It looked as if Ottawa would have an excellent top-6 forward group heading into the season thanks to the development of their prospects and adding Alex DeBrincat and Claude Giroux. Unfortunately, Josh Norris injured his shoulder just five games into the season and that left them rotating centers on the second line for several weeks. The good news for Ottawa is that he returned to his normal second-line spot at morning skate, perhaps a month earlier than the team anticipated. It doesn't look like he'll be back in the lineup before Christmas, but it certainly does seem as if he's well ahead of schedule.

Norris had 45 goals (!) in his most recent 82 regular season games before getting hurt. While a lot of those were thanks to his power-play performance, putting up 17 PP tallies in that span, that does a disservice to his 5-on-5 scoring. In that span, he managed 1.09 goals/60 minutes at 5-on-5, tied with Patrice Bergeron, and in the 82^nd percentile of forwards (at least 1000 minutes played). If he can keep scoring at that pace, on top of his power-play prowess, Norris stands an excellent chance to be a high-end top-6 scorer for the near-term.

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Kyle Palmieri was back on the ice for the Islanders at practice on Monday:

Kyle Palmieri (upper-body, IR) is on the ice for practice. #Isles

— Stefen Rosner (@stefen_rosner) December 12, 2022

The team also welcomed back Anthony Beauvillier after he missed the team's latest game on the weekend. It should be noted neither was a full participant in practice, so it's not confirmed either are ready to return Tuesday when they head to Boston but they will be travel with the team. Regardless, that's the only game the Islanders have between from Monday-Thursday this week, so it could be just one more game missed before both hitting the lineup on the weekend. That is just a guess on my part, but it seems reasonable enough.

Palmieri was having a decent goal-scoring season with six goals in 20 games before leaving the lineup just before American Thanksgiving. Add in the 1.5 hits per game and there was something here for fantasy owners in banger leagues. Those looking for depth help should check the waiver wires as the team has a 5-in-8 stretch leading starting Friday in Arizona.  

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Ryan Hartman was back on the ice for the Wild before their game on Monday night:

Ryan Hartman is skating with the #mnwild for the first time since getting hurt Oct. 30. His anticipated return should be significant to this lineup if all goes well during this week's practices

— Michael Russo (@RussoHockey) December 12, 2022

Hartman has been out of the lineup since Halloween with an upper-body injury. He had just one goal in nine games before being sidelined.

Since the start of the 2021 Bubble season, Minnesota's top line generates 2.8 expected goals and 4.2 actual goals per 60 minutes at 5-on-5 with Hartman and 2.3 expected goals/2.7 actual goals without him. Sam Steel has done an admirable job filling in on the top line over the last few weeks so it's a wonder where Hartman slots when he returns. Matt Boldy sure could use a center that can play to his strengths more than Frédérick Gaudreau, whose defensive play is stellar but offensive contributions are questionable. It could be an end to Steel's tenuous role on the top line, but we'll have to see what combinations look like in practices as Hartman gets up to speed.

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Robby Fabbri was on the ice for Detroit's Monday practice without a non-contact jersey:

Robby Fabbri no longer wearing the blue non-contact jersey for practice. Expected to return next month. #RedWings pic.twitter.com/C89zYQcEkU

— Ansar Khan (@AnsarKhanMLive) December 12, 2022

Fabbri hasn't played since mid-March nine months ago thanks to his knee surgery. The soon-to-be 26-year-old forward has endured a lot of injuries in his career, including a pair of knee surgeries back in 2017 that caused him to miss over 100 regular season games. It is fair to wonder what his performance will be when he's ready to get back in the lineup but it's a boost for a team that is fighting for a playoff spot. Like Hartman, we'll have to see where he's being slotted as he gets more practice time underneath him as the team said it'll be a few weeks yet before he returns.

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Tyler Johnson also had some good news on the injury front:

Tyler Johnson (ankle) is out of his no-contact jersey and practicing. #Blackhawks pic.twitter.com/K132BTqvjy

— Charlie Roumeliotis (@CRoumeliotis) December 12, 2022

There may not be much fantasy goodness on the Blackhawks this year as the team sits last in the league in goals per minute (as of Monday afternoon). The roster has zero players with 10 goals and Patrick Kane is leading the way with just 20 points. Johnson, however, had been earning some PP1 time earlier in the year before all these injuries cropped up and he had three PPPs in six games. Not that we should expect that level of production to persist but fantasy owners in deep banger leagues might want to take a look here. Johnson has 113 hits over his last 87 games and that, with reasonable PP production, could make for a useful depth piece. We will wait to get more information on when he returns and what the power play looks like but keep him in mind.  

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Eeli Tolvanen was claimed off waivers by Seattle. Tolvanen had played just 13 games for Nashville this season and hadn't suited up in over three weeks. This has been a consistent theme of his with the Predators and now the team is moving on from him.

Right now, there probably isn't much fantasy value here. The Kraken have their top-2 lines set, it seems, and it's doubtful Tolvanen is put on a checking line with Yanni Gourde. This is an organization that can take its time with him, even if they're in a playoff race for the next four months. I am still a believer in his talent and this is the same organization that sold low on Kevin Fiala just a few years ago. Tolvanen gets a new lease on his NHL career though the fantasy value isn't there yet.

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Jack Eichel was sent to the injured reserve for Vegas and he’ll miss at least the next two games. We are waiting for more of an update from the team after Eichel had been out of the lineup in their game on the weekend.

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Tim Stützle took a hard crash into the boards going a pretty high speed, left Ottawa's game on Monday night, and did not return. Despite the good news about Norris, this is obviously very bad news for the team right now. They can ill afford any more serious injuries and this one looked bad for Stützle. Derick Brassard took his place on the top line, but Shane Pinto might be getting a lot more ice time very soon.

Ottawa took that game from Anaheim by a 3-0 score. Alex DeBrincat scored twice, his first two-goal game in exactly a month. Cam Talbot made 32 saves for his first shutout of the season.

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Cole Caufield was also injured and left Montreal's game on Monday, not to return. We will update when we can but this is not a team that can afford to lose a player of his magnitude. Mike Hoffman took a lot of spins on the top line in his absence, for what it's worth.

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New York came back from a 3-1 deficit to beat New Jersey 4-3 in a resilient win for the Rangers. The Kid Line was reunited and both Kaapo Kakko and Filip Chytil tallied for the Rangers. Chytil had a goal, an assist, and five shots in nearly 15 minutes of ice time. This is the kind of performance from those players that this team needs to make a push.

Vincent Trocheck also had a goal and an assist, which maybe portends good things in the future, along with what we'll discuss a little later these Ramblings.

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Evgeni Malkin scored with 35 seconds left in Pittsburgh's home tilt against Dallas to lift the Penguins to a 2-1 victory. That was just his ninth goal of the season and if that shooting percentage can keep regressing, Malkin could have an excellent production season.

Roope Hintz scored the lone goal for the Stars and recorded six shots, three more than any teammate on this evening. Ty Dellandrea remained on the second line for the entire game and finished with 13:51 in TOI.

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Jordan Binnington stopped all 25 shots he faced from Nashville as the St. Louis Blues took a 1-0 overtime victory from the Predators. Brayden Schenn had gone nine straight games without a goal before tallying the game-winning marker. Jordan Kyrou – more on him later as well – had an assist on the winner, managing five shots on goal.

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Anyone that has read my Ramblings in recent history will know that I like to look for data/information in a wide range of spots for any advantage I can get in the fantasy game. Whether it be our Frozen Tools and the Schedule Planner (among other wonderful tools), Natural Stat Trick, or other stats websites, the search is varied. One of these spots is Corey Sznajder's Patreon; he is someone who hand-tracks hundreds of NHL games every year across dozens of micro-stats. Of interest to me in particular is his scoring chances and scoring chance assists (passes leading to teammate scoring chances) at 5-on-5, or my name of Scoring Chance Contributions (SCC). They have very good correlation with 5-on-5 scoring and is something that I don't think gets a lot of traction, namely because it does come from a Patreon.

Regardless, I find there's value in it and with the season about one-third over, I thought it'd be a good chance to check up on some players. We will limit it to guys with at least 100 minutes tracked at 5-on-5 so there may be some names that fall through the cracks for right now.

Top Five

In order, the top five players by SCC are Jack Hughes, Nathan MacKinnon, Mark Stone, Jesper Bratt, and Auston Matthews. There probably shouldn't be much surprise there, and Connor McDavid has caught up after a slow start, ranking seventh.

On the season, the median 5-on-5 on-ice goals-for mark is roughly 2.5 goals/60. Those five guys, in order, are at 4.1, 3.1, 2.9, 4.2, and 3.8 goals for/60 minutes. It is a wonder what Stone's would be if they had another scorer on his line rather than Chandler Stephenson, but I digress.

Magnitude matters here and it should be noted that Hughes is at 20 SCC/60 minutes with MacKinnon at 16.2. There is a similar gap between first (Hughes) and second (MacKinnon) as second and 10^th (Alexis Lafrenière, 12.4). Hughes is just having a marvelous season.

Alexis Lafrenière

Oh, yeah, you read that right. In this sample so far, Laffy is 10^th in the league by SCC, ahead of names like Alex DeBrincat, Leon Draisaitl (though like McDavid, he's been climbing fast), Sebastian Aho, and Mikko Rantanen. You wouldn't know it, as the 2020 first rounder has just 13 points in 29 games and his points/60 rate is nearly identical to 2021-22.

This is where real-life value and fantasy value can diverge. Lafrenière putting up a 40-point season would certainly be a disappointment to Rangers fans and fantasy owners alike. That would be all without a single power-play point, though, as he's sitting with zero in 29 games (going into Monday night's tilt). Swap Vincent Trocheck for Lafrenière on the power play and Laffy could easily have a 60-point season. His line mates are shooting just 7.9% at 5-on-5 as his three most-common line mates – Trocheck, Kakko, Panarin – have just 12 goals at 5-on-5. Barclay Goodrow alone has six. More finishing should see more points but until he's a PP1 fixture, Lafrenière's fantasy value will stay dormant.

Jordan Kyrou

Nestled between DeBrincat and Draisaitl is St. Louis's most recent contract extensionee in Kyrou. He had strong SCC numbers early in the season, but it clearly wasn't translating to point production as he posted four points in the team's first 10 games. The offence came alive in November and has been in the middle of the league in goals per minute over the team's last 20 games. Kyrou has responded with seven goals and 19 points in his last 19 games, posting over three shots per game.

The future of St. Louis is kind of muddled. The team went into Monday night's game against Nashville five points out of a playoff spot with five teams to jump and nearly as many goals against as Vancouver. Vladimir Tarasenko and Ryan O'Reilly are both on the wrong side of 30 years old and pending free agents, thus trade candidates. The trio if Thomas-Buchnevich-Kyrou should be around for a couple more years, though, and that's enough for Kyrou to keep producing.

Vincent Trocheck

The next guy I'll discuss is Vincent Trocheck (who has played a lot with Lafrenière this year, so the SCC correlates with his). In the 115-minute sample, Trochecks' SCC/60 is 10.4, just behind Martin Necas's 10.5, and just ahead of Nikita Kucherov's 10.3. His production has three problems:

• His shooting percentage at 5-on-5 (5.2%, a four-year low) is pretty bad. Not that he's usually a high converter, having a couple similar seasons back in Florida, but it's hurting his goal totals.
• The team is shooting 5.9% with him on the ice, which is hurting his assist totals. The lowest of his career in any season where he played at least 60 games is 7% so there is likely some good regression to come, the question is how much, and if it's enough to really juice his fantasy value.
• His individual points percentage (IPP) sits at 53.9%, the lowest of his career. It could be his wingers taking all the touches, but it is another sign of potential positive regression.

I think Trocheck should be better fantasy-wise over his next 50-some games, though his owners in banger leagues can't be too angry with his 3.4 shots and 2.6 hits per game. Imagine if he puts up 35-40 points the rest of the way? There could be huge upside here in the second half.

Kevin Fiala and Andre Burakovsky

The last two guys we'll review are two guys who switched Western Conference teams in the offseason. Both are having good years with Fiala sitting at 32 points in 31 games on the Los Angeles roster (with nine PPPs) while Burakovsky has 27 points in 27 games (10 PPPs), pacing for a career year in Seattle. Both are just outside the top-30 forwards by SCC, ranking slightly ahead of names like Patrice Bergeron and Tim Stützle.

Burakovsky could be in for a double-regression whammy. His own IPP at 5-on-5 is far too high at 93.8% (career-high of 82.4% in 2016-17) but he also has a career-low secondary assist rate. If that can balance out somewhat, maybe he really will push for point-per-game status this year. I would lean closer to 70 points but there's something special about the Kraken this year.

It is worth noting that Fiala is shooting 7.8% at 5-on-5 this year, having had three straight years at 11.9% or better in Minnesota. If that can inch up a little bit, he could be even better over his final 51 games. Something to keep in mind for anyone either looking to trade him away or trade for him.