One of the big stories heading into the playoffs in the West is the Minnesota Wild. Over their last 25 games, the team is 17-3-5 and have given up more than four goals just twice in that span (both times to non-playoff teams, funnily enough). That stretch includes 11 games without Kirill Kaprizov, and they still have managed a 7-2-2 record without him.

The good news is that, as expected, he was skating on Monday:

Injured or not, Kirill Kaprizov is such a gifted skater #mnwild. https://t.co/FvMAAyLwWw pic.twitter.com/epOgmPLuBt

— Joe Smith (@JoeSmithNHL) April 3, 2023

Minnesota has six games left, three this week and three next. If he can make it back sometime next week, he could have time for a tune-up game or two before the postseason.

Staying with the Wild for a second, Mason Shaw's season is over:  

Mason Shaw suffered a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee in Saturday's game at Vegas and will miss the remainder of this season.

— Minnesota Wild PR (@mnwildPR) April 3, 2023

It was the first full season in the NHL for Shaw, and he managed 7 goals and 17 points in 59 games playing a depth role. It is a shame because he had largely been playing well. He will be back next season in a similar role, though his upside in hits leagues is real if he can earn some more ice time than 11:17 a night.

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Dallas called up prospect defenceman Thomas Harley:

Stars have recalled Thomas Harley https://t.co/S0mHrCGqTa

— Saad Yousuf (@SaadYousuf126) April 3, 2023

It feels like a lifetime ago but the 2019 first-round pick made his debut way back in the 2020 Bubble Playoffs. He has just 35 total NHL games to his name, though, and is expected to be a big piece of this team for years to come. This might not just be a tryout thing, either, as the team is looking for more from its bottom pair, as intimated by Mr. Yousuf in an earlier tweet. Harley has 10 goals and 34 points in 66 AHL games this season, perhaps a sign his offensive game is starting to reach the level he needs to be an NHL regular.

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On the good news front for Buffalo, Tage Thompson was skating at practice:  

Tage Thompson is on the ice for practice

— Paul Hamilton (@pham1717) April 3, 2023

He was in his usual top-line spot during practice after missing the team's last three games. They are still alive in the playoff race, however unlikely, so this is a boost for the team and fantasy owners alike.

Also, I know the Sabres have been on a slide over the last month, but that they're still even viable in the playoff race with 5-7 games left is a testament to the strides this team made from last season. What a bright future they have.

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Montreal announced that Sean Monahan (groin surgery) and Alex Belzile (fractured leg) will be out for the remainder of the regular season.  Monahan hasn't played since early December as injuries keep piling up for him year after year. It is really unfortunate because he played very well through the first two months of the season.

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Artturi Lehkonen was skating before Avalanche practice with a stick in hand:  

Lehkonen out early working with Allard, stick in hand.

— Evan Rawal (@evanrawal) April 3, 2023

That is notable because he has a broken finger and had been skating without a stick. It is a very good sign, though time is running out to get back into the lineup before Game 1 of the postseason.

Not for nothing, but Gabriel Landeskog certainly doesn't look like he'll be ready for the postseason, and Lehkonen's status is still up in the air. They didn't really replace Nazem Kadri, either, even if Evan Rodrigues is having a nice season. As good as a lot of these Avs players are, going into the playoffs down an entire scoring line from 12 months ago would be an uphill battle. Health is going to determine a lot for this team over the next two weeks.

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Including this one, I have four Ramblings over the next week. I want to take these Ramblings to discuss defencemen from a variety of angles. Whether it's improvements, declines, changes in patterns, or individual player analysis, we are going to take the time to review a position that has evolved more than any other over the last decade.

Today, the focus will be on improvements/declines in scoring chance contributions per 60 minutes at 5-on-5 (SCC/60). Corey Sznajder is a name mentioned in these pages before, and he's someone who hand-tracks hundreds of games every season in dozens of different micro-stats like zone entries/exits, passing combinations, defensive zone work, and myriad other areas. He tracks individual scoring chances and scoring chance assists, which are passes leading to a teammate's scoring chance. Adding those together gives us a skater's SCC/60 and it is something that can indicate that skater being very involved offensively. Defencemen will generally have much lower rates than forwards, but being involved can help with fantasy upside. For that reason, let's look at some of the biggest risers and fallers from last season to this season, focusing solely on players that have at least 200 tracked minutes in each season. That means we won't have rookies like Owen Power or Jake Sanderson, or guys that have missed significant time due to injury.

One last note: we have 149 defencemen in the sample and the average SCC/60 this season among those 149 defencemen is 2.3. Generally speaking, anything over 3.2 SCC/60 for a blue liner is excellent and anything below 1.3 SCC/60 is poor. Clear? Great. Additional data will be taken from our Frozen Tools or Natural Stat Trick.

Let's start with the risers. We aren't just looking at the biggest jumps, but some names of interest to me or readers. For a reference, here are the five biggest jumps in SCC/60:  

Alright, let's touch on some of these names.

Jakob Chychrun

Chychrun was finally traded after being on the block for at least a couple years, and posted five points in 12 games with Ottawa before being injured. Those injuries have been a hallmark for him, but it's worth noting he did have a much better season contributing offensively. His SCC/60 took a huge leap from 2021-22, his worst per-minute production season out of his last three. Chychrun's mark of 3.6 SCC per 60 minutes puts him in the 88^th percentile of defencemen, or a low-end number-1 rearguard comparable to names like Thomas Chabot and Brent Burns. It should be noted the big reason for his jump this season is his playmaking component – the scoring chance assists – is well above the league average for the first time in three years. Having a locked top PP role in Ottawa seems unlikely but with the continued growth of their forwards, if Chychrun can replicate this season in 2023-24, he could still easily be a 40-point defenceman with great peripherals.

Adam Pelech (and Noah Dobson)

We have two Islanders defencemen listed here because both Dobson (2^nd) and Pelech (T-6^th) are among the largest risers in SCC/60 from last season. I wanted to note it for two reasons.

First, it can help highlight one limitation of SCC/60: double counting. What I mean by that is if a player has a scoring chance assist, then someone on the ice with them has a scoring chance. It doesn't necessarily mean the player getting the scoring chance did anything particularly well, it just means they were in a spot to get a decent shot off. It is hard to tell who is driving the bus sometimes, so we should point out that Dobson and Pelech haven't played a lot together this season as a defence pair – under 120 minutes together, while Dobson has spent over 1000 minutes elsewhere. It is extremely unlikely that the double counting of SCC/60 applies here.

Second, the change in the Islanders' offensive play. When I looked last week, no team in the league was getting a higher percentage of their shot attempts from the blue line than the Islanders:

on the left, the teams at least one standard deviation above the league average in percentage of team shot attempts taken by defencemen, and on the right are teams at least one SD below average in this regard pic.twitter.com/vzrcNUZURe

— Michael Clifford (@SlimCliffy) March 29, 2023

Getting the defence more involved is clearly one of the objectives of this team under coach Lane Lambert, and it's given Pelech and Dobson a bigger spotlight at 5-on-5. This has translated to 5-on-5 career-highs for Dobson in points/60, shots/60, on-ice team shots/60, and on-ice team goals/60. Not bad work on a roster that is 20^th in goals/60, and perhaps a good sign of things to come when this team has a healthy Mathew Barzal and Oliver Wahlstrom next season.  

Marcus Pettersson

Pettersson has played a fair amount with Kris Letang (404 minutes) but has spent a lot more time away from him (800 minutes), so the double-count isn't a huge problem. Also, the team generates basically the same amount of offence whether Pettersson is with Letang (3.5 xGF/60) or is not (3.4 xGF/60). That is why it's believable for Pettersson to have the seventh-largest jump in SCC/60 from last year. He has a nearly identical rate this campaign to Letang himself, and is higher than names like Alex Pietrangelo, Josh Morrissey, and Morgan Rielly.

Pettersson has great peripherals (260 hits+blocks in 67 games) and is one point away from tying his career mark for a single season despite 17 fewer games played. What his fantasy upside looks like depends entirely on the aging core still being able to produce, but Pettersson is absolutely making great strides both in real life and in the fantasy game.

Jaycob Megna

Inside the top-10 risers in SCC/60 was a name I did not expect to see in Jaycob Megna. He has never really shown offensive upside, whether the NHL or AHL. Then I saw that he's spent over 75% of his 5-on-5 ice time with Erik Karlsson, so this is absolutely one of those cases where I worry about double counting and Megna being the beneficiary of a Norris-calibre season from Karlsson. We can probably ignore the 30-year-old who has 28 points in his last 118 AHL games.  

Mikey Anderson

Anderson has often been known for being a defence-first defenceman, and that's where his real-life value is derived. He has seen a big jump in his SCC/60, though, as it's risen by 140% from last season. The problem is he was starting from a place that was well below average, and that 140% jump in SCC/60 (all the way to 2.04) leaves him still below the league average of 2.3. All the same, his rise in production does seem to have some reasoning behind it, and his peripherals make him a very good multi-cat option moving forward.

Alright, let's touch on some drops. Here are the five largest declines in SCC/60 totals from last season:

We are going to talk about three of these five names, as well as a couple others.

MacKenzie Weegar

Like a lot of guys making their way to Calgary in the 2022 offseason, Weegar has seen a huge drop in SCC/60. It tracks with similarly large drops from forwards Jonathan Huberdeau and Nazem Kadri. Seeing it apply to three different players at three different positions indicates this is a coaching thing, and it's hard to see it improving much unless Darryl Sutter changes his tactics (or the team changes coaches). It is nice to see him doing better of late now that he has a real PP role, though: 10 points and 27 shots in his last 10 games.

Devon Toews

Last year, Toews's points per game was 43% higher than it is this year. Part of that is a drop in power-play production, as he has just four PPPs compared to 12 a season ago. However, his points/60 at 5-on-5 have dropped about 20% from last campaign as the team has a three-year low in goals for/60 with Toews on the ice. Last year, his SCC/60 was among the elite in the NHL and this year it's comparable to a second-pair defenceman. The entire team has struggled to score at times this season thanks to a slew of injuries among the forwards and the loss of Nazem Kadri. It is a wonder if Toews can rebound next season if the team can stay on the ice and out of the trainer's room.

Miro Heiskanen

We will just briefly mention Heiskanen because I did a deep dive on his season recently, pointing out how he's being relied upon less for offensive work at 5-on-5 than in recent campaigns. His production is still rising likely because there is more depth up front, and he doesn't have to do as much work offensively thanks to that added scoring depth. This lightened offensive load is reflected in his decline in SCC/60, and that is a bit worrisome. We will re-visit this at some point in the summer.

John Klingberg

Moving on to a former Stars defenceman, there was, predictably, a large drop in Klingberg's SCC/60 going to the Anaheim Ducks this season. He was still above average, mind you, but the absolute collapse in his defensive ability over the last few seasons means that being above average offensively is not nearly enough to justify high-end usage. The six-time 40-point blue liner seems to be following a similar career arc to that of Keith Yandle and I'm not sure how much longer Klingberg will be viable in a lot of fantasy formats. We will see where he ends up this summer.

Morgan Rielly

Just to touch on Rielly quickly: he is the antithesis of the aforementioned Pelech and Dobson. Where the Islanders generate the largest share shot attempts from the blue line of any team (37%), the Leafs generate the least by a good margin (23.8%, next-closest is Buffalo at 25.3%). However, that was the case for Toronto a season ago, as this team has had very low shot rates from the blue line for a few years now. Is Rielly playing through some sort of injury? It would help explain what has happened. This is another player we'll take a closer look at this summer.