Thursday was opening day for major league baseball (nice win for the Blue Jays!), so I won't blame you if you took your eye off the puck for a moment or all day. On the other hand, if you’re like me, you haven’t paid as much attention to the start of the fantasy baseball season because of the fantasy hockey playoffs. Thursday featured a usual busy day of NHL games, so there's plenty to discuss.

Matthew Tkachuk doesn't need his dad to motivate him, although he probably felt the impact of his dad's words anyway on Thursday. The elder Tkachuk boy recorded a hat trick and an assist against the Habs, giving him consecutive seasons with at least 100 points. We know Tkachuk is his own player and not propped up by the other talent around him, since his two 100-point seasons have been with two different teams. Even though Calgary brought in reinforcements this offseason, it's fair to say that the departures of Tkachuk and Johnny Gaudreau were significant and even resulted in a net loss for the Flames.  

Per @PR_NHL

Panthers Matthew Tkachuk is the 4th player in NHL history to record 100 points in back-to-back seasons after changing teams in the offseason.

— Sportsnet Stats (@SNstats) March 31, 2023

Anton Lundell, nice of you to appear during the fantasy playoffs. Lundell scored twice and added an assist with six shots on Thursday, giving him goals in back-to-back games. Speaking of getting propped up, centering Tkachuk's line while Sam Bennett is out is really helping Lundell's value at the moment. Lundell has been stapled to my bench on one team thanks to a 12-game stretch without a point, but now seems like as good a time as any to start him.

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Speaking of Gaudreau, remember when the Flames' top line put up those astronomical plus/minus numbers last season? Tkachuk was a plus-57 and Johnny Hockey led the league with a plus-64? What a difference a year makes. Tkachuk's plus-26 is still very good, but Gaudreau is in the bottom 10 of the league with a minus-30 this season. It goes to show that the team is more of a factor than player with the stat. No one on the Blue Jackets is a plus player this season. One player with three games played is a zero, while the rest are minuses.

Columbus's blueline is so decimated that Jake Christiansen received the most power-play time of any defenseman. If you've never heard of Christiansen, maybe it's because he's played a grand total of 29 NHL games and has just four career NHL points. In a game where the Jackets had five power plays, Christiansen played nearly five minutes on the man advantage. I guess you could add him if you need power-play points. Christiansen scored 29 points in 43 games in the AHL this season, so there's a bit of offense there.  

With the 2-1 overtime win, the Bruins have officially clinched the President's Trophy. They've also set a franchise record with 58 wins on the season. So how many of our writers picked them to win the Atlantic Division in the preseason predictions? Zero. (My prediction of Florida to win the division looks especially soft.) It's interesting that the last President's Trophy winner to win the Stanley Cup was Chicago in 2012-13, meaning that the Bruins shouldn't be considered an obvious pick to win the Cup.

Now that the Bruins have the President's Trophy and home ice throughout the playoffs locked up, they really don't have anything left to play for, aside from being ready for Game 1 of the playoffs. That means we should expect plenty of load management, as we saw with Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand, and Hampus Lindholm taking a break to rest minor injuries on Sunday. David Pastrnak has his 50 goals and is just one point shy of 100 thanks to his overtime winner on Thursday, so don't be surprised if he sits out for a game or two before the end of the season.

After starting his Bruins tenure with a bang (12 PTS in his first 10 GP), Dmitry Orlov has cooled off considerably with just one point in his last seven games. The Bruins as a team has scored just three goals over their last two games, which is also something to monitor if you roster any Boston players.

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Cam Talbot probably posted the ugliest win of the season, let alone the fantasy playoffs, on Thursday. In his return from a lower-body injury, Talbot allowed four goals on 11 shots. That's right, the Flyers took just 11 shots in the entire game. The shots were 46-11 in favor of the Senators, but they needed overtime to win 5-4. That gave Talbot the rare win/really bad start combination. Win or lose, a .636 SV% for a game qualifies as a really bad start. As long as the poor start was more rust than injury, Talbot should be better the rest of the way.

Travis Hamonic has been a popular pickup recently because he entered Thursday's game with points in three consecutive games, but he left with an injury that was "not good" according to D.J. Smith. Yet with the Sens playing two more games this week on Saturday and Sunday, fellow Senator Jake Sanderson is where you should turn your attention to if he's still available. Although Sanderson has been held without a point in five consecutive games, he logged a season-high 27:49 on Thursday. With Thomas Chabot also out of the lineup with an injury, Sanderson has also been receiving first-unit power-play minutes.

If your league counts penalty minutes, Nicolas Deslauriers was your man on Thursday. Deslauriers had two fights along with a game misconduct to collect 20 PIM. Deslauriers leads the league with 131 PIM (seems rather low compared to what used to appear during the 1980s), and he's in the top 5 with 276 hits. If you need to make up ground in one or both of those categories late in the season, he seems like an obvious pickup. The lack of scoring won't kill you since it's for a short period of time. He's just 5% rostered in Yahoo and 11% rostered in Fantrax.

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The Jakub Vrana train keeps on rolling. Vrana scored again on Thursday, giving him four goals in his last four games and nine goals in 13 games with the Blues. He's also averaged over three shots per game. Although his scoring will inevitably drop a bit (over 20% shooting), Vrana can be added in just about all formats. For some reason the Red Wings didn't want him, but he is picking up the scoring slack for a St. Louis team that has won six of its last eight games even after trading some key veterans before the deadline.

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Tristan Jarry posted his second shutout of the season on Thursday, a 28-save effort against Nashville. Even though this season hasn't been easy for Jarry, he has still posted some respectable numbers. He has quality starts in each of his last three games, and over half of his starts have been quality starts. In addition, only eight goalies with at least 20 GP have a lower percentage of really bad starts than Jarry (12.2 RBS%).

Even though he has been held without a point for three consecutive games, Sidney Crosby fired nine shots on goal on Thursday, leading all players.

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The Tampa Bay/Washington game was a hard-hitting game. Alex Ovechkin recorded a season-high 11 hits for the Capitals, while Tanner Jeannot and Pat Maroon had eight and six hits respectively for the Bolts. In such a physical game, maybe it shouldn't have come as a surprise that Maroon scored two goals. That probably helped no one, though.

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An Oilers goalie finally posted a shutout this season! I guess shutouts don't really matter with run support from the likes of Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, but it's nice to have when those two are held to "just" one point each. Stuart Skinner received credit for the goose egg, stopping 43 shots from the Kings. Skinner had not recorded a quality start in his previous four games and also had two really bad starts over that span. The Oilers have to be considered one of the favorites in the Western Conference and can score with the best of them, but is their goaltending strong enough for a deep run into the playoffs?

That all being said, Skinner has been piling up the wins recently. He now has 10 wins during the month of March, which is an Oilers team record for any calendar month (Sportsnet Stats). He's accomplished a 10-1-1 record this month despite a rather ordinary 2.83 GAA and .908 SV% over the month.

Ryan Nugent-Hopkins's point streak ended at nine games, meaning that he will remain at 96 points for at least one more game. The Nuge has smashed Dobber's preseason career upside of 77 points, looking poised to hit 100 points for the first time in his career. The key reason? The Oilers' power play. Nugent-Hopkins has 50 power-play points. Yes, that many power-play points. Only McDavid and Draisaitl have more. The Oilers convert nearly a third of their power-play opportunities (32.7%), over 7% higher than the next-best power play. He's a top-10 overall scorer, but take away the power-play points, and he's barely a top-50 scorer when it comes to even-strength points. Needless to say, Nuge is along for the ride.

Your nightly McDavid highlight:

Connor McDavid scores career goal No. 300 in the most Connor McDavid way. 🔥 pic.twitter.com/Fr48YKSAqW

— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) March 31, 2023

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With a goal on Thursday, Daniel Sprong has reached 20 goals and 40 points for the first time in his career. Sprong also have goals in four of his past five games, where he has averaged under 12 minutes of icetime per game. Unbelievably, Sprong has been a healthy scratch a few times this month, which speaks more to Seattle's depth at forward than any lack of scoring. Among Kraken players, only Jared McCann and Matty Beniers have more goals than Sprong. However, the Kraken really spread out the scoring after that, as they have 13 players total with at least 10 goals.

Currently, there are about 110 players with at least 20 goals, none of which have logged as little icetime as Sprong (11:10 TOI). He seems poised to thrive with a bigger role, but I have a hard time recommending him if he's playing on the fourth line with Brandon Tanev and Ryan Donato. As well, a healthy scratch is the last thing you need when you're in a do-or-die fantasy playoff match.

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Follow me on Twitter @Ian_Gooding for more fantasy hockey.