With the Eastern Conference Final starting tonight, it is a time to offer some thoughts on the two series that lay ahead in the NHL playoffs.

Florida-Carolina is not a Conference Final matchup many (any?) of us had, but with the benefit of hindsight, it certainly does make sense: over the final 45 games of the regular season, spanning calendar 2023, Carolina (1^st) and Florida (4^tH) were both near the top of the East in expected goal share at 5-on-5, while Florida had the second-highest actual goal share. The teams had their flaws, sure, but they weren't out-of-nowhere success stories. They had been playing well for a while.

Over in the West, Dallas-Vegas feels about right, yes? Many of us had hopes for Edmonton but their depth and goaltending didn't hold up. Meanwhile, Colorado was injured and missing key players. Those two teams, combined with Dallas and Vegas, comprised the top-4 teams by points percentage in the West this season. Vegas didn't play particularly well down the stretch of the regular season, but adding Mark Stone changes their outlook dramatically.

Maybe there is a lesson with these teams, too. According to Corey Sznajder's tracking data, all four remaining teams were above average by shots created off the forecheck in the regular season:

Of the 18 teams to be above the league average by shots off the forecheck/cycle, 13 of them made the playoffs, and none of the three postseason teams that were below average (Boston, Seattle, Los Angeles) remain.

Officially, I have Vegas and Carolina going through, but these are both incredibly close series. They should be a lot of fun to watch at the very least.

For the entire Dobber Panel of picks for the second round, check out the voting here.

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On the topic of Florida-Carolina, it seems Teuvo Teravainen will be in the lineup for Game 1:

Rod Brind'Amour on Teuvo Teravainen's status following today's practice:

"Hopefully he's going to play… We'll probably morning skate (tomorrow) and make the determination after that… If he can go and he feels like ready ready, then he'll be in." pic.twitter.com/GrwqXdYMB9

— Walt Ruff (@WaltRuff) May 17, 2023

Of course, nothing is set in stone, and we won't know what the lineup is until warmups start, but it does appear to be a good sign for the injured Finn.

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The offseason fantasy reviews of all the non-playoff teams continue in today's Ramblings as we head to California and check in on the San Jose Sharks. Since the regular season finished, we learned that Erik Karlsson was nominated not only for the Norris Trophy, but for the Ted Lindsay (MVP as voted by the players). That fact makes the rest of this article sad, funny, or both.  

This review will cover the successes and failures of the players and team, where they improved or declined, and where the Sharks go from here. Even on a team heading to a full rebuild like San Jose, there is no shortage of discussion points.

As usual, data for this article will be taken from our Frozen Tools or Natural Stat Trick, unless otherwise indicated.

Successes

The clear, runaway fantasy success this season for the Sharks was defenceman Erik Karlsson. In fact, that may be the case for all fantasy successes. Karlsson, who'd amassed 115 points over 211 games with San Jose from 2018-22, exploded for 101 points in 82 games. It was just the 15^th instance of a defenceman posting at least 100 points in a season in NHL history, and 11 of those 14 prior instances were Bobby Orr or Paul Coffey. He was also the first blue liner to reach 100 points in over 30 years. The sum of all this was him out-performing his Yahoo! ADP by 100 picks, finishing as the number-2 defenceman, and the only reason he was not number-1 was his plus/minus. Not only a successful season for Karlsson, but one of the most unbelievable offensive seasons ever by a defenceman. We can credit a lot to him shooting 12%, after never being higher than 8.5% in a single season, but we can't discredit what he did. Part of what he did was be as proficient with scoring chance assists – just assisting on a teammate’s scoring chance – as Cale Makar (per AllThreeZones’ tracking):

It was a stellar year for Timo Meier until he was traded, posting 31 goals and 52 points in 57 games, managing nearly two hits and 4.5 shots per game. Things slowed considerably after the trade to New Jersey and it's a wonder what that'll do to his draft value this fall. Fantasy owners have been getting smarter about this sort of thing over the last half-decade. The last thing I will note is he lost a lot of ice time in New Jersey when compared to San Jose, and any player that relies heavily on peripherals like shots and hits losing ice time is not ideal.

Logan Couture quietly had a good season, posting four-year highs in goals, assists, points, power-play points, and hits per game. He finished the year near the top-100 players on Yahoo!'s ranking system, despite regularly being drafted outside the top-150. He still had some very good playmaking stats when looking at some tracking data.

Alexander Barabanov had easily his most productive season, but a brutal plus/minus and lack of peripherals really watered down his value outside of points-only formats. Matt Benning was fine in deeper multi-cat formats.

Failures

He wasn't a colossal failure, but Tomas Hertl saw a decline in shots per game, a five-year low in goals per game, and a small drop in hits per game. Combine that with his horrific plus/minus (minus-36), and he wasn't worth a lot on Yahoo! this season. He finished about a round ahead of his Yahoo! ADP so, again, not an outright failure, but it doesn't bode well with the team heading to a full teardown.

There were spurts were either of the San Jose goaltenders carried a bit of fantasy value, but they largely were awful this season. Both James Reimer and Kaapo Kahkonen finished with negative Goals Saved Above Expected, per Evolving Hockey. On top of that, Reimer got 41 starts and Kahkonen 37. Split starts on a bad team when you're already not playing well is a fantasy black hole.  

Other than that, it's hard to call anyone else a failure. They sent down William Eklund to start the season, and there are useful guys for banger leagues like Mario Ferraro or Luke Kunin (when healthy), but this wasn't a trove of fantasy usefulness at the outset of the season.  

Improvements

On the bright side, the Sharks legitimately improved offensively, and by quite a bit. At even strength, their goals per 60 minutes jumped by 17%, their expected goals-for jumped over 20%, and shots jumped by 4%.

On the downside, that improvement was all Karlsson. With him on the ice at even strength, the team scored 3.68 goals per 60 minutes. When Karlsson was off the ice, the team scored 1.93 goals per 60 minutes. When looking at on-ice player goal rates across the league, offensively speaking, San Jose performed like Ottawa did with Tim Stützle whenever Karlsson was on the ice. Whenever Karlsson was resting, San Jose performed like the Islanders did whenever they had Casey Cizikas on the ice. Whatever we may think of Karlsson defensively, this team was absolutely god-awful offensively with him off the ice. Just keep that in mind when looking to the 2023-24 season.

Declines

This is where the bright side ends, because everything got worse. Both the power play (-2.3%) and the penalty kill (-18.5%) got worse from a goals for/against perspective. As has often been mentioned in this series, with power-play goal-scoring up across the league, a decline in that respect is magnified because of its growing importance. I probably don't have to say what the PP looked like with Karlsson off the ice.

There were improvements in expected goals for numbers, but there was also a huge increase in expected goals against numbers which, predictably, resulted in a lot more goals against at even strength this season compared to last. In fact, the drop in team defence (combined with shoddy goaltending, which may explain one another) meant goals against went up 24% from last year, a season where San Jose was already in the bottom-10 by goals against. There is a reason that they finished near the bottom of the league in 2022-23.

Declines nearly across the board are what should temper expectations of a turnaround in San Jose. They have a couple of nice, young players, but Karlsson just had a career season and they traded away Meier. If Karlsson regresses (he will), and they can't replace Meier (they won't, not right away), there are huge pieces missing from this team and we got a very clear look at what that might look like down the stretch: San Jose's final 30 games saw them go 6-19-5, winning just 20% of their games while sporting a minus-48 goal differential. A full season of that would be comparable to the season Anaheim just had.

Where They Go From Here

The Sharks have nearly $35M in cap space tied up between Hertl, Couture, Karlsson, and Marc-Edouard Vlasic for at least three more years. It makes a full teardown difficult, but it's clear the team has reached the point where they need to start building for the future.

On the upside, San Jose doesn't have much in the way of impact UFA/RFA players, and could have around $10M in cap space after signing some of their young RFAs, if they so choose. It seems more likely they just run the same lineup they finished the season with to see what they have in some of their young players. It would give top prospects like Eklund, Henry Thrun, and Thomas Bordeleau some more NHL experience, and probably alongside veterans like Couture/Hertl/Karlsson, while likely winding up with another top-5 pick in next year's Draft.

This is a team that has truly reached its limit from the heyday of 5-8 years ago. It makes it hard to dig for fantasy value. The spare parts playing in the top-6 might have some streaming value at times, as will the goalies, but as the team start to turn the page from the Couture/Hertl core, there will be a lot of pain to come. It will make them a tough team to watch in real life, and a tough team to rely on in fantasy.

Previous Offseason Reviews:

Buffalo

Calgary

Pittsburgh

Nashville

Ottawa

Vancouver

Detroit

St. Louis

Washington

Arizona

Philadelphia