One thing Montreal made it a priority to do under the new management regime is load up the blue line. Justin Barron a key piece of the Artturi Lehkonen trade, they grabbed Jonathan Kovacevic off waivers (more on him later), they traded for Mike Matheson, and brought in Arber Xhekaj (and there’s still Lane Huston in college). Add in the young guys like Jordan Harris and Kaiden Guhle, and the re-tool of the blue line is taking shape. To further this, the Habs signed their 2019 second-round pick defenceman Jayden Struble:

Jayden Struble is signing a AHL deal to finish the season. His entry level contract will begin next season. @CanadiensMTL

— Renaud Lavoie (@renlavoietva) March 15, 2023

Because of his age and contract limits, his two-year ELC starts in 2023-24 and there is no entry-level slide, according to Cap Friendly. While he will start in the AHL for now, it means that whether he's in the NHL or AHL next season, the team is burning a year of ELC status. It should be noted that Montreal has nine defencemen signed for 2023-24, Struble makes 10, plus the prospect pool. Struble has a hill to climb if he wants to earn regular minutes next campaign, and there's still the matter of the quality of the team. Do not expect much fantasy value for a while. His Dobber Prospects profile is here.

Staying with Montreal, bad news about forward Christian Dvorak:

Medical update on forward Christian Dvorakhttps://t.co/hnS54V7D0R

— Canadiens Montréal (@CanadiensMTL) March 15, 2023

That he'll be ready for 2023-24 is good news for him and the team long-term, but it adds another name to the lengthy injury list.

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Toronto also signed a pick in Ryan Tverberg, a seventh-rounder from 2020. Needless to say, Toronto's forward group is pretty packed right now and will be again next season. Then the Big Four start to have contracts come up and it's a matter of what this roster looks like in 2025. For now, just a name to mention, and we'll see where things stand a year from now. His Dobber Prospects profile can be found here.

Morgan Rielly and Mikko Rantanen scored the lone goals between Toronto and Colorado on Wednesday night as two high-octane teams combined for just 48 shots through regulation and overtime. Rantanen had five shots while Valeri Nichushkin had four as the Avalanche took the 2-1 shootout victory. Auston Matthews landed six of his own.

Mitch Marner played over 29 minutes in his highest TOI game of the season by over a minute. Ilya Samsonov saved 28 of 29 shots but his team couldn't help him in the shootout.

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Washington and Buffalo also went to a shootout, though they combined for eight goals in their matchup with the Capitals escaping with a 5-4 shootout win. Alex Ovechkin had a goal and an assist with five shots and two hits despite being a game-time decision. TJ Oshie also had 1+1 with two shots and three hits of his own. Trevor van Riemsdyk had an assist, five shots, and two blocks in over 24 minutes of ice time.

JJ Peterka scored for Buffalo, as did Tyson Jost and Zemgus Girgensons as the secondary guys really stepped up for them. Owen Power had an assist and two shots in the contest.

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For fantasy owners worried about a key absence on Tuesday night, fret no more:

Steven Stamkos is on the ice for the #Bolts practice today

— Gabby Shirley (@Gabby_Shirley_) March 15, 2023

A good sign for the veteran forward as the team marches towards the postseason and, potentially, a fourth straight Cup berth. Ross Colton was skating beside him at practice, too, with Anthony Cirelli down on the third line.

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It doesn’t matter a whole lot for fantasy but the NHL provided an update on the playoff/awards/draft schedule:

Most of these dates were previously known, but here's a tidy league calendar for the rest of the season. pic.twitter.com/bJOZDh62aw

— Cory Lavalette (@corylav) March 15, 2023

One thing I haven’t seen announced: the start of free agent frenzy. It used to be Canada Day every year and then COVID threw a wrench in that the last few free agency periods. If the Draft finishes on Thursday, June 29th, it would leave them time to have free agency on Saturday, July 1st, but I’m asking them to not do that. Having free agency on Canada Day is bad enough, can we not do it on a weekend as well?

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The Ducks signed rookie Nikita Nesterenko to a three-year entry-level deal. He will also report to Anaheim so it appears as if he will play some NHL games, burning the first year of that deal. His Dobber Prospects profile is here.

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In continuing the theme of my Ramblings this week focusing on defencemen, we're going to look at some scoring chance data. This will come from Corey Sznajder's tracking data, the source of a lot of micro-stats some people might see floating around social media like controlled zone entries and scoring chance assists.

Back in January, we looked at some defencemen by scoring chance contributions per 60 minutes at 5-on-5. That is simply adding an individual's scoring chances to assists on a teammate's scoring chance, on a 60-minute basis. Clear? Wonderful. Let's look at some improvements over the last seven weeks, as well as just the overall leaders.

For reference, here are the top-10 defencemen by SCC/60 at 5v5 so far this season (minimum of 200 minutes tracked):

Looking at the names on that list, it makes sense that this might be a stat that we look to for some fantasy gems, yeah? Let's look at where some players stand, how they've improved, and what it could mean for the next month (and next year).

Rasmus Ristolainen

I would read a 5000-word breakdown on the changes in Ristolainen's game from his first nine seasons compared to his 2022-23 performance under John Tortorella. Per Evolving Hockey, he had never had a positive impact on overall expected goals at even strength until this season, had never had a positive impact on expected goals against at even strength, and had never had a positive impact on actual goals against at even strength. All three are happening this season. It is far from his best fantasy season, and it’s unlikely he ever reaches those highs of 2015-2019 again unless he's running a team's top power play, but there were questions of how long he might actually last in the league. Well, he's having a legitimately good season, and he's also seen the biggest improvement in SCC/60 at 5-on-5 since our last check-in. it is now nearly a league-average rate. Whatever some people (including me) think of Torts as a coach, resurrecting Risto's career is an accomplishment.

Cale Makar

Not that we had a lot of reason to concern ourselves, but Makar's SCC/60 numbers had fallen off quite a bit from last year to this year. Of course, he just needed some time, and he posted the second-largest increase from late January to now, behind Ristolainen. That jump has pushed him to second in the league among defencemen by SCC/60, trailing only Adam Fox. Makar's rate (6.4/60) is now nearly triple the league average for defencemen (2.2/60), and is comparable to forwards like Mats Zuccarello and Trevor Zegras. Though Makar has seen some injury issues since Christmas, he has 10 points in his last five games and has 55 points in 52 games on the season. Yeah, he's just fine.

Noah Dobson

A more important name to discuss for a change is Dobson, who saw the fifth-largest increase of any defenceman in our sample. On the season, as noted in the screenshot above, he's fifth among all defencemen in SCC/60 on the campaign and is nearly 2.5 times the average for rearguards. Though he hasn't been on a level like Makar, Dobson does have 11 points in 17 games since the All-Star break, managing 42 shots, 16 hits, and 16 blocks. That isn't monster point production, but he's tied for second among all Islanders skaters in that span (Anders Lee also has 11). The Islanders are also a bottom-10 scoring team in that span while Dobson has skated under 20 minutes a night on average. Imagine if he's skating 22 minutes a night for a top-10 scoring team? A better offensive environment would be nice.

Shayne Gostisbehere

One of the more underrated pickups of the deadline, especially with Andrei Svechnikov's recent knee injury, is Gostisbehere. For a team that relies on its blue line to generate offence, having a tremendous puck-mover makes sense (like Tony DeAngelo a year ago). He is playing third-pair minutes behind their Core Four and that also makes sense. Regardless, he has seen one of the 10 biggest SCC/60 increases since January and he's also now top-10 among all defencemen in the league this season. With Carolina's dwindling high-end offensive players and Ghost's reduced role, fantasy value could be tough to come by for the next few weeks. Paying attention to where he lands this summer will be a big deal though because there's a lot of offensive potential here if he can ever get a role like he had in Arizona but in a better offensive environment.

Justin Faulk

While he didn't have a monster SCC/60 increase over the last couple of months, Faulk did see a rise, and he's now 12^th in our rankings, easily a top-pair rate, and comparable to names like Thomas Chabot and Mikhail Sergachev. This has helped his production along a bit, as he posted just 16 points in 41 games from the second week of November until the All-Star Game, but has seven points in 15 games since. That is not great production, but 45 shots, 16 hits, and 24 blocks in that span has provided good multi-cat value. St. Louis is an interesting team because they did get rid of a lot of players at the trade deadline, but still have a handful of high-end players in their early-to-mid 20s. There could be enough around him to still have decent production in 2023-24, but the cupboard is starting to get bare.  

Evan Bouchard

A modest Faulk-like increase from Bouchard over the last seven weeks has pushed him inside the 90^th percentile, or easily a first-line rate. He does have 9 points in 18 games since the All-Star break, which isn't monster production, but a lot better than the 18 points through 50 games he had to start the campaign. What's more is he has six points in five games since the trade deadline, which provided him more minutes and a top PP role. Bouchard was a player many of us (present company included) expected a leap from in the fantasy game this season. It took five months, but we finally got there, and it bodes extremely well for at least two more seasons until Leon Draisaitl is a free agent.

Jonathan Kovacevic

It is hard to overstate the luck Montreal might have gotten here. They grabbed Kovacevic off waivers from Winnipeg back in October. In 63 games with the Canadiens, Kovacevic leads their blue line in goal share at 5-on-5, expected goal share at 5-on-5, expected goals-for impact at even strength, and an expected goals impact comparable to names like Dmitry Orlov and John Marino. He is also the very last name on the list of defencemen that are at least one standard deviation above the league average by SCC/60, nestled between Jaccob Slavin and Hampus Lindholm. His Individual Points Percentage (IPP) is just 30%, though. That means he's registering a point on just 30% of Montreal goals scored with him on the ice at 5-on-5. It is the second-lowest among regular Habs blue liners (Joel Edmundson at 20.7%) and four out of seven of them are above 41%. If he manages 40% instead of 30%, he has 16 points at 5-on-5, and his points/60 would be a top-pair rate. There could be a bit of bad luck here and if he can maintain this play as the team improves over the next few years, he could provide a solid mix of good production with good peripherals, but elite at neither. This is absolutely a situation to monitor this summer and into training camp.