Every Sunday, we share 21 Fantasy Rambles from our writers at DobberHockey. These thoughts are curated from the past week’s 'Daily Ramblings'.

Writers/Editors: Ian Gooding, Michael Clifford, Alexander MacLean and Dobber

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1. Did you have the Boston Bruins falling out of the playoffs this season? Well, they’ve now won seven consecutive games and are now 10-1-0. There’s still a lot of season left, but wit h Brad Marchand back and Charlie McAvoy soon to follow, I like their chances.

Hampus Lindholm also continues to be scorching hot with a goal and an assist with a plus-3. He’s a must start over the next few games, but he may be transitioning to a more defensive role once McAvoy returns, which might be as early as next week. Use the time to sell high on Lindholm if you can, as he has never reached a 0.5 PTS/GP pace over a full season since debuting in 2013-14. His advanced stats confirm this (15.8 SH%, 11.1 5-on-5 SH%, 2.7 PTS/60). He could reach a 0.5 PTS/GP pace anyway this season, as he is surrounded with more talent on the Bruins than on the Ducks. I wrote more about Lindholm on Wednesday. (nov4)

2. Entering Saturday, the NHL goal scoring leaders were:

Connor McDavid – 12
Bo Horvat – 10
Erik Karlsson – 10 (!)
Victor Olofsson – 9

Four other names were tied at eight, including Gabe Vilardi who I want to look into.

The 11^th overall pick in 2017 has had a very unique and non-linear developmental path. After dealing with many injuries, including a nagging back injury that was at one point rumoured to be career threatening, he rebounded with solid showings in both AHL and NHL stints in his D+2 year. He was a tweener for the next two years, and coming into camp this year it felt like there A) wasn’t room for him to thrive, and B) that he didn’t quite have the same upside that he had flashed before being drafted. He was someone that I checked in on in my dynasty leagues to take a chance on if the price was very low, but I didn’t end up jumping on what was still a discount cost at the time. Now, his stock is soaring, and it’s unlikely he’s ever going to be so cheap to acquire again.

That all being said, and while his eight goals through 13 games is impressive (he scored his ninth on Saturday), Vilardi’s underlying numbers are very inflated at the moment. His current shooting percentage of 24.3% is about one-and-a-half time his career shooting percentage of 16%. His IPP is a ridiculous 87.5%, though strangely his secondary assist percentage was only 20% (entering Staurday). The goal scoring should drop a bit, but the five assists through 14 games looks reasonable overall. A 60-point-pace the rest of the way is not out of the question, especially if he keeps seeing at least 50% of his shifts in the top-six, which is a good bet as his ice time in each of his last four games has been above 17 minutes. (nov5)

3. Victor Olofsson is also worth checking in on. He’s scoring, yes, but he only has one assist on the year, and is averaging just a little more than 15 minutes of ice time per game thus far. That makes him a risky play moving forward, and it’s likely that his production is streaky all season. Working in Olofsson’s favour though is that he is shooting a lot more – nearly 1.5 times what he was doing per minute in previous years. That means, if the ice time does start to creep up, there’s tons of volume to be gained even when his shooting percentage regresses by half.

Additionally, he just hit his 200-game breakout threshold, which would put him into the 70+ point range as an expectation based on a 20% increase from his norm the last couple years. (nov5)

4. Still with the goals list, we can all see Erik Karlsson there and know that he’s WAY over-performing now in the goal column. Regardless, it is still great to see him playing back at an exceptional level, and impacting the team’s offense to such a degree. In hindsight it should have been more clear that he would see a big bump in production with Brent Burns gone, but instead of dwelling on it, let’s just file it away to remember for the next time we have a similar situation. (nov5)

5. The emergence of Bo Horvat as a big scorer comes two years later than everyone was expecting. He scored 10 goals in 17 games in the 2020 playoffs, but then only scored 50 goals in his next 126 games in the regular season over the next two years. Well, this year he’s stepped things up, is shooting more often, finishing more efficiently, and is also seeing some more offensive zone starts. The 70-goal pace won’t continue, but he could very well hit 40 at this point, which would be huge considering his career high was 31, which he set just last season. (nov5)

6. A few days ago Arvid Soderblom notched his first career NHL win. With Petr Mrazek and Alex Stalock out with injuries at the moment, Soderblom has a chance to showcase his talents. This is the kind of opportunity where a goalie can force his way into regular playing time, as neither Mrazek or Stalock is a real roadblock even when healthy.

Let’s not forget that this is the Chicago Blackhawks though, who are supposed to be contending for the Connor Bedard lottery, and not the playoffs, so expecting many wins would be foolish. (nov5)

7. I don’t have a lot of faith in the Kraken's Martin Jones and you probably don’t either, but I should mention that he has wins and quality starts in four of his last five games. Due to a rough start, Jones’s save percentage is .901%, even with this recent run of exceptional play. Philipp Grubauer is still considered week-to-week, so Jones might not be the worst option if you need a goalie stream. (nov4)

8. The Cold Report on Frozen Tools shows another familiar name for the Blues. Ryan O’Reilly has been without a point in four consecutive games, and he has just one point (a goal) to show over nine games. No points at 5-on-5 either. He’s normally a dependable player, and all of his advanced stats on the Frozen Tools are green, which indicate a strong buy-low opportunity. What’s weird as well is that he’s also in a contract year, so he should be extra motivated. I’d go with O’Reilly as a buy very low, as he is now 31 and playing at a deep center position where there are usually tons of replacement-level options available in standard-sized leagues. 

By the way, O’Reilly’s minus-12 is the second-worst ranking in the league. Only teammate Jordan Kyrou‘s minus-15 is worse. Neither O’Reilly or Kyrou has recorded an assist yet this season, and both have played nine games. Ouch. (nov4)

9. On Wednesday I covered defensemen who were filling in for PP1 incumbents who are injured. An omission to that list was the brother combination of Seth Jones and Caleb Jones in Chicago. Seth is expected to miss the next 3-4 weeks with a thumb injury, so Caleb has taken his spot there. The younger Jones brother has six points (all assists) over his last seven games. Late this week, Jones was rostered in just 3% of Yahoo leagues and 19% of Fantrax leagues, so he’s very likely available if you could use an injury replacement on defense. (nov4)

10. Jonathan Toews has points in seven of his last eight games, including seven goals in 12 games for the season. It’s easy to brush off Captain Serious now that he is 34 and the Blackhawks aren’t hiding the fact that they’re rebuilding. Yet there he was this week, rostered in just 19 percent of Yahoo leagues and 37% of Fantrax leagues. Obviously he’s not going to continue scoring goals at that pace, but it appears that he still has something left to provide for fantasy teams. (nov4)

11. (Timothy Liljegren returned to the Maple Leafs' lineup on Saturday). It was a breakout season, of sorts, for Liljegren a year ago. He was second, behind Morgan Rielly, in points per minute from the blue line. What’s more is that per Evolving Hockey, he led their blue line in expected goals impact, and was second in actual goals-for impact, behind Rielly again. With Liljegren on the ice with them, Toronto’s top line generated a whopping 73% more expected goals last season and 85% more actual goals, on a per-minute basis. He was a great puck-mover for them even if he played third-pair ice time. We may have to see how Liljegren fares returning from injury, but this could be the boost the team needs from the back end. (nov3)

12. Jake Walman is a player I’ve been high on for a few years (relatively speaking, for a 26-year-old third-round pick). He looked good playing a sheltered role in St. Louis and my wish  is he can keep that play with Detroit. This could be a big season for him though he’ll still likely be a third-pair guy for them. That means no fantasy relevance, at least not in 2022-23. Hopes are he can put together a full-ish season and live up to the potential he’s flashed. Reports have Walman (shoulder) set to return from injury this week. (nov3)

13. It will depend on the league, but Jonathan Huberdeau was likely taken somewhere in the second round in most formats. To date, he has one goal and five points in 10 games, posting 19 whole shots on goal.

One obvious problem is the ice-time decline, which is expected for this Flames team. Even a year ago when they had arguably the best top line in hockey, Matthew Tkachuk was playing under 18 minutes a game. Expecting much more than 18 minutes from Huberdeau was expecting too much, even if his sub-17-minute mark is a lot steeper than anticipated. Regardless, without top-tier efficiency, no one will be able to post 100 points skating under 17 minutes a game. That is a huge issue. There's also the fact that he has yet to mesh well with linemates Tyler Toffoli and Elias Lindholm. At one point this past week, the trio was sitting at 2.8 expected goals for and a 52.5% expected goal share, which isn’t awful, but nowhere near elite, and the zero actual goals scored at 5-on-5 stuck out like a sore thumb. (nov3)

14. Detroit’s injuries have piled up and that will not help Moritz Seider‘s case to repeat a 50-point season. He has also been inconsistently on the top PP unit, which was a big factor in his production a year ago. He has one PPP in nine games, a year after posting 21 in 82 contests. He also hasn’t scored yet, which will right itself.

I have hope here. Now that Seider is back on the top PP unit. The question is the 5-on-5 scoring persisting through the injuries and (hopefully) getting some more ice time. Either way, I think he still reaches 40 points, and with his peripherals, will be just fine in multi-cat formats. But he was often drafted as a top-10 defenseman in multi-cat leagues, a height that will be difficult to reach from here. (nov3)

15. This past week, Tage Thompson had himself one of the best fantasy evenings we’ll see this season. He capped off a hat trick in the third period to go with just as many assists. The Buffalo center had nine total shots, too, giving him 39 shots for his first nine games of the campaign. (nov1)

16. In the fantasy world we typically think of the Blue Jackets as a lower-scoring team that is pretty frugal in terms of giving up goals against. When they added Johnny Hockey, it would be fair of you to think that this team had solved the former. So far it turns out that the former issue is still not really resolved – and now the goaltending and defense have been terrible.

I have long been a fan of Elvis Merzlikins, early in his career even considering him one of the three best young goalies in the world in terms of talent and NHL-readiness (Igor Shesterkin and Ilya Sorokin the others). His SV% was 0.923 as a rookie in 2019-20, slipping to 0.916 and then 0.907 last year. So far this season he is at 0.863. I must admit, my confidence is shaken for this season. But long-term I’m still a backer. You see production nosedive like this for a season or two and then bounce back all the time. Once a goalie is strong for a sustained length of time, he has a bounceback year if his talent level is high and he gets enough of a leash. You saw it with Pekka Rinne, for example. Sergei Bobrovsky, too. Horrible seasons in decline, only to bounce back and win Vezina trophies.

Merzlikins’ contract ($5.4M AAV each of the next four years after this one). Without that contract, then I’d be much (much) less certain of a rebound. But this team will keep throwing him out there, letting him work through this. (oct31)

17. Still with the Jackets, it was good to see Patrik Laine score in Finland. If there is one player who could use the Finland trip as a stepping stone to start off a scoring streak, it would be Laine. Getting Laine going would also be a key factor in Johnny Gaudreau getting back close to last year’s scoring pace. The latter's goal scoring is ticking along at a very similar rate, but his assist rate is significantly less than half of last year, putting him down at a 62-point pace, which has been about his floor over the last decade. At least his owners at this point can take solace that it shouldn’t get worse. (nov5)

18. Alexander Holtz, the 2020 seventh overall pick, has been a healthy scratch for eight of the Devils' last nine games. Honestly, just send the guy down. Bring him up when an injury hits the top six. If I had him in my league, I would like to see him go down and pound out 20 points in 20 games, get called up brimming with confidence in December, and have a great second half. This press box stuff is not good, because it tells me they’ll keep putting him in the lineup every two or three games and give him 10 minutes on the fourth line. No thank you. (oct31)

19. Jarred Tinordi was drafted 22^nd overall in 2010 and couldn’t get his NHL career to take off. But in 2019, at the age of 27, he started making the odd appearance. And since that time he has learned that using his 6-6, 229-pound frame for bodychecking is his ticket to getting called up.

Early in his pro efforts he was averaging about 1.75 Hits per game. But since 2019 that average is closer to 2.75. This season he has played every game so far for a Chicago team in need of bodies on the back end. Tinordi has averaged 3.78 Hits per game so far. Besides six Hits on Sunday, the 30-year-old Tinordi picked up two assists, which I believe is his first ever multi-point effort in the NHL. Tinordi makes for a sneaky-good Dobbernomics own (value), for those who play this awesome free game… (oct31)

20. Don’t look now, but it appears that teenaged rookie Dylan Guenther is starting to settle in despite still seeing only about 12:30 minutes of ice time per contest. He has been given some ES time alongside Clayton Keller, so the opportunities are starting to emerge. If he can work his way up to the top PP unit full-time, he could really blossom. It’s a situation worth watching. (oct31)

21. Marco Rossi is struggling. Of late, Rossi has often been playing with Brandon Duhaime and Tyson Jost. That’s a step away from the press box and two steps away from AHL. I don’t mind top prospects going down. It’s all about confidence at that age. (oct31)

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Have a good week, folks – stay safe!!

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