quality.

Adding Copp as the second-line centre is the biggest note here. Since the retirement of Henrik Zetterberg, this team has not had a competent centre to play behind Dylan Larkin; certainly not one that can play 18-19 minutes a night with good offensive contributions and penalty killing ability. With Perron added and the skill that already exists, Copp's raw points upside is capped because of lack of power-play exposure. All the same, this was a big need for them and Copp should fare well there.

Scoring depth was the key here for Detroit. In 2021-22, the team scored 1.9 goals per 60 minutes at 5-on-5 with the top duo of Larkin and Tyler Bertuzzi off the ice. For comparison's sake, Pittsburgh scored 2.4 goals/60 with Crosby/Guentzel off the ice, Toronto scored 2.7 goals/60 with Matthews/Marner on the bench, and Carolina scored a whopping 3.0 goals/60 with Aho/Teravainen off-ice. In other words, the top teams in the East could still score at least at a league average rate, if not much higher, with their stars on the bench. Detroit could not, and it's one reason they found themselves in the bottom-10 of the standings yet again.

The additional scoring is important for them, but who does it help in fantasy? Well, the goalies, for starters (zing!). Whether the team improved defensively, well, we'll get to that in a second. But the ability to score more goals throughout the lineup will only help the goalies rack up wins. If Larkin/Bertuzzi had an off-night, and the goalies weren't stellar, they weren't winning games. Having secondary scoring to pick up the top guns will help the goalies in that vital Win column. (This isn't an exaggeration, either – Alex Nedeljkovic had 18 games where he allowed at least four goals and lost all of them. Jack Campbell won over 20% of his games where he allowed at least four. A team being able to score helps the goalie's wins stats.)

More than that, it's improvements to the power play that should help the skaters, fantasy-wise. Larkin had just 13 PPPs (!) in 71 games despite being featured on the top unit all season. Detroit had one of the worst power plays in the league, and as I mentioned in my write-up on Perron, they added one of the top wingers in hockey when it comes to goal-driving with the man advantage. Larkin was just a couple points shy of being a point-per-game player in 2021-22. Any bets he can be a point-per-game guy if that top PP unit improves to even just league average?

How much this team got better in the defensive end is open for interpretation. I get that not everyone believes in advanced stats, but here's Ben Chiarot's play-driving over the last three years, per Evolving Hockey:

As a Habs fan that watched him for years, and as anyone saw in Florida's playoff run, he's not a great defensive defenceman. Maatta could help in this regard, and the two are surely upgrades over what the team had last season. It's just a question of how much it will actually help, and I'm dubious it's substantial.

In that sense, the extra goals will be nice for the Wings' goalies, but they'll still have to carry the team from time to time. Overall, a really good day for Wings fans and fantasy owners of the likes of Larkin or Seider.

Johnny Gaudreau

It makes no damn sense, but it compels me.

Really, though. I was laughing earlier in the day when they signed Erik Gudbranson considering the amount of defensive depth they have. This is a different beast, though, as Gaudreau steps onto the team and becomes the best forward they've had since Rick Nash.

It'll be curious to see how everything lines up. Beyond just Patrik Laine, they still have Jakub Voracek and Oliver Bjorkstrand around. That seems to lock up their top-6 wing slots, leaving the likes of Gustav Nyquist and Yegor Chinakhov in the bottom-6. But even with Kent Johnson on the way, does anyone think this team was one (1) Jonathan Hockey away from being a Cup contender? They need Johnson and Cole Sillinger to be major impact players, and sooner rather than later.

Fantasy-wise, this is a big downgrade for Gaudreau. He should still be great offensively, but there's a large difference between being a 115-point guy and a 95-point guy when you don't hit or rack up PIMs.

Regardless of how this works out, with the young kids coming and now the skilled, veteran wingers, Columbus is going to be as much fun to watch as this franchise has ever been.

Ilya Mikheyev

This is one of the more intriguing signings for me on the day. There is a contingent that believes Mikheyev was under-utilized on a Leafs team that was loaded with offensive talent, and there's a contingent that believes this is an overpay. It really is tough what to make of a guy with fewer than two full seasons of NHL games that turns 28 in October.

We can't talk about the Russian winger without talking about that gnarly wrist injury. He incurred a sliced wrist in December of 2019 and that ended his season. He was having a good rookie year to that point with 8 goals and 23 points in 39 games. Pacing for over 15 goals and nearly 50 points as a rookie is a good year, especially with a zero in the power-play point column.

It's a question of how healthy that wrist was in the shortened 2021 COVID season. He shot a poor 6.5% and had just 17 points in 54 games. The team shot just 6.7% with Mikheyev on the ice at 5-on-5 as he largely played in the bottom-6 with the likes of Pierre Engvall and Alex Kerfoot. That doesn't seem like a spot conducive to offence, and I will note that Engvall's on-ice team goal rate was 2.2 this past season, so maybe it was a line mate problem.

That is what makes the move to Vancouver so interesting. Ostensibly, he could go play with the likes of Elias Pettersson, J.T. Miller, and Brock Boeser. He should get consistent top-6 minutes and he potted 21 goals in just 53 games last year in that role. According to Corey Sznajder's tracking data, he is both good in transition and loves to shoot:

That isn't a huge minute sample, but the results were similar in COVID 2021. He isn't a great playmaker, but he can get the team into the zone and is good at getting his shot away. That is very valuable in its own, and that doesn't even get into his superlative defence.

Mikheyev's fantasy problem persists, though: power play time. He got little time with the Leafs and considering names like Horvat, Miller, Pettersson and Boeser, it doesn't appear much will change with the Canucks. PPTOI is always a key to unlocking the next level of fantasy production, and that's what will keep Mikheyev's ceiling capped.

In the real world, this is a good signing for Vancouver. In fantasy, this seems like a fairly lateral move for the player.

Philadelphia Flyers

So, let me get this straight. The Flyers are trying to, what's the term, aggressively re-tool and they do that by signing Nic Deslauriers for FOUR YEARS and signing a defenceman they traded away last year in Justin Braun? Is that what I'm seeing?

If the team is healthy, namely Sean Couturier and Ryan Ellis, this team should improve regardless. But adding a one-dimensional defenceman in Tony DeAngelo, plus the guys in the paragraph above, is not going to get a healthy team to the Cup Final. They're that gif of the guy from The Office walking into a room with a pot of chili and then spilling it all over the place.

Again, this team should be better. Between Couturier, Ellis, Travis Konecny, Cam Atkinson, a healthy Kevin Hayes, Joel Farabee, and some good puck-moving defencemen, there is a good amount of talent here. But we just need to look at what teams like Detroit, Columbus, and Ottawa did today to see where the Flyers might sit in the Eastern Conference. Even if aging teams like Boston, Washington, and Pittsburgh take a step back, there are teams like Detroit, Ottawa, Columbus, New Jersey, and Buffalo that are all rising. It seems like the Flyers are caught in between, spinning their tires in mud, and then signing Deslauriers to punch the mud.

Carolina

I would be remiss if I didn't touch on what Carolina did. Sure, they lost DeAngelo, Nino Niederreiter, and Vincent Trocheck. They did trade for Jesperi Kotkaniemi for this eventuality (though whether he's ready to be a pseudo-2C along with Jordan Staal remains to be seen). But they went out and rebuilt some of that lost depth by trading for Brent Burns, signing Ondrej Kase, and then getting Max Pacioretty in a cap dump. That is a pretty tidy day of business.

How Burns fares on the top PP unit should be fascinating to watch. According to Evolving Hockey, his power-play expected goals impact for the Sharks over the last three years was similar to other blue liners like Shea Theodore, Morgan Rielly, and Dougie Hamilton. The problem is that did not translate to goals, as the actual goals impact was closer to names like Zach Werenski and Jeff Petry; not quite the same company. As anyone who has watched Burns for any length of time can say, he just shoots way too much from the blue line with the man advantage (from Hockey Viz):

Meanwhile in Carolina, they rarely took shots from the middle of the blue line, or over on the left side where Burns would move if he were walking said blue line. They relied a lot more on puck movement than they did on forcing deflections or rebounds. What will this clash in styles look like in Carolina? Coaches generally want players to do what they want them to, but Burns has played the same way for years. I am not convinced he'll be a 1-to-1 exchange for DeAngelo's puck-moving ability. I guess we'll find out in a few months' time.