Buffalo had their end-of-year press conference, and these can usually be kind of useless for fantasy purposes. The campaign has just finished, the Draft and Free Agency are months away, and teams may have coach/management upheaval in the meantime. It can make those mornings kind of fruitless even if it's the last chance to really get insight on the team from management until those events in June and July.

We did get one interesting nugget from the Sabres' clean-out though:

Don Granato said he'd be comfortable w/ a Devon Levi-Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen goalie tandem next season. #Sabres

— Bill Hoppe (@BillHoppeNHL) April 19, 2023

Not that anyone expected Devon Levi or Ukko-Pekka-Luukkonen to be kept off the roster, but it gives them a vote of confidence. I also wonder how the starts might go, and the leash each player may have. While I do think Levi is the goaltender of the future and has the clear inside track, this team clearly has the 2024 postseason in mind and the goalie that is playing better will likely get the net. That doesn't guarantee a heavy workload for either.

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Michael Bunting was suspended three games for his hit to the head on Erik Cernak:

Toronto's Michael Bunting has been suspended for 3 playoff games for an Illegal Check to the Head and Interference against Tampa Bay's Erik Cernak. https://t.co/cEqbrMfeIt

— NHL Player Safety (@NHLPlayerSafety) April 19, 2023

This will keep Bunting out of the lineup until Game 5. It is his first career suspension.

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Tampa Bay gave some updates on their injured players:

Michael Eyssimont, Erik Cernak et Victor Hedman ne sont pas à l'entraînement aujourd'hui. @TBLightning @TVASports

— Renaud Lavoie (@renlavoietva) April 19, 2023

On top of that, injured forward Tanner Jeannot was skating for the team at practice on Wednesday. Follow-ups after practice said that Michael Eyssimont and Erik Cernak are out for Game 2 while it seems Jeannot and Victor Hedman are closer to game-time decisions. The injuries, they are a-startin'.

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Patrice Bergeron was out for Boston for Game 2 after missing Game 1. While it may not have seemed a big deal for the Florida series, Wednesday night could have proved otherwise. He is still a huge part of the team. This is absolutely a situation to keep monitoring.

The Bergeron-less Bruins finally cracked a bit in Game 2 as the Florida Panthers evened the series 1-1 thanks to a 6-3 win. Sam Bennett scored in his return to the lineup, managing seven shots in total with three hits. He and his line mates looked tremendous in this game, and it's a difficult matchup for Boston without Bergeron as it moves everyone in an unusual spot.

Brandon Montour scored twice for the Panthers, including the game-winner early in the third period. His tremendous season continues, even against a tremendous team like the Bruins.

Alex Lyon was very good in net again, saving 34 of 37 shots guarding Florida's cage.

Tyler Bertuzzi scored in the loss, giving him three points in two playoff games. Going back to the regular season, he now has 13 points in his last 10 games with Boston. He's doing his part, including stirring the pot a bit. He is an interesting player to follow in free agency, for fantasy purposes.

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We had a higher scoring game between the New York Islanders and Carolina Hurricanes for Game 2 of their first-round matchup. New York reeled off three straight goals to take a lead midway through the third period, but Jaccob Slavin tied it a few minutes later on a weird bounce off goalie Ilya Sorokin.  It gave us overtime for the first time in the series.

It didn't take long as Jesper Fast wired home a cross-ice feed five minutes into the extra frame to give Carolina the 4-3 win, and a 2-0 series lead. Brent Burns assisted on the goal, his second of the night, adding four shots and a hit. Slavin also had a two-point night, assisting on an earlier Paul Stastny tally.

Antti Raanta stopped 24 of 27 shots faced in the victory.

Teuvo Teravainen left the game late in the third period and did not return. Hurricanes beat writer Cory Lavalette stated after the game that Tervainen suffered a broken hand on a slash late in the game, would require surgery, and will be out for a while. Just more awful injury news.

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Dallas called Riley Tufte up for their second playoff game as Joe Pavelski was missing after leaving Game 1 when his head hit the ice after a hit from Matt Dumba. Tufte had 19 goals and 90 PIMs in 63 AHL games this season. Joel Kiviranta drew into the lineup for Pavelski, though Tyler Seguin took his spot on the top line.

The Stars evened their series with The Wild 1-1 by laying an absolute beating on them in Game 2 by a 7-3 margin. Following his 51-save double overtime win in Game 1, Minnesota's starting goalie Filip Gustavsson was riding the pines for this one. Marc-André Fleury let in seven goals on 31 shots in his stead. Not to say they were all his fault or anything close to it, but it is an extremely curious decision to not start Gustavsson, given his Game 1 performance, in favour of a goalie rotation (???) in the playoffs.

Roope Hintz did most of the damage with a hat trick, including the first, sixth, and seventh goals for the Stars. He added an assist to give himself a four-point night while Evgenii Dadonov had a pair of his own tallies on three shots. Jamie Benn had a goal and an assist while Tyler Seguin scored a power-play goal while taking Joe Pavelski's spot on the top unit.

Miro Heiskanen had four assists, including three on the power play, to go with four shots and two blocks. He was the only Dallas defenceman to register a point on the seven goals.

There was a lot of, let's say, rough-housing in this one so we'll see if anything comes of it.

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Edmonton got out to a 2-0 lead in the first period over Los Angeles and looked dominant, then the Kings scored two goals late in the second period to tie the game. It was at that point that the collective butts of Edmonton fandom clenched with visions of the blown Game 1.

That didn't happen as Klim Kostin grabbed a turnover in the neutral zone and ripped home a wrist shot that honestly should have been saved. His goal stood as the game-winner with Evander Kane adding a late empty-net tally. Leon Draisaitl assisted on his goal, adding to Drai's PP goal and ES assist earlier in the game for a three-point night.

Stuart Skinner saved 22 of 24 for the win.

Gabriel Vilardi was back in the lineup for Los Angeles, skating on the third line and second PP unit. He skated 14:37, scoring once on two shots, adding a block and a hit. His goal was a real nice tuck job on the short side, too. He looked like one of the best players on the ice for the Kings, which is both good and bad, depending how you look at it.

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On Tuesday, I started my offseason series of reviewing the fantasy seasons of each non-playoff team. That edition covered the Buffalo Sabres, and today we'll be moving to the Western Conference. We are going to touch on successes, failures, improvements, declines, and where the team goes from here. Data will be from our Frozen Tools or Natural Stat Trick, unless otherwise indicated.

Easily one of the most interesting teams heading into the 2022-23 season was Calgary. In 2021-22, they won their division and advanced to the second round of the postseason. But then they fell flat in the Battle of Alberta, getting bounced in five games to Edmonton, and had a turbulent offseason. Johnny Gaudreau left for Columbus, Matthew Tkachuk was traded for Jonathan Huberdeau and MacKenzie Weegar (among other pieces), and the team signed Nazem Kadri. All that upheaval led to 93 points and outside of the playoff picture in 2023. They also had no fantasy options that ended up as super-elite, unlike the season prior.

Let's dissect the season a bit, from a fantasy perspective.

Successes

Though it's tough to say a team with one (1) player in the top-75 fantasy options on Yahoo! had successes, there was at least one great fantasy season: Tyler Toffoli. He was the guy that finished top-75 on Yahoo!, coming in 42^nd overall, and in the neighbourhood of wingers like Artemi Panarin, Alex Ovechkin, and Kyle Connor. Considering he was very often drafted outside the top-120 players, or outside the first 10 rounds, finishing as a fourth-round value is a wild success for him.

Toffoli finished the campaign with career-highs in goals (34), assists (39), power-play points (25), shots on goal (268), and even hit a seven-year high in penalty minutes with 28. He also posted the highest shots/60 minutes of his career. Where most of his teammates underwhelmed, Toffoli finally had the full regular season fantasy performance that many fantasy players (at least me) had been waiting for years to see.

Mikael Backlund was also pretty good with a career-high 56 points, 260 shots, and 97 hits. The problem is he shot 7.3%, and that inefficiency is something we'll discuss later. Regardless, a good fantasy season for him.

Failures

Well, there's lots of this to go around.

• Nazem Kadri dropped 31 points from his total the year prior despite 11 more games played.
• Elias Lindholm shaved 20 goals (!) off his 2021-22 mark, dropping from 42 to 22.
• Andrew Mangiapane scored fewer than half the goals (17) he registered the year before (35). That he had shoulder surgery immediately after the season probably explains a lot of this.
• Jonathan Huberdeau saw his point production (55) cut by more than half what he did in his last year in Florida (115). It was an eight-season low, counting only seasons where he played at least 50 games.
• MacKenzie Weegar's point production dropped 30%.
• Jacob Markstrom had arguably the worst season of his career, and likely his worst season when looking at just 5-on-5 numbers.

It really isn't that hard to look around this team to find fantasy hockey failures. We probably could have just looked at some of my season-long teams and saved the research.

Improvements

In a season where one guy (maybe two) had a great season and so many players did not, it's hard to say that the team improved in any regard. That doubles when we consider that they already fired their general manager.

If anything, at least Darryl Sutter started playing the kids more. It felt like pulling teeth most of the time, but Walker Duehr got a regular role over the final 7-8 weeks of the season, Adam Ruzicka played over half the season, and Jakob Pelletier got some legitimate top-6 run. Now, how much of a chance these guys actually got is up for debate, but it's hard seeing the Darryl Sutter of 2013 doing what the Darryl Sutter of 2023 did. He may not even be around for 2023-24, though.

Declines

We went over all the players and the under-performance but is that a product of the team environment or did they create that team environment?

For fantasy purposes, the Flames dropped from 6^th in the league in goals back in 2021-22 to 19^th in 2022-23. The thing is, being ranked 19^th in goals doesn't preclude from having good fantasy value; Ottawa finished just about them and had two forwards among the top-25 skaters, while Winnipeg finished just behind them and had more skaters in the top-75 than Calgary. The problem is the Flames spread out ice time so unless one line goes nuclear – like in 2021-22 – it's hard to accumulate fantasy value.

The big decline came by shooting percentage. They finished dead last in the NHL by conversion rate at 8.75%. Just shooting 9.5%, which would have still kept them outside the top-20 teams, would have added 22 goals to their total and had them in a playoff spot.

Inefficiency was the culprit, and it goes beyond shooting percentage. The team finished second in the league in shots but finished seventh by expected goals. That difference meant Calgary required the eighth-most shots of any team to create one expected goal, with mostly awful teams below them (Colorado excepted). A year ago, they were in the middle of the league by this measure, so they were a lot more efficient with their shots with Matthew Tkachuk and Johnny Gaudreau on the roster. Efficiency can help shooting percentages – half of the top-10 teams by shots/xG efficiency were also top-10 scoring teams – and Calgary needs more of that.

Calgary saw their shot efficiency decline and that won't fly in 2023. Who the coach is in September could change this, but the team can't repeat this performance next season. Goaltending improvements or not, they need to improve their shot quality.  

Moving Forward

Despite a new general manager coming in, and perhaps a new coach, it's likely to be a quiet offseason. Calgary has no important UFAs to replace and no RFAs that need an extension. They also have very little cap space, so maybe there are a couple trades, but with the lengthy contracts and need for impact from younger players, it's likely to be improvements on the margin rather than anything approaching the overhaul we saw in the 2022 offseason.

Let's assume that Markstrom rebounds to some degree and doesn't sink their season. The changes need to come with how the team plays offensively. It's a new NHL and playing like it's 2015 won't work. Of the top-12 teams by goals/60 this season, only one missed the postseason (Buffalo). Only 3/16 playoff teams finished in the bottom half of the league in scoring. Markstrom improving probably gets them to the playoffs, but scoring will decide whether this team can get back to contender status or not.

All the pieces are here for a good playoff team, especially if the young players can take a step forward. Things aren't that bleak, yet, but there is work to do with the on-ice product and unless that improves, it's hard to see this franchise being a trove of fantasy value. It starts with the guy behind the bench, so we'll see what the new GM does and pick this back up then.