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. Boy am I ever upset now that I traded away Luke Evangelista last offseason to acquire Mackenzie Weegar. Offensively, Weegar – despite seven points in his last six games – has struggled for most of the season, as it can largely be attributed to systems and bad luck. Calgary is not scoring as much as Weegar’s Florida teams have the last couple years.

Meanwhile, Evangelista is already up to nine points in 13 games, putting up 2.4 shots per game while skating more than 16 minutes a night. He’s also not feeding on power play points with one so far. His most common linemates are his AHL teammates from the first half of the year, the streaking Tommy Novak, to go along with winger Kiefer Sherwood. (mar22)

2. Patrik Laine is expected to miss the next two to four weeks with a tricep strain. Unfortunate timing, as Laine had posted multiple points in each of his last three games and four of his past five games. Try to move Laine to an injured slot or the bench if you can, but he is droppable in single-season leagues in the fantasy playoffs with that kind of recovery timeline. Prior to Friday’s game, Laine led the Jackets with a 0.95 PTS/GP pace. (mar25)

3. Entering Saturday action, Kyle Palmieri had seven points over his last four games. The Isles don’t have the greatest volume in terms of games remaining (see Schedule Planner), yet Palmieri has been on a scoring line and the first power play. He’s only 4% rostered in Yahoo and 15% rostered in Fantrax, so maybe you can get some mileage out of him the rest of the way. (mar25)

4. JJ Peterka, Dylan Cozens and Jack Quinn have formed a kid line for the Sabres, with none of the three being older than 22 years of age. Cozens is now rostered in the majority of leagues, but Quinn and Peterka are rostered in less than 10% of Yahoo leagues (Peterka just 1%!) Keep in mind that Buffalo has a bit of a tougher schedule next week, which you can find out about in the latest Looking Ahead. (mar25)

5. In case you missed it, Filip Hronek‘s debut in Vancouver last Friday resulted in no points but a team-leading 24:25 in ice time. As expected, Hronek skated on the Canucks’ second power-play unit. Hronek is already on pace to reach 40 points for the first time in his career, although I wouldn’t expect a major change in value in him moving from Detroit to Vancouver. The Canucks have banked a lot on him (1^st and 2^nd round picks) to be that missing piece to lift them into the playoffs next season. Expect him to play a ton on the right side of the defense, which might be the most glaring weakness on the roster. That in itself should provide solid peripherals and shouldn’t hurt his overall point totals either. (mar25)

6. Once the details of what happened to Washington defenseman John Carlson a few months ago, just seeing him back on the ice with the Capitals in practice was great to see. On Thursday night, he made his return to the lineup, playing on a pairing with Martin Fehervary. It is just nice to see a full recovery and he can get back to the game.

It was a very successful return to the ice for Carlson, as he managed a goal and an assist in Washington’s 6-1 beatdown of Chicago. He had three shots, a couple of PIMs, a Hit, and both his points were on the man advantage. That is an instant impact that the team has been missing since Christmas. By the way, it was also Nicklas Backstrom‘s first multipoint game of the season as his return from hip surgery hasn’t been as smooth for the team as hoped. (mar24)

7. William Eklund is day-to-day in the AHL, as he was injured after being sent down following his stint with the big club. At this point, we may not see him back with the San Jose Sharks this season, and that makes projecting him for next year very interesting. What the team does this summer – and who they draft – will tell us a lot. (mar24)

8. Igor Shesterkin has a 0.931 save percentage in his last 10 starts, winning eight of them. The Rangers are an entirely different team with a 0.930 Shesterkin as opposed to 0.910 (as is every team, I guess). (mar24)

9. My fantasy hockey seasons are varied. There is a keeper league that is my last traditional fantasy hockey league, there are a handful of best ball formats that I draft before the season, and there is Daily Fantasy Hockey that I play almost every day. It is the best ball formats (here) that I want to discuss, and more specifically what went wrong with my regular season. (mar24)

10. This is the time of year where college seasons have wrapped and players are starting to sign with their NHL teams. Most of these guys will have no relevance in the fantasy game at any point of their careers, but they are worth noting because a gem is found every once in a while like Torey Krug, Zach Hyman, and Kevin Hayes (whether they refused to sign with the team that drafted them or otherwise). (mar23)

11. It’s also that time of year where the backups goalies gain a little bit more value as they see some more starts due to starters resting. Additionally, teams out of the playoff race have the double-incentive to try starting their third or fourth string guys to see what the young goalies have, as well as sitting their better goalie for the purpose of ending up with better lottery odds. (mar22)

12. The other thing to be wary of with goalies, is the young guys that tail off in the last half or quarter of the season. Jake Oettinger is not a bad goalie, but he has had a rough go of it in some games lately. His 48 games played in a season last year was a career high for him in any league, and he is now up to 55. Owners may need to be a big more selective starting him the rest of the way. Luckily, Dallas has a fairly easy schedule to close out the month, but the road start against Colorado on April 1^st is one I would try to avoid if you can. (mar22)

13. The NHLPA released their player poll on things like top forward, top defenseman, most underrated and so forth. The most underrated, in my opinion, is Elias Pettersson.

Not because he has a perception of being bad, but because outside of the Connor McDavid–Auston Matthews–Nathan MacKinnon triumvirate, Pettersson has a real case at being the best forward in the NHL. He is not a lock or anything, but he’s someone I would discuss in the same breath as names like Kirill Kaprizov, David Pastrnak, Matthew Tkachuk, Aleksander Barkov, and Leon Draisaitl, and I’m not sure that’s how he’s viewed, or anything close to it.

In fact, ESPN’s player survey from last month had him outside the top-12 centers in the NHL, and TSN had him outside the top-50 players in the NHL at the outset of the 2022-23 campaign. (mar23)

14. Over the last three seasons, Pettersson was 28^th among forwards in points per minute (at time of writing). That is easily 90^th percentile, but not super-elite. In that span, however, his most-common line mate at 5-on-5 was Brock Boeser, who spent 872 minutes alongside Pettersson.

Overall, the Vancouver pivot had 2371 minutes at 5-on-5, meaning Boeser was on his wing nearly 37% of the time. Boeser is not a high-end forward, and that was Pettersson’s most-common line mate. For reference, over the last three seasons, MacKinnon has spent 73% of his 5-on-5 time with Mikko Rantanen next to him and Matthews has had Marner next to him for 64% of his 5-on-5 TOI. McDavid is McDavid and doesn’t need a reference here.

It is just to say that the high-end players often have at least one other high-end player next to them. Pettersson’s two most-common line mates over the last three years are Boeser and Andrei Kuzmenko, and Kuzmenko has been with Vancouver for one season. Pettersson does not have an elite line mate to bounce off of, and there has been a steady rotation of guys on and off his line.

For a guy with a 91^st percentile production rate to do that while having to constantly carry his line is patently absurd. Yes, I do think he is tremendously underrated and with Vancouver hitting the reset button, I don’t think that changes anytime soon. (mar23)

15. It’s hard to deny Miro Heiskanen right now, even if some micro-stats don’t look great. He is still solid-to-great in most important areas, eats a ton of minutes, and has a PP1 role locked in for the time being.

It took Victor Hedman five years to scratch the surface of his fantasy upside, Rasmus Dahlin is just getting there in his fifth year, while Charlie McAvoy can’t hold on to the top PP role in Boston. Not every defenseman is Cale Makar, and Heiskanen requires a bit of patience to bring it all together, even if he's having a good fantasy year.

Hopefully, some comfort in his new role allows him to tap back into the raw high-end offensive upside he showed earlier in his career. At the least, a better supporting cast will go a long way to keeping his fantasy value afloat, and the PP1 role with climbing shot rates speak to a lot more goodness to come. The next step in his fantasy evolution is incorporating more peripherals like hits and blocks. They may never come but it's his last hurdle to really reaching that final fantasy plateau. Follow the link for the deep dive… (mar23)

16. Jake Sanderson is already up to 29 points in 68 games, so it’s safe to say the 20-year-old is going to be putting up a 30-point rookie campaign. It may be boosted by his power play production, accounting for 16 points already. With the talent Ottawa has up front in the top-six though, there is room for three fantasy-relevant defensemen, though none of them may hit their ceilings as a result. (mar22)

17. Anthony Duclair (1-4-5 in 11 games) has been slow to get going after returning just a few weeks ago from an Achilles injury suffered last year. After we saw Max Pacioretty re-injure his, I think the Panthers played it a little more cautious giving Duclair all the time he needed to get fully healthy. However, we do still have to be cautious with how we treat him moving forward because of the increased re-injury risk. If he can make it through this coming summer without any setbacks though, then he should be a good bounce-back candidate next year after a full offseason of training. (mar22)

18. Jacob Markstrom should be an excellent buy-low candidate in the offseason for fantasy GMs, but I do also wonder if we see an NHL GM swoop in looking to buy low, as well. The Flames may test the market on him as they could very reasonably run Dan Vladar and Dustin Wolf next year, and will be tight against the cap.

I would have more faith owning Markstrom next year in fantasy if he doesn’t get moved though, as goalies in their first year with new teams often take a step back – Darcy Kuemper, Jack Campbell, and Philipp Grubauer as recent big-money examples. (mar22)

19. Rick Roos' monthly mailbag column runs this upcoming week and he has room to answer more questions. To get yours to him for the deepest dive you'll find anywhere, you can either private message "rizzeedizzee" via the DobberHockey Forums or, as usual, send an email to [email protected] with "Roos Mailbag" as the subject line. (mar22)

20. One of the missteps a lot of us fantasy players make – myself included – is kind of forgetting about younger players that don’t break out right away. As fantasy players, we’re looking for the guys that can have a big impact on our rosters and if a rookie can’t do that, as they often can’t, they get discarded and pushed to the back of our minds. Follow the link for some young players that haven’t taken that next step in the fantasy game even with a couple seasons under their belt: Jesperi Kotkaniemi, Alexis Lafrenière, Alex Newhook, Cam York and Adam Boqvist. (mar21)

21. There is a very small sample size to bear this out, so it’s really not worth going through the numbers here, but I am excited for a full season of Mat Barzal playing wing with Bo Horvat.

Barzal has been shackled the last number of years, with both a low-scoring system, and a lack of creative/skilled offensive players around him. Having someone like Horvat around will lessen the defensive responsibilities on Barzal, and add a finishing skill to his line that he hasn’t had in a long time.

Horvat seems like the perfect fit for Barzal, and it is unfortunate that they only overlapped for six games (plus an extra one minute of the seventh before Barzal was injured. During that stretch, Horvat saw his scoring pace drop (expected based on his percentages in a career year, as well as the move to a new and lower-scoring team), but Barzal soared with eight points in the six games, and bumped his shot rate up a smidge too. That may be more attributed to the ice-time jump though, with an ice time number under 20-minutes in only one of those six games. It helps not having to be sheltered as much, and the more ice time for Barzal the better. (mar20)

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